pc graphics probles...sooo slow

[la Huerta]

hey all...:)



when i'm on a webpage with a lot a graphics, or any flash, it's almost non responsive, the mouse pointer gets sticky on the screen, and scrolling is difficult..

it's a compaq , with not a lot on it , only about 1/3 full,max, even a while ago when i had even less on it it still had the problem, i just updated the graphics driver and it seems to be worse..


also, i have gimp on too now, which eats up memory, does anyone know how to adjust the pc for gimp, and can anything be cleaned after using gimp a few times to gain some space back on the hardrive...

all suggestions appriecated...


La H

[Cliff Rogers]

Do a google for Spybot V1.4, download & install it, update it & then run a clean on your computer. :2tsup:

[la Huerta]

i did a scan and removed some spyware, but i do this every 2 days,,,it does'nt seem to be the problem...

[Cliff Rogers]

Hmmm... spyware is the number one cause of slownest, number to is bloody nortons, number three is teenagers in the house loading heaps of sheyet on the PC, number four is journaling in MS Office (part of outlook), it was switched on by default in Office 97 & Outlook 98.

Start uninstalling things.

Maybe you have a crook video card but that usually shows up as busted up or no video rather than slow video.:?

[la Huerta]

yeh bazaar...

i have no office apps, no teenages, pics go to photobucket, no norton...

just basic programs that i use everyday...and most of them are small...

checked the device manager and no problems showing up there...

maybe it's just the pc and nothing can be done...

[Cliff Rogers]

Do you still have the same amount of RAM that you started with?
Maybe (if you have more than one) a stick RAM has chucked it in & windoze is now running without it.

Where are you, Sydney.... has it just rained recently?
We get weird faults when it rains after a dry spell, the dust build up around the CPU fan can cause strange things to happen.
Blow it ou with compressed air.

Could also be HDD on the way out.... back up your data now.

[la Huerta]

ok back again...

i'm also finding that some words in my tabed browsing and overlapping each other...ie:not displaying correctly

[Felder]

maybe it's just the pc and nothing can be done...

Try doing this: :crash:

It's very therapeutic.....:)

[la Huerta]

i did that on my old one...


...yep felt gooooood..

[Cliff Rogers]

ok back again...

i'm also finding that some words in my tabed browsing and overlapping each other...ie:not displaying correctly

Dust or video card, give it a clean out first & then try swapping the video card.

Ignore Felder, he is hitting the monitor & it isn't the monitor's fault. :p

[Felder]

Ignore Felder, he is hitting the monitor & it isn't the monitor's fault. :p

Goes to show what you know. :cool:

La Huerta - get a new monitor mate. That will solve all your problems. It will also balance your cheque book, cook dinner and take out the garbage. A new monitor will also clean your car once a week and vacuum the house.

[Ianab]

How much Ram (not hard disk space) does that poor Compaq have? And what version of Windows?

Most of those home spec Compaqs I've seen have been horribly short on memory and loaded up with various 'utilities' that Compaq put on them to 'help' you :~

I suspect another stick of RAM will make your computing a lot more enjoyable :)

Cheers

Ian

[Cliff Rogers]

Goes to show what you know. :cool:

La Huerta - get a new monitor mate.....
And the name of this monitor would be...... Rudigar? Nabnerb? :p

[la Huerta]

ok , so whats the easiest and cheapest way of adding ram...

it's got MSW2000...

[Ianab]

Hmm... would need to know the exact type of ram that the machine takes.

Can you find the exact model number of you machine, maybe we can ID it from the compaq (HP) web page?

Realistically you want to have 256mb or more of ram to run Win2000 smoothly.

Ian

[la Huerta]

ah yeh sorry mate...P3, it has 256mb Ram and i think 20gbHD...(could be 40gb actually)

[Heilander]

here's my 2 cents worth;to find out what is on your system go to run or open a cmd dos command ;type dxdiag/enter it will list in detail what kind and how much ram is on it.if you are running gimp or any graphics prog you need IMHO at least 500 meg ram (cheap these days probable dimm adding a stick is easy if you want instructions yell ok?
Keith

P.S. why is the 'General' flying through the orchard??

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

I suspect Cliff is spot on; not enough RAM. Especially if your gfx card uses shared RAM. 256MB is just sufficient to run Win98 or earlier; Win2K or XP really need at least double that. You haven't said what OS you're running?

Assuming your system is clean, then the next most likely causes are too small a swap file (W98 & earlier didn't auto-size on the fly) or your HDD seriously needs defragging. The easy way to tell if one of these is the cause is to wait until the system bogs down, and then check to see if the HDD is working it's little butt off. If it is, BINGO!

Under W98 I used to edit the autoexec.bat to include the line "del C:/win386.swp" to dispose of the mongrel at every boot. Under W2K I enable "clear virtual memory pagefile when system shuts down" in the Security Options of the Local Policy. It's only a matter of seconds for the system to rebuild a new, unfrag'd pagefile on reboot. :)

[Cliff Rogers]

.... You haven't said what OS you're running? .....

Did too, it's Win2K.

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

:- [inserts foot in mouth...]

[Felder]

P.S. why is the 'General' flying through the orchard??

The boys were out doing a moonshine run when that infernally clumsy Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane spotted them and gave chase. Boss Hog has been notified. :cool:

[la Huerta]

felder has the right answer to the flying General question...


not enough ram is probably right, it started going a little wacko when i was using gimp a lot...

i did a resistry clean and cleaned old files with the CCcleaner...

i also upted the figure in the swap file, as i read this needs to be done because gimp uses a lot of vertual memory, but not sure if the numbers right, i'v been increasing it a bit here and there and feel it's help a bit...

[Cliff Rogers]

Slowness when using virtual memory could be you HDD.

[Harry72]

P3 256mb .... time for a update!

[la Huerta]

this is an update...my laptop blew up a xmas, and this is all i could afford at the time...


apart from this little problem, it does everything i need it to do ..

[Ianab]

Yeah.. P3 , win2k and 256mb should work 'OK'. Well for web browsing and light graphics work anyway. Unless it's got a fault of course, a sick hard disk that has to keep retrying errors will give you a really sad PC though.

Of course the only way to really test this is to pop in another hard disk and reload windows and see if it works properly. :-

Having a few organ doner PCs laying around helps with the fault finding too :wink:

Cheers

Ian

[Cliff Rogers]

...a sick hard disk that has to keep retrying errors will give you a really sad PC though.

Of course the only way to really test this is to pop in another hard disk and reload windows and see if it works properly. :-

Having a few organ doner PCs laying around helps with the fault finding too :wink: ...

I have a good :pir8: diag that boots from a CD for testing the HDD. :2tsup:

[la Huerta]

hey thanks so far everyone for your replies !


i was just using gimp, and it stoped responding, i went to shut it down in the task manager and noticed the cpu usage was 100%, that explains the freeze-up, so while i had the taks manager on i went to a couple of flash sites and noticed that anything with heavy graphics would cause the cpu usage to go up to around 90%...


oh, and 2/3 of the pc is empty, so you would'nt think i'd have a problem.

[Heilander]

you didn't say whether you had a separate graphics/video card or an onboard one also the thing that uses a virtual ram is called a swap file which could have been changed percentage wise to too small a cache (usually 10% of your hard drive) set it back to default or,since you have 2/3 of your c: drive empty ,assign 20% .but you would be better/cheaper getting a 2nd hand graphics card to take the load off your p c ram
Keith

[la Huerta]

thanks for all the tips guys...it's going a bit better now after some more cleaning and adjusting...i just make sure i don't have to many programes open at once...


much appriecated...!

La H