Significant slowdown.

[bill]

I have xp pro SP2 running on a 1.7gHz machine with 384mB Ram.

There is a definite slowdown in opening of folders and programs and for
example opening a word document now takes twice as long as it used to. The
slowdown is enough to be annoying.

I have Freeram xp pro running which shows me I have nearly always 50% Ram
available,

Windows Task Manager tells me there are no Applications running, and in
processes only System Idle Process shows 97%

I update and run AVG daily.
I periodically run 'Scan Spyware' and 'Spybot" but none of these show
anything.

Can I offer any more information?
Can anyone give me an idea about what else to try ??
I would like very much to get back to normal repsonse time.

TIA

Bill

 

[Will Denny]

Hi Bill

Please see the following article:

http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm

--


Will Denny
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
Please reply to the News Groups

 

[Mak]

<snip> "have Freeram xp pro running which" - slows you down, uninstall,
memory managers for XP is nothing but a hoax.

 

[Guest]

Will

Would the activities in the link you provided be effective for slower than
normal shutdown, as well as startup ???

Harry

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have xp pro SP2 running on a 1.7gHz machine with 384mB Ram.

There is a definite slowdown in opening of folders and programs and
for example opening a word document now takes twice as long as it
used to. The slowdown is enough to be annoying.

I have Freeram xp pro running which shows me I have nearly always 50%
Ram available,

The very first thing to suspect is Freeram. Programs like this are always
counterproductive. Wanting to minimize the amount of memory Windows uses is
a counterproductive desire. Windows is designed to use all, or nearly all,
of your memory, all the time, and that's good not bad. Free memory is wasted
memory. You paid for it all and shouldn't want to see any of it wasted.

Windows works hard to find a use for all the memory you have all the time.
For example if your apps don't need some of it, it will use that part for
caching, then give it back when your apps later need it. In this way Windows
keeps all your memory working for you all the time.

I would uninstall Freeram and see if that doesn't fix your problem.