Slow System

[Guest]

hi,
using xl home adition with service pack 2 on a dell dim 4500. 2 gig pentium
processor, 128 mb ram, 2 gig virtual memory, page file 386mb. 15 gig hard
drive.

everything on my pc runs slow. vidios are jerky, music is jerky. we have 3
users with severate logons and switching users could take up to 5 minutes.
when i log out, i get a not responding message on devldr(what's that) and
have to end task to log out.
i have mcaffee virus protection, lavasoft ad-aware and spybot. i defrag
about once a week but nothing seems to help. as time goes on, the system just
seems to get slower. any suggestions.

thanks in advance.

FSt1

 

[Cymbal Man Freq.]

You need at least 512 MB of RAM!!!
Your page file is 386 MB despiite having 2 GB of virtual memory.
386 + 128 = 514 MB
I'd go to 1 GB of RAM if I were you.

| hi,
| using xl home adition with service pack 2 on a dell dim 4500. 2 gig pentium
| processor, 128 mb ram, 2 gig virtual memory, page file 386mb. 15 gig hard
| drive.
|
| everything on my pc runs slow. vidios are jerky, music is jerky. we have 3
| users with severate logons and switching users could take up to 5 minutes.
| when i log out, i get a not responding message on devldr(what's that) and
| have to end task to log out.
| i have mcaffee virus protection, lavasoft ad-aware and spybot. i defrag
| about once a week but nothing seems to help. as time goes on, the system just
| seems to get slower. any suggestions.
|
| thanks in advance.
|
| FSt1

 

[Jim]

You need to add more memory, at least 512MB or more.
Second a 15GB hard drive is way too small, replace it with a 120GB drive.
Third: Have you removed/deleted any Windows temporary files lately, IE Temp
files, etc. This will free up more drive space till you can upgrade the hard
drive.
Fourth: Check to see if System Restore has gobbled up too much space. To do
this right click on the My Computer Icon, select Properties, this click on
the System Restore tab, then click on the Setting button and see what the
'Disk Space Usage' is set to.
!0% should be more than enough, remember that a small drive like you have
will limit the number of restore points.
Jim

 

[Mr C]

It happens that FSt1 formulated :
Here's the minimum specs according to MS...

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/upgrading/sysreqs.mspx

128MB RAM isn't a lot to work worth, you've got to get the OS in there,
background applications, foreground applications etc. That system is
going to be constantly writing to disk. Get yourself some more RAM in
there and remove anything you don't need running from startup.

Mr C.

 

[DanS]

hi,
using xl home adition with service pack 2 on a dell dim 4500. 2 gig
pentium processor, 128 mb ram, 2 gig virtual memory, page file 386mb.
15 gig hard drive.

everything on my pc runs slow. vidios are jerky, music is jerky. we
have 3 users with severate logons and switching users could take up to
5 minutes. when i log out, i get a not responding message on
devldr(what's that) and have to end task to log out.
i have mcaffee virus protection, lavasoft ad-aware and spybot. i
defrag about once a week but nothing seems to help. as time goes on,
the system just seems to get slower. any suggestions.

thanks in advance.

FSt1

In addition to adding RAM like others have said, I noticed you said...
"we
have 3 users with severate logons and switching users could take up to
5 minutes."

Does this mean after the first user is done, the next one goes to
'Start', 'Switch Users', or does the first user log out ?

I've found you typically almost NEVER need to use switch users. This
leaves all of the previous user's program open in the background, which
will quickly bring your PC with only 128 Megs RAM to a grinding halt.