XP Bogging down

[Jethro]

I am running WXP PRO SP2 - 640MB DDR - 30GB out of 160GB
of HDD space still free - RADEON 120MB AGP video card.

I wonder if I am having RAM or other space problem.

I am running at the same time - Photoshop and its 'Bridge', Windows
Explorer, Quicktime playing a clip from a CD. It will start out just
fine, but then after a while, as I flip from one app to another, the
machine bogs down horribly. I have to wait several seconds for the
change to occur. It is almost as if too much is going on - or that
the machine cannot handle these tasks concurrently. I would hope it
can. If I re-boot, things are good again - for a while anyway.

Can anyone suggest what might be my problem? Besides myself that is.
Thanks
Jethro

 

[Guest]

I suspect that you're right - the system can't handle all these tasks at the
same time.

Try running only one of the tasks and see how it acts - then add another and
check it out. Continue adding tasks until the behavior happens again.

In general I recommend that a "mature" system (one that's had XP on it for a
while) have at least 1 gB of RAM. This is because of all the stuff that gets
put on the system as it ages.

Have you defragged your hard drive? Often that will help to speed things up?

Since it appears to fix itself on reboot - have you considered that there
may be a corruption in one of the programs that's consuming resources but not
releasing them? Try checking the usage figures in Task Manager when it's
working OK, then again when it's bogged down. Use Ctrl-Alt-Del to access
Task Manager and click on the Processes tab.

- John

 

[Paul Smith]

I am running WXP PRO SP2 - 640MB DDR - 30GB out of 160GB
of HDD space still free - RADEON 120MB AGP video card.

I wonder if I am having RAM or other space problem.

I am running at the same time - Photoshop and its 'Bridge', Windows
Explorer, Quicktime playing a clip from a CD. It will start out just
fine, but then after a while, as I flip from one app to another, the
machine bogs down horribly. I have to wait several seconds for the
change to occur. It is almost as if too much is going on - or that
the machine cannot handle these tasks concurrently. I would hope it
can. If I re-boot, things are good again - for a while anyway.

Can anyone suggest what might be my problem? Besides myself that is.

Press CTRL+ALT+DEL and click on the processes tab, have a look at memory and
CPU usage and see if one application is gobbling up large amounts of
resources.

If we can find out what's doing it it'll help nail down a solution.

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User.
http://www.windowsresource.net/
Get ready for Windows Vista: http://www.windowsvista.com/getready/

*Remove nospam. to reply by e-mail*

 

[Jethro]

Press CTRL+ALT+DEL and click on the processes tab, have a look at memory and
CPU usage and see if one application is gobbling up large amounts of
resources.

If we can find out what's doing it it'll help nail down a solution.

Quicktime is bouncing 15% to 50% while it is just sitting there,
unused. I wonder why? Photoshop bounces 0% to 40% as I use it.
Explorer uses 0% to 5% as I use it. However I discovered that my AVG
antivirus program was checking for viruses in the background
unknowingly, and of course was using the CPU also. When I terminated
that, my hangup pretty much stopped.

Thanks

Jethro