John said:
My computer seems to have slowed down. Web pages take
longer to load. The mouse has to wait to work. Any ideas?
Thanks, I'm kinda new at this, John. I use XP.
If you have 256MB of memory or less, this might be the
problem:
1. After XP has been running for, say, several months; after
you've installed a succession of updates from Windows
Update, and after you've installed a number of applications,
your hard drive gets increasingly fragmented (disorganized).
2. When an application runs, XP pages the code it needs to
run the application into memory. This code includes the
code specific to the application as well as code (in dll
files) that XP can share with other applications.
3. The more your hard drive is fragmented, the longer this
loading of the code into memory takes. As your hard
drive gets increasingly fragmented, the response time
of your computer gets slower and slower. A symptom
to observe here is that the light on your hard drive will be
constantly flickering for a long time while XP is loading
the code. (Note however that this will not be reflected in
page file activity, as shared code modules (dll's) normally
are not paged.)
4. One solution, of course, is to defragment your hard drive.
To do this, click on the "start" button, then go to
All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Disk
Defragmenter.
5. Another solution, if you have 256MB or less, is to increase
your memory to 512MB. Increasing memory allows
XP to retain more of the shared code modules in memory,
thus generally reducing the amount of code it needs to page
in from your hard drive when it starts an application. This
results in improved response time. It also is mechanically
easier on your hard drive. Of course, it doesn't hurt to
occasionally defragment your hard drive also.
-- Bob Day
