alxrays said:
-- Hello,
I am running Windows XP Home Edition SP2 Pentium 4 Processor
2.53GHz 512MB Memory PC 1066 RDRAM (2x256 modules)
My programs take too long to open.
I've deleted Temporary internet files,history & Cookies along with TEMP files.
I've done a defrag and deleted many files on my hard drive which is 110GB
54GB free.
Cleared Recent file folder and ran Ad a Ware, Spybot and AVG. My Firewall is
only Zone Alarm, I turned off Windows Firewall thinking the 2 may be causing
the delays.
Any suggestions? I already re-formatted my entire computer. Is it time to
buy a NEW Computer?
How about running some benchmarks ?
1) SuperPI.
http://www.xtremesystems.com/pi/super_pi_mod-1.5.zip
Unzip and run super_pi_mod.exe . Click Calculate.
Select "1M" from the menu. Run the calculation.
The program will compute the math constant PI to 1 million
digits. I have a P4 running at 3.08GHz and it takes 49.25 seconds
to complete the benchmark. Is your result relatively close to that ?
This is a basic test of processor speed, and doesn't use a lot of RAM
(uses about 10MB or so while the benchmark runs).
2) HDTach or HDTune.
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach
http://www.hdtune.com/hdtune_255.exe (the free version)
Both programs can do a read benchmark, of hard drive speed.
The normal result should be about 60MB/aec data transfer rate at
the beginning of the disk, and about 40MB/sec or so near the end
of the disk. The programs sample data from the disk, at spots across
the disk surface. And a curve should be the result.
If the result is a straight line, and a lot lower than the above figures
(for a 7200RPM drive), then something could be misconfigured. For example,
PIO transfer mode, which uses the CPU for each byte transferred, gives
about 4MB/sec transfer rate. That will significantly increase the load
time for programs.
HDTune also has an information tab, which will tell you something about
the current mode of the disk (DMA or PIO). In the right hand corner
of the Info window, is "Supported" and "Active" modes for the drive.
3) In Task Manager, you can examine the Commit Charge, and see how much
of your Physical Memory is in use. For example, my Physical total is
2GB, and my Commit Charge total is about 1GB. So my memory is currently
half used (a few programs parked in the background).
Finding information on RDRAM isn't always that easy, and knowing
the motherboard make and model or the computer make and model,
may make it easier to track down some of the issues with that
stuff. I seem to remember one chipset had a limit as to the
total number of memory chips per channel, making it harder
to get full stated capacity on memory. It is one of the
few memory technologies, that really needs the heat spreader
they rivet to it.
Paul
