How do I find out what's running on my computer ...

MimiJane

albertross wrote:

By chuntering, do you mean the disk is being accessed? If so, you can use filemon to see exactly what is doing that.

As dealwala said, system idle, means that nothing is happening, so this is not the cause of your chuntering.

Thanks ... can't be system idle then. The permanent chuntering has slowed the computer right down and I'm often getting error pages up as the pages are so slow at loading.

I've downloaded filemon, but I'm afraid it means nothing to me ... and it's difficult to view it as everything's moving about so quickly!

This has only started happening in the last few days and I've not downloaded anything recently and have run Spybot, Adaware, etc. ...

T4i

Have you got anything in tasks? Something you may have installed in the past may be auto-defragging or auto-scanning your hdd's.....

Also, could your copy of windows be auto-updating and installing the updates.

T4i

MimiJane wrote:

Thanks ... can't be system idle then. The permanent chuntering has slowed the computer right down and I'm often getting error pages up as the pages are so slow at loading.

I've downloaded filemon, but I'm afraid it means nothing to me ... and it's difficult to view it as everything's moving about so quickly!

This has only started happening in the last few days and I've not downloaded anything recently and have run Spybot, Adaware, etc. ...

When you have filemon running what process is coming up the most? Just monitor your HDD light and the information from filemon....you should be able to find what is causing your HDD to thrash.

If you do see a correlation between your hdd usage and a filemon process look in the 'path' coloum and it will tell you what program is been used..

Hope this helps!

penrhyn

peter_the_piper wrote:

If you run a scan with hijack this, try running a quick analysis here http://www.hijackthis.de/
it will tell you if anythig is dodgy on your comp.

Cheers Peter just tried this and found a remnant of Spyware Nuker that I thought I'd got rid of. I've always been a bit scared of Hijack this but the analyser makes thing a lot less daunting.

Back on topic I assume the OP is running XP but I was wondering if the problem could be down to lack of RAM?

MimiJane

penrhyn wrote:

Cheers Peter just tried this and found a remnant of Spyware Nuker that I thought I'd got rid of. I've always been a bit scared of Hijack this but the analyser makes thing a lot less daunting.

Back on topic I assume the OP is running XP but I was wondering if the problem could be down to lack of RAM?

Yes, on XP, but RAM should be OK ... have 256, as recommended for Broadband (I think!).

T4i

256mb of RAM is low for XP BUT its enough. I think the HDD thrashing is down to software.

penrhyn

Just had a look at the performance meter in the task manager on my PC, and with Firefox(total of 58 processes) and the internet connection the PC is using 360K of memory(1Gb available), I suspect the OP is probably running out and having to swap files with the HDD.
So with 256K there isn't much room for running many programs.
Of course I could be wrong?

MimiJane

Thanks a lot everyone ...

After doing a bit of Internet research, I think it could well be the fact that I need more RAM installing as I have quite a few programmes on the computer now and do swap from one application to another frequently. Even if this isn't the problem, it would seem to be a good thing to have more memory anyway.

I have no idea what sort of RAM to install and how to go about it. The computer manufacturer went out of business years ago (DAN) and I'm not at all technical. Presume I'm therefore best to call in an "expert"?

MercilessKiller

woooooah don't call an expert! (Ripoffs!)

http://www.sharewarejunkies.com/01zwd11/sandra.htm

That program will show you everything in your pc INCLUDING memory.

What you need to note is the SPEED and TYPE of memory
eg
PC 2700 SDRam or
400mhz DDR Ram
etc

It will be clearly labelled under memory so should be easy enough to stop!

The manufacturer is not important. Only the type (SD/DDR) and speed (PC2100/PC2700/PC3200/300mhz/333mhz/400mhz)

Copy and paste what it says in here if you are unsure what to ask/look for

MimiJane

I just keep getting an error page up when I try to download (could be my computer). I wouldn't have a clue how to install RAM myself though, even if I knew the speed/type ...