computer slow 'HELP!'

bargaingirl

Hi all techies out there, have a time computer amd athlon processor xp2600 512 of ram 128 graphics card it is a bit slow and want to make it faster how much ram can I put in /on it before it goes ‘BANG’ already upgraded from 256 to 512!!!

Know nothing about computers so be gentle!!!

boxst

Hello

What are you doing whilst it is 'slow'? Have you run a virus checker and a spybot checker?

Steve

abdulinyourface

bargaingirl wrote:

Hi all techies out there, have a time computer amd athlon processor xp2600 512 of ram 128 graphics card it is a bit slow and want to make it faster how much ram can I put in /on it before it goes ‘BANG’ already upgraded from 256 to 512!!!

Know nothing about computers so be gentle!!!

Throwing in more ram wont necessarily make your computer run faster. Judging by your specs 512mb may be the max or you may be able to upgrade it to 1gb depending on your motherboard. There's a limit to how much you can put in there so dont worry about it going "bang".

Id suggest getting someone to look at you system and see what programs you are running. Quite a few programs like antivirus software etc will continuously run in the background therefore slowing the performance of your pc. These programs' settings can be changed so this doesn't occur and I'm sure you will see an improvement in performance.

If you are running norton then this is one of the major resource hoggers and I'd suggest changing the settings on that straight away!

Abs

crox

Might be getting a bit techinical but harddisk space (or lack of it) can also cause problems, as can fragmentation.
You can check harddisk space by going to Start -> My Computer and then right clicking on your drive (presumably Local Disk (c:)) and looking at free space. If it's less than, say, 5 gig this could slow you down and you could do with running the disk clean up tool. You can run defragment from the tools tab.

crox

dratted smileys that shoul be c: )

ITFCNUT

I would recommend downloading a program called c cleaner from http://www.filehippo.com it will help u free up some much valuable space ...

bargaingirl

hi all who have replied answer to some of the questions
1. have 110gb of harddisk and only 16.4 used
2. am running Mcafee but often check on ctrl alt delete to see if it running on 100% sometimes it is sometimes not
3. as soon as I open too many windows thats it slow time...
pehaps it is time to upgrade hey...do you not think getting more ram might help then??

sandroad

Bargaingirl -

Run Windows Task manager (ctrl + shift + Esc), click on the Processes tab and sort by Mem Usage when this problem occurs. You might have useless programs using up valuable RAM.

Also, what is your page file set to? To check this, open up System Properties (windows button + Pause/break), click Advanced, then Settings, Settings under Perfomance Options, then Advanced. Click Change under Virtual Memory and let me know what you have it set to.

Will try to help but need to find out if either there are rogue processes running or if you Memory Allocation is a bit screwy. I assume this is Windows XP.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

bargaingirl

ok sandroad... thanks for the info checked what you said...does this make any sense to you..it says
C custom size 768
maximum 1536!!!!!!

Havent a clue what this means, but cant thank you enough for you help have posted a thankyou as i really do appreciate any help I can get!

crox

ooo mcafee if I remember it gave me grief too, check these forums,
http://forums.mcafeehelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=217945#217945
http://forums.mcafeehelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=43592&highlight=mcshield

bargaingirl

whey hey, it is more responsive...thanks crox still look forward to what sandroad has to say bout other thing though big thanks to you!

I have never been thanked does something wonderful happen????