Need new PC - advice please

macman

melbury wrote: »

It says 71.7GB, which is probably quite small compared to new machines today. Will run a defrag now. Thanks for the advice.

No, that is the size of your hard drive, nothing to do with RAM, which is working memory. Please check again. You are probably looking at a figure of 256MB or 512Mb for RAM on a 6 yr old machine. If so, an extra 512MB will transform your PC for very little cost.
Right click on Computer, not on your C drive.
Also suggest you download and run CCleaner as well, which is an excellent free cleanup utility.

closed

backup your data, then reinstall windows from the recovery partition, it will probably work like new again, or post a hijackthis log, along with installed ram (physical ram total) and commit charge and commit charge peak from task manager, performance. Defrag is unlikely to make any difference.

Switch you internet security to avast and windows firewall.

melbury

macman wrote: »

No, that is the size of your hard drive, nothing to do with RAM, which is working memory. Please check again. You are probably looking at a figure of 256MB or 512Mb for RAM on a 6 yr old machine. If so, an extra 512MB will transform your PC for very little cost.
Right click on Computer, not on your C drive.
Also suggest you download and run CCleaner as well, which is an excellent free cleanup utility.

Sorry, shows how much I know about computers. It says 504MB.

What is CCleaner and where do you find it, is it safe?

Many thanks.

melbury

closed wrote: »

backup your data, then reinstall windows from the recovery partition, it will probably work like new again, or post a hijackthis log, along with installed ram (physical ram total) and commit charge and commit charge peak from task manager, performance. Defrag is unlikely to make any difference.

Switch you internet security to avast and windows firewall.

Defrag made no difference at all:mad:

I don't understand what you mean by "hijackthis log, along with installed ram (physical ram total) and commit charge and commit charge peak from task manager, performance." I did recently download Malwarebytes and run that every now and then, together with my Kaspersky Internet Security.

Please remember, you are talking to an idiot who didn't even know how to find the ram capacity:)

closed

defrag never makes any difference, pc's get slow because of the balance of what you have running, and the installed ram.

ctrl alt del, task manager, performance, post the figures I mentioned, one of which is ram capacity, commit charge is how much is in use now, and commit charge peak is what is the most you have used since boot, when either are above installed ram, the pc will slowdown

run this http://www.trendmicro.com/ftp/products/hijackthis/HijackThis.exe
, scan, post the log

then update malwarebytes, and do a FULL scan, fix anything found before closing

melbury

closed wrote: »

defrag never makes any difference, pc's get slow because of the balance of what you have running, and the installed ram.

ctrl alt del, task manager, performance, post the figures I mentioned, one of which is ram capacity, commit charge is how much is in use now, and commit charge peak is what is the most you have used since boot, when either are above installed ram, the pc will slowdown

run this http://www.trendmicro.com/ftp/products/hijackthis/HijackThis.exe
, scan, post the log

then update malwarebytes, and do a FULL scan, fix anything found before closing

Is HijackThis safe? I bought Kaspersky thinking that would keep my machine protected, but it hasn't run properly since installing the 2010 version - worked better with the 2009 version.

RAM figure 504MB

The figures in task manager are:

CPU Usage fluctuating from 39% up to 100%
PF Usage averaging about 570MB
Commit Charge (K): Total 584770 Peak 648084

Sounds like it is going to blow up, continually whirring!!!!!

closed

If it wasn't safe, I wouldn't have suggested it, it's nothing to do with protection, kaspersky may be part of the problem, look which process is using the cpu in task manager

melbury

closed wrote: »

If it wasn't safe, I wouldn't have suggested it, it's nothing to do with protection, kaspersky may be part of the problem, look which process is using the cpu in task manager

Sorry, of course you wouldn't have.

At the moment it is a thing called iexplore.exe and it is using up 120,196, which is much larger figure than any of the other ones. That is really weird because there is another iexplore.exe higher up the list and that is only using 8,472 - very strange.

googler

melbury wrote: »

To be honest I am just not knowledgable enough to do as you suggest - I pretty much know how to switch it on and get online!

My initial reaction to this was

"Oh, for crying out loud, man - dontcha wanna LEARN ....."

... but I can see from subsequent posts that you're starting to.

closed

that's internet explorer which often get's gunged up with browser helper object, post the log if you want advice on why

resetting ie to default under tools, internet options advanced may help.