Enough memory?

bridiej

Lately my PC has been running quite slow, even though I run crapcleaner, spybot and AVG anti virus on a weekly basis.

I think it's the momery as i can only have outlook, explorer and one word document open at any one time without it locking up, sometimes it does come up with an "out of memory" message but not always.

My PC is 2 years old and has 256mb ram, should this be enough?

Is it possible there's something using up the memory or do I just need to upgrade it?

Thanks

shrek101

Definately get more ram, 512mb is minimum and you will notice a big difference compared with 256 or the difference between 512 and 1gb.

T4i

Are you running Windows? If so what version?

256MB of RAM is low but should run word, outlook and explorer ok.....

You could try increasing the 'page file' size if you have enough free space on the HDD.

wolfman

256mb RAM should be ok from the sound of things. You don't appear to be using any intensive applications, like Photoshop. You'll probably have the Windows Swap file set to the default settings so you should be ok.

It sounds like something might be hogging the resources. Probably best to try an online scan, see if that picks anything up. Have you installed anything recently that may run in the background?

If you go to Start > Run > type "taskmgr". This'll launch task manager which will give you an overview of the processes running, and how much of the CPU/Memory is being used.

Personally I have 1gb of Ram, but never use more than 400-500mb of it and my machine has sql server, visual studio.net, antivirus, outlook, sql enterprise manager, trillian and firefox to name but a few processes open.

On a light machine, 256mb should be ok, 512mb would run no problem. Xp's minimum requirement is 128mb.

Hintza

If AOL is your ISP this could also have a huge impact.


I think if I were in your shoes I would be looking to save all my stuff and flatten the PC and start again whilst adding some more memory (and avoid loading AOL sofware connect direct, if they are your ISP).

bridiej

No, not using AOL but BT Yahoo broadband.

There's plenty of disk space as we defragged it at the weekend hoping it might help. I use the PC for work to run transcription software etc so think I may be wise to upgrade the memory!!

Thanks

bridiej

T4i wrote:

Are you running Windows? If so what version?

256MB of RAM is low but should run word, outlook and explorer ok.....

You could try increasing the 'page file' size if you have enough free space on the HDD.

Yes, Windows XP home edition...

Debt_Free_Chick

Personally, I think that the combination of XP, Outlook and Word is sufficiently memory hogging ... add to that some of the backround services initiated by XP and your memory looks low to me.

Have to admit to having 512mb in my desktop and 1gb of memory in my laptop!

T4i

Boot your p.c from cold.

Dont start any progs up when booted to desktop. Press Ctrl, Alt and Del for task manager click the performance tab and tell me how much memory is taken up.

Booting my XP pro from cold takes about 130MB of RAM. I shall check this tonight, I'm not sure if it has changed much since this months OS patches.

I can't see Word, outlook and explorer taking up half of your memory.....

I've just build a really cheap p.c for my sis with only a 1GIG CPU and 256MB RAM and it doesnt struggle with office, email and IE.

shrek101

Memory is so cheap just now, hence its a good reason to upgrade when you only have 256mb. If you upgrade from 512mb to 1024mb (1gb) the difference wouldnt be as noticeable than 256mb to 512mb.

bridiej

Will do it later and let you know....