Unresponsive Desktop

psychic_teabag

Does windows still offer a "safe" mode ? That might help you figure it if it's one of the autostart programs or something.

iamlucky18

Did you manage to solve your issue?

Terry98

iamlucky18 wrote: »

Did you manage to solve your issue?

Yes and no. It was a shame the two people that were helping me disappeared because I might have learnt a bit more from them.

I did try to do a system restore but I have now found out Win 10 switches it off by default.Thanks MS perhaps you will tell me why someday.

Even though I was told it was nothing to do with the memory I found out that Win10 has an app to check memory problems so I ran it. No problems there.

I am still intrigued about Task Manager reporting 40% memory use when I have only got Opera open. Going by that if I started using a video editing program I think the computer would blow up.

It is a little bit better now I have changed my mouse. I was using an old MS wireless mouse and thought that might have something to do with it so changed it for a standard usb one.

I bet you are sorry you asked now but Google is my friend.

iamlucky18

Lol I'm not sorry at all. I like to help on techie stuff. I build my own computers.

Even though Opera might seem like the only program open, there will be lots of background programs termed startup programs that start automatically when you switch on the comp. You don't need them all. Even though they may only take up 20MB of RAM resource, cumulatively they will be a resource hog.

Do us a favour. I'm the start bar type "msconfig" but without the quotes, then go to the startup pane. Please take a screenshot or screenshots of all the startup programs. I'll tell you which ones are not needed on startup. Don't make any changes yourself.

We'll see if that it has speeds up your company a bit.

Also, 4GB RAM is THE bare minimum for desktop PCs. 8GB is the sweetspot unless you're going to be running virtual machines, in which case you will need at least 16GB but I doubt you will be doing that type of stuff.

What do you use your comp for mostly? Word processing, or also video editing etc.?

grumpycrab

Terry98 wrote: »

I am still intrigued about Task Manager reporting 40% memory use when I have only got Opera open. Going by that if I started using a video editing program I think the computer would blow up.

Did you try a different browser for comparison? You never said whether CPU and disk usage was normal or not...

Terry98

Thanks for your reply,

I keep an eye on start up progs in CCleaner and have everything disabled at start up apart from Avast.
The msconfig command now sends me to Task Manager which confirms Avast is the only prog set to run at start up.

When I bought the computer a few years ago I used to do quite a bit of video editing and it handled it with no problems. I agree WIN10 needs more RAM but I thought 4GB would be enough for my needs.

Terry98

grumpycrab wrote: »

Did you try a different browser for comparison? You never said whether CPU and disk usage was normal or not...

Sorry. CPU 1% Disk 0% I will try another browser and let you know.

psychic_teabag

Terry98 wrote: »

I am still intrigued about Task Manager reporting 40% memory use when I have only got Opera open. Going by that if I started using a video editing program I think the computer would blow up.

I don't know how windows reports these things, but don't forget that unused memory is wasted memory. If it's not used for applications, it can be used to cache data, etc. Modern systems use virtual memory, and can discard pages of memory containing unused bits of applications to free up memory. But when there is no memory pressure, there is no reason for the O/S to do so. As long as it's "clean" (no changes since last written to disk) it is almost instant to discard a page to make it available when there is demand.

Also browsers tend to have a memory cache as well as a disk cache, so opera might be holding a lot of data in memory. Have you repeated the test without Opera running ?

Also, don't forget that while you only see Opera, there's a lot of other stuff running in the background (services and things), plus the desktop interface itself.

Gloomendoom

Terry98 wrote: »

When I bought the computer a few years ago I used to do quite a bit of video editing and it handled it with no problems. I agree WIN10 needs more RAM but I thought 4GB would be enough for my needs.

I run Windows 10 on a 2007 Dell desktop with 4GB of ram. It copes with Photoshop and Inventor without any problems. It's actually pretty quick.

iamlucky18

Gloomendoom wrote: »

I run Windows 10 on a 2007 Dell desktop with 4GB of ram. It copes with Photoshop and Inventor without any problems. It's actually pretty quick.

From what I remember, PS depends more on CPU than on RAM. I think it's the same with Inventor too. Which CPU does your Dell laptop have?