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HELP! LAPTOP SLOW AS ****!! NEED VIRTUAL MEMORY ADVICE!

S

scorpionldr

Dec 10, 2002
2,613
74
Dirty Jersey, USA
#1
Hey Guys, I'm using a Toshiba satellite t2400 1.83 Giga Hz, .99 gig ram laptop, with a 120 gig harddrive........in short, I need help. Hard-drive space is somehow down to not a lot (a solid 75 gigs memory), and I don't really have any big items (next to Postal 2, share the pain, a gig and a half, and Office 2003 Pro (800 megs.....if there's a good solution to replace that, I'll take it).
desktop is adjusted (recently) "for best performance" (hate it). 4095 megs is for system cache, and everything in that area is going towards making programs run well (obviously not well enough if I'm posting about it :rolleyes:).


................can anyone help me? this computer used to actually be fast......I don't know what happened.
 
#2
scorpionldr said:
Hey Guys, I'm using a Toshiba satellite t2400 1.83 Giga Hz, .99 gig ram laptop, with a 120 gig harddrive........in short, I need help. Hard-drive space is somehow down to not a lot (a solid 75 gigs memory), and I don't really have any big items (next to Postal 2, share the pain, a gig and a half, and Office 2003 Pro (800 megs.....if there's a good solution to replace that, I'll take it).
desktop is adjusted (recently) "for best performance" (hate it). 4095 megs is for system cache, and everything in that area is going towards making programs run well (obviously not well enough if I'm posting about it :rolleyes:).


................can anyone help me? this computer used to actually be fast......I don't know what happened.
Click to expand...


buy more ram. or try just working or just posting on talkbass :p

windows/ MS office is a major resource hog. if you are running vista take your machine in and "downgrade" to XP pro.

option 2 Invalid Link Removed

option 3 (most expensive)
but a mac.:hiding:
 
#5
winston said:
Do you defrag your hard drive and get rid of unnecessary files on a regular basis? Failure to do so in Windows can lead to things slowing down. Performance-wise extra RAM is faster than virtual memory.
Click to expand...

Rune Bivrin said:
DEFRAG!
Seriously. If it used to perform well, but is now crawling, a defrag is the first thing to try. Preferably three to five times in a row (the defrag app isn't exactly stellar).
Click to expand...

yes....

also, are you running any virus protection, update your protection lately, have you manually run it? 2 other good things to try are

spybot
hijack this

both free.
 
#6
standupright, it could be that my anti-virus is out of date, considering my school's so ******** that when I took an "upgrade" to Norton 09, the network had me use "their" software instead; crummy basic symantec av..........what a cockroach of a program. I found an installer on my drive for norton 06 and there's always the client updater (definitions I have all) that screws up.

Defragging I've done once, I'm doing it again. and again, and again........

spybot I know, I haven't really used it tho cuz I didnt want to accidentally screw up important files (as it itself has stated you can do with the program).

Hijack this?? sounds like an invitation to mess up my program.

I've been cleaning a lot lately.......I'm looking into external drives so I hopefully can stop one day.

Since office is such a hog, are there any good alternatives? Abiword I saw under the free software thing, but seeing as lately everyone's using the latest version of word I don't want to take the chance of putting myself "out of order". open office? if anyones got an alternative for me that'll work nearly universally i'll take it. seeing that 800 + meg backsore makes me angry.

oh and for note, "freeram xp" stated I have 36 percent of my ram.
 
#7
if you want, download and install both spybot and hijack this, you can run them with out having them do anything, they give a report first. post the results here, and i can tell you what is ok to get rid of or not.

also, if you bring up task manager (ctrl+alt+del) what do you is running under processes when you have no programs running on the computer, and what is your CPU and Memory Utilization?

before you defrag, make sure to clean up all the crap on you computer. delete your IE cache or FF cache, and all the crap from temp. after you have cleaned up, and emptied the recycle, then defrag.
 
#13
Trevor.A said:
You need to close some running processes. Open the task manager and look in the Processes tab, how many are running?
You can run msconfig to turn them off so they don't start when you boot your computer, but make sure you don't turn off anything you need.
Click to expand...

I'm weary of the words "terminate" and "lose" in the descriptions of what happens if I am to stop processes.....enlighten me.........is it really unsafe?
 
#14
scorpionldr said:
I'm weary of the words "terminate" and "lose" in the descriptions of what happens if I am to stop processes.....enlighten me.........is it really unsafe?
Click to expand...

depends on what it is. if you go to your start menu, click start, and then run, in the box that pops up, type msconfig and then hit enter.

you'll get a window that comes up with a bunch of tabs, go to the tab that say startup. all of the items listed here are processes that start when you boot up the computer. you can do some research yourself and google the names of the startup item to find out if they are required or not. some are, some aren't.
 
#15
scorpionldr said:
I'm weary of the words "terminate" and "lose" in the descriptions of what happens if I am to stop processes.....enlighten me.........is it really unsafe?
Click to expand...
No, you won't lose anything and it's reversible. Also in msconfig, look in the services tab and uncheck any you're sure you don't need. These are a lot harder to tell with though since they run in the background. Check 'hide all M$ services' at the bottom and it will show only things you've installed.
If you do somehow manage to turn something off that prevents something from working and you can't get to msconfig, start in safe mode and re-enable it. I've never had that problem before, though, and I've used it a lot.
 
#17
1) Shovel another gig of RAM into it. Your system will hold 4GB but XP doesn't "see" more than 3GB.

2) Backup anything you need in terms of user-created documents.

3) Do a clean re-install. (I know this is not a popular suggestion, but based on my experience with this kind of slow-down something "funky" has gone on that you may not be aware of Malware, adware, etc.) Plus you seem to be "missing" HDD space.

4)After your OS is installed - Defrag

5) Load your ChipSet drivers - Defrag

6) Load your Video drivers - Defrag

7) Load your Audio drivers - Defrag

8) Load you NIC drivers - Defrag

9) Download all necessary updates from MS - Defrag

10) Install MS Office and update as necessary - Defrag

11) Install misc. applets & utils (Java, Shockwave player, a PDF reader (Foxit is nice), Flash player, etc) - defrag

12) The last thing you load is your AV software as it's updated frequently. I recommend Avast! anti-virus. It's $$FREE$$ very effective, pretty light-weight and has caught stuff that Norton (yeech!) missed.

I know this is time consuming, but the defrag after each software install helps keep your file system nice and tidy. Or maybe I'm just super-obsessive. :atoz:
 
#18
so generally here's my spybot results.......did a print screen, unfortunately after i typed out everything i had.
 

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  • spybot scan results.jpg
    spybot scan results.jpg
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#19
Trevor.A said:
No, you won't lose anything and it's reversible. Also in msconfig, look in the services tab and uncheck any you're sure you don't need. These are a lot harder to tell with though since they run in the background. Check 'hide all M$ services' at the bottom and it will show only things you've installed.
If you do somehow manage to turn something off that prevents something from working and you can't get to msconfig, start in safe mode and re-enable it. I've never had that problem before, though, and I've used it a lot.
Click to expand...

a print screen of my processes:
 

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  • systemprocesses.jpg
    systemprocesses.jpg
    33.8 KB · Views: 36

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