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January 20th, 2010 06:00
CPU and RAM...
i recently added 1G of memory to my chugging ¼G and sometimes it(pc) hangs. so to see whats going on i hit ctrl+alt+delete and it shows that only something like 5or600MB are committed of 1500M. but the CPU %age is high. what's the sense of having all that ram and it still bogs down??? this is something that i don't understand... what's the difference/relationship between the CPU and RAM?
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RoHe
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January 20th, 2010 10:00
Always include the PC model and version of windows in your posts! :emotion-5:
When was the last time you did a thorough malware scan?
Increaseing the amount of RAM decreases the time it takes to move data around because accessing RAM is faster than accessing the hard drive. But the CPU can only handle so much at a time. So if something is hogging CPU time, the amount of RAM won't make much difference. How much unnecessary junk is running in the background?
You didn't say what process is hogging the CPU, but if it's "System Idle", that's normal. System Idle is the amount of free CPU time that's available. So when System Idle is high, you have a lot of CPU capacity available.
You didn't say where you got the new RAM. Does it meet the specs for your system? RAM only runs at the speed of the slowest RAM that's installed. So even if you just installed faster RAM, it won't run at full speed if the existing RAM runs at a slower speed. And some RAM, even if it meets your system's specs, may not be fully compatible and will cause crashes. Dell PCs can be very finicky about the brand of RAM installed.
Ron
walbek
268 Posts
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January 20th, 2010 13:00
dell 2400
was scanned by ZA extreme security trial 5days ago before uninstall and yesterday by AVG internet security and a couple days ago by ad-aware...
i only have problem with CPU when IE8 hangs(for whatever reason) which uses almost all CPU.
i understand the "system idle".
memory is 1GB Kingston, recommended by crucial.com for my system (which said was ok to mix different amount of memory, didn't have to be paired) and bought from walmart.com
AVG has 13 .exe running that i can recognize with 3 that has same name avgcrvx.exe. IE8 for some reason always has more than 1 (right now 2)running(i've seen about 6 at 1 time). for some reason there is always a lot of svchost.exe always running(7 now). and a few other things which is totaling 552mb. system usually idles at 95-98%
RoHe
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January 25th, 2010 12:00
IE8 always has more than 1 process running. Each one is for a separate tab or window. That way, if one session crashes, the others don't. I have 3 IE8 windows open and there are 4 IE8 processes running -totally normal.
Svchost.exe always has multiple processes running too. I have 8 running under XP SP3. Again, that's normal.
It could still be bum RAM. You can download and run memtest86+ for free and run that. You'll need a bootable floppy or bootable CD to run it. You can download a pre-compiled bootable to create a CD, or a file to use on bootable USB stick, or to create a bootable floppy for the latest version here. (Scroll 1/2 way down the page).
If System Idle is 95-98%, then you have lots of available CPU time, so that's not what's slowing the machine down. Don't use AVG so can't comment on its effect on the system.
Ron