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hmeier4799

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20 years ago

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hmeier4799

3 Posts

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1687

October 26th, 2006 01:00

Computer slow down

Will the presence of picture files on my hard drive slow down the operation of my computer even though the files are not opened?
  • T

    tgsmith

    2862 Posts

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    Posted October 26th, 2006 02:00

    Hmeier4799,
    Little bit of Yes and a little bit of No on this one.  The little bit of Yes means that Windows XP has a default setting under the properties of your hard disk that says "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for faster file searching".  Therefore, the more files on your hard drive, the more time it takes to index them and find the files required for the task(s) you are running.  Likewise,  virus and spyware scans, photo organizers, and defragmentation of the drive will take longer.   Obviously, this is expected.  Therefore, the little bit of No is that they don't really slow down the operation of the computer per se, unless they are being performed as a task running in the background.
     
    More common reason for hard drive slow down is the amount of RAM you have in your system.  Windows XP SP2 really needs at least 512Mb of RAM to function efficiently.  No matter how much RAM you have in your system, Windows XP cannot load all programs you're using at the same time.  It creates additional virtual RAM space on your hard drive, and swaps tasks in and out of the virtual RAM as needed. 
     
    You can improve your overall system performance by minimizing the number of tasks loaded at any one time.  For instance, if you use AOL you can configure it to not load the system tray icon and AOL companion at Windows Startup.  Also, you can turn off loading Kodak EasyShare at startup, as well as other programs that automatically launch such as Instant Messenger programs and scanner button monitoring programs.  If you feel you need and want all of these types of programs then you need more RAM and a faster CPU.  A slim and trim 1 GHz PIII with 512Mb of RAM will outperform a bloated 3.0 GHz P4 with 1GB of RAM.
     
    Tony
  • K

    Karts4Kids

    99 Posts

    84

    0

    Posted October 26th, 2006 03:00

    Have you ran the advanced diagnostics?  On the Dell screen you can press the F12 key and boot to utility particition choose the 3rd option down (something like advanced or other test) and then choose System memory.  Once you have selected system memory you will be given an opportunity to pick a number to run the random test on the memory and choose a good number like 30.  The test will take a while to run with this high of a number but will be a very thorough test on all RAM installed so if you have bad ram then you will know.  A simpler solution would be to run the system on one stick at a time and see if you see any performance gains when running one stick over running another stick.  If you are in idle state and your are consuming tons of system resources (Task Manager) then do yourself a favor and renew your yearly virus liscense and back up your data just in case :)

  • F

    fudgieguys

    1308 Posts

    84

    0

    Posted October 26th, 2006 14:00

    Let's keep things simple. The more files stored on your computer, then at some point the computer will slow down a bit, but not until the hard drive is over 75 to 85% full.  Your System memory interacts with your hard drive, so more space,  better the performance.  With today's system I doubt you will see any real slow down not like back in the days of smaller hard drives and slower processor speeds. One thing to do is run maintenance routines on a regular basis. Defrag is on of the best things.
     
     
    You will find useful tips on how to keep your system in tip top condition.

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