delay in opening application

crab apple,

Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum.

You say there is a delay in opening up programs?  You may want to first get rid of some of these utiltity programs listed in your post. I believe that once you uninstall most of those programs your system will work just fine. When you open email these programs are checking all the email coming in to your inbox causing the delay.

Hi

Thank you for your response.  I have removed all the utilities except Zone Alarm and there is no improvement.  I have all those utilities because of getting Trojan Vundo a few years ago and now I try to keep my computer ultra protected and clean at all times.

This weekend I will remove Zone Alarm as I'm getting the impression that is the cause of the delay, unless you have any other suggestions.  The computer doesn't make noises as though it is working during these delay times.  It is as if the message isn't getting through for 50 seconds, then, when it does, Zone Alarm starts working and finally the program opens.  Also, the problem is intermittent.

Thanks for your help. 

Crab Apple.

How much memory does your computer have?  How big is the pagefile (swap file)?  How much free disk space do you have in C:?  Depending on what all is running on your computer any of these being "low" could cause the slow down you describe.

Hi Thank you for your response.  I have removed all the utilities except Zone Alarm and there is no improvement.  I have all those utilities because of getting Trojan Vundo a few years ago and now I try to keep my computer ultra protected and clean at all times. This weekend I will remove Zone Alarm as I'm getting the impression that is the cause of the delay, unless you have any other suggestions.  The computer doesn't make noises as though it is working during these delay times.  It is as if the message isn't getting through for 50 seconds, then, when it does, Zone Alarm starts working and finally the program opens.  Also, the problem is intermittent. Thanks for your help.  Crab Apple.

Do you get the error message "Internet Explorer can not display this webpage"? I'm having simular problems. But my PC "Dell Inspiron 530" is less than a week old and has been doing it since I got it.

Dell won't help me with it.

Hi Larry R

The computer has 512 MB Ram.  Total paging file size for all drives is 768MB ( I didn't know what this was, but now I do - thanks.)  Total size of C: is 229 GB with free space of 132GB.  How does that sound for just opening an internal document, or connecting to e-mail, or just to the internet?

Thanks
Crab Apple.

Hi mkfarnam

No, I don't get this message.  I'm not able to help you with this problem.  Perhaps you should start a new thread so that someone more knowledgeable can offer suggestions.

Crab Apple

Personally I'd increase paging file size to 1024 (or even 2048) MB, however, the 768 MB you have now should be sufficient.  You got way more than enough disk space that that isn't going to be the problem.  Having only 512 MB of memory, however, when combined with all the applications you have running (and thus using memory) could very well be the problem.  For XP 512MB is about the minimum you can run the system at without some slowdowns, while I believe the amount is about 1GB for Vista.  This number depends on what exactly you are doing with the computer, and what services are running on it, of course.

Hi Larry R

Thank you for your analysis.  I don't have all those utilities running in my computer as I removed them at Jesse L.'s suggestion.  The only protection I am using is Zone Alarm at this time, so I have decided not to make changes to the memory as your e-mail suggested it would likely be sufficient. 

I would like to explain more clearly what is happening, as you have talked about slowdowns and I would not describe my computer as being slow.   My computer works very quickly once a program has been opened.  The problem is after the mouse has been clicked there is a delay of about 45 seconds before there is a response.  This happens opening programs on or offline, opening Internet Explorer, opening Outlook Express, moving from site to site.  For 15 minutes this morning the computer worked beautifully and I thought my problem had solved itself, but for the rest of the day it has been delaying to the point of frustration.

I welcome any further suggestions you might have, please.

Crab Apple

Hi Jesse

I just wanted to bring you up to date with my on-going problem.  Zone Alarm was uninstalled and reinstalled this weekend with no change in our problem.  While Zone Alarm was shut down the problem remained.  There are currently no other malware utilities running on the computer other than Zone Alarm.  Do you have any further suggestions, please?

What you describe sounds to me like the computer is having to page out processes and applications in order to "make room" for the program you are trying to start.  The fact that it runs fine once it has opened tends to back that up.  If this is what is going on then adding more physical memory to the system should fix things for you.

Hi Crab Apple

As suggested by Larry R, could be that your Dimension 8400 is running short on RAM (memory)

Agree 512MB is a low-end spec for running present day applications & not sure what your video card spec is?

Have you checked system loading & performance in Task Manager?

On Processes tab

At bottom of screen, what are Processes, CPU Usage (%) & Commit Charge (ratio) values?

Under Image Name, any application exe files using an excessive amount of CPU?

Scroll all the way to bottom, what is System Idle Process (%) value?

On Performance tab

You should see a graphical display of Usage History for CPU & Page File

When opening applications or doing work (e.g. opening a Word document) the CPU Usage History will show peaks, these peaks will vary in height, but should rise & fall off sharply

If your system has CPU/memory limitations, peaks can reach 100% & plateau for a period of time before falling off

Finally, if nothing unusual found in Task Manager – a long shot – but have you tried another mouse or if applicable a mouse that only uses the MS XP native HID drivers?

Hi Bell Boy

Thank you for your response.  Following are the answers to your questions:

Task manager/Processes tab
Processes 43  /  CPU Usage 0%   /  Commit Charge 555m/1245m  /  no .exe programs working  /  System Idle Process 99%

Task manager/Performance tab
CPU usage appears normal when I open and type in documents, and use internet and e-mail.

I must say that today the computer has worked the way it should work all day.  Again, I'm hoping that something has happened to fix the problem, but we'll see tomorrow.  At least I have a base-line to compare Task manager numbers to if the problem occurs tomorrow.  Do the above numbers look normal?

Thanks.

Crab Apple

Hi Larry R

Thank you for the great explanation.  I now understand what is probably happening when the computer does this delay thing.  As I wrote in the response to Bell Boy, the computer worked well all day today, so I'm hoping this is the end of the problem.  I will be more attuned to the memory issue if it starts delaying badly again.

Thanks

Crab Apple

Hi again Crab Apple

Only reason I mentioned try another mouse is to eliminate any mouse hardware or mouse 3rd party driver (if applicable) compatibility issues

Anyway, moving onto your Dimension 8400 Task Manager values

Processes: 43 (About normal)

CPU Usage: 0%  (Not normally a static value, tends to vary, anything from 1% to 10+% is normal)

Commit Charge: 555m/1245m (= 0.45 is a bit on the high side but still less than 1)

Numerator 555MB is greater than your RAM (512MB) causing slower system performance by using hard drive disk temporary storage space based virtual memory (Paging Files)

No .exe programs working (Depends what you mean by none working)?

List should indicate a few Generic Host (svchost.exe) type processes that run essential Services & tend to be the main user of CPU (%), Security type applications (AV in particular) can soak up CPU when running

System Idle Process: 99% (not much system load demand but means CPU (%) would then be 1%)

In summary, as expected the Commit Charge value implies you need to think about adding more RAM memory

Hope this helps   :emotion-1:

Hi Bell Boy

Thanks for the analysis.  I'm starting to understand this data more as a result of this problem.  It looks like I will be adding RAM in the near future.

Thank you all for your help.  Your support and knowledge has made this worry much lighter.

Crab Apple