UNSOLVED
sloooooow DIM2400
bought my sister one in '03 and she's having trouble with it being deadly slow... takes
minutes to open anything or do anything... got her NIS for security, got her to do a spyware check regularly with ad-aware, dump cookies and files daily, etc., but still slower'n anything... any ideas?
fyi, she only does a little onlining occasionally, uses it mostly for writing only... and doesn't have enough files on it to fill more'n a few floppies, so it can't be a memory prob, unless other stuff got in there before she started using the spyware checker...
anyone else had this problem?... can't really afford to buy her a new hd, so any help will be greatly appreciated...
love and hugs, maia
ps: btw, i help writers of all breeds all over the world by email, so if you need any help with any kind of writing, i'll be happy to return the favor... m
shesagordie
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Posted September 22nd, 2007 02:00
mammamaia
How much memory is installed in the D-2400?
XP requires a minimum memory of 512mb.
Bev.
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Please don't send me questions about your system by DCF Messenger.
Post the issue in the appropriate Board, where they will be answered.- I would check in task manager to see if any tasks are using up your CPU cycles. Look in the Processes tab and look for large numbers in the CPU column. Ignore System Idle Process. Also check the Performance tab and look at the Total Physical Memory and the Commit Charge numbers. If the Commit Charge is larger than Total Physical Memory you could be low on memory or have programs using too much memory.
Peter - virtually certain it has 256, but have to check with 'baby sis' and it's probably the middle of the night there [ny]... i'm gonna have her list for me all the programs she has operating and see if there's junk there that can be tossed... she also may need to defrag, but i don't know if she's got enough stuff on it to have that be a factor...
shesagordie
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46017 Posts
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Posted September 22nd, 2007 03:00
mammamaia
The D-2400 has intergrated graphics, therefore between 32 and 64mb of system memory can be allocated to support graphics, unless a PCI video card has been installed.
How to optimize Windows XP for the best performance.
Bev.
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Please don't send me questions about your system by DCF Messenger.
Post the issue in the appropriate Board, where they will be answered.- i seriously doubt she's got anything much in the way of graphics on there, as all she uses the thing for is to write her bits of transcribing work she does for some extra income and knows next to nothing about anything else one can do with a computer... plus, the time she spends on it is very limited, due to not being able to sit for long... so, i can't begin to figure out what the problem is...tell me this, anyone who knows... if she'd acquired a lot of spyware in the 3 years or more before we found out about it and i got her to add ad-aware and check for it regularly, could it have piled up in places on the hd where the ad-aware wouldn't have caught it, when she finally did start checking for it?... seems to me that's what happened to my previous inspiron laptop and my techo-geek friend had to do all kinds of stuff to 'cleanse' the poor thing, before i could give it away in workable shape... same thing had happened to me as my sis is going through... would take minutes just to open a document!... so, whatcha think?... could that be the problem?and if so, is there any remedy short of buying her a new hard drive?
- If you have run spyware and virus checks recently (with proper updates), I wouldn't expect those to be a big problem.
One possible problem is that she is low on memory to begin with. Many programs including those preinstalled by Dell, will start something automatically, even if you don't need it. The problem is it uses memory and possibly CPU time.
Another possible problem is a program that has gone "crazy." My aunt had a machine she was ready to toss out because it became unusable after 20 minutes or so. It turned out to be a utility put on the computer by Compaq that had a flaw and slowly ate up all the available memory. Disabling that one program from starting, made the computer perfectly usable. Programs can also use all the CPU cycles.
That is why you need to see what programs are using memory and CPU cycles.
Peter
maia
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Posted September 22nd, 2007 02:00