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LadyDay
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Posted: Monday May 29th, 2006 23:54 |
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my main pc is 4 yrs old
i run the defrag test and it always says doesnt need de fragging
what else can i do to speed it up
should i just buy more memory
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umbrarchist
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Posted: Tuesday May 30th, 2006 07:17 |
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In the LAPTOPS thread I created a post with 2 screenshots. They use the taskmanager to show the CPU usage in the lower right corner. You could do this to check the level of activity on your machine. What operating system are you running?
Is the machine slower then it used to be on the same jobs? Another thing to check is the size of the pagefile.
umbra
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TheDogon
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Posted: Tuesday May 30th, 2006 21:44 |
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LadyDay wrote: my main pc is 4 yrs old
i run the defrag test and it always says doesnt need de fragging
what else can i do to speed it up
should i just buy more memory
More RAM usually does the trick. Do you know how much RAM you have now?
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LadyDay
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Posted: Tuesday May 30th, 2006 22:51 |
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256 ram and 40gb hard drive amd athlon processor
os - xp
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ac9311
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Posted: Wednesday May 31st, 2006 04:49 |
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| More memory will help. Check your startup folder and make sure that you don't have unnecessary programs in the folder. Because they will be allocated memory everytime the pc is booted and the programs will never release the memory until they are removed from the startup folder.
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umbrarchist
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Posted: Wednesday May 31st, 2006 06:39 |
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Let's see if we can learn some things without spending any money.
You can bring up the task manager by typing Ctrl +Alt + Delete simultaneously. This should cause your screen to go blue and a selection box with 6 buttons should appear in the middle of the screen. The bottom middle button should say Task Manager. CLICK THAT
Now a box with tabs at the top should come up. The tabs will be:
Applications, Processes, Performance, Network, [and something else I don't remember]
(What do you think I am, a computer? LOL)
The one you want is Performance.
I go into the options menu and turn the Always On Top OFF. This way it lets me still see the task bar across the bottom even when I put the task manager in the lower right corner. I usually change the size of the window too. Now you should be able to watch your CPU usage while you work.
I use a 1.3 Ghz machine the most and the vast majority of the time my CPU usage is below 33%. Playing a DVD movie causes it to bounce between 40 and 60%. Ripping CDs to MP3s puts it at a steady 80%.
One thing I have learned that slows things down is the IDE Hard Drive interface set to PIO. This causes the CPU to go to 100% and the disk reads and writes are DOG SLOW, like TWO Megabytes per second. If your hard drive speed is less than 8 MB/sec it is substandard. So the first thing to check is if the CPU usage maxes out every time you copy a bunch of files.
Measuring disk speed is another lesson.
What did you say your credit card number was?
umbrarchist
Last edited on Wednesday May 31st, 2006 08:29 by umbrarchist
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MCP
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Posted: Wednesday May 31st, 2006 22:56 |
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@ Ladyday.
With a operating system like window xp, its very resource hungry. I would suggest increasing the memory from 256mb to at least 512mb. If you can put anymore in your pc, it wouldn't hurt at all
The difference you would definately notice.
What defragging program are you using. Is it the windows xp defragger.???
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LadyDay
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Posted: Wednesday May 31st, 2006 23:36 |
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@mcp it is the windows xp installed defragger.
i will try and invest in more memory. think it will be about 20 quid
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umbrarchist
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Posted: Thursday June 8th, 2006 08:27 |
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Here is a tiny program that can monitor your memory usage.
http://www.gena01.com/memuse/
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LadyDay
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Posted: Tuesday September 26th, 2006 23:57 |
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everyone is telling me to defrag. im gonna give it a go
but
do i need to back up anything? if so what
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umbrarchist
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Posted: Wednesday September 27th, 2006 01:04 |
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It depends on how paranoid you are. I have never had a computer crash during a defrag but a power failure without a UPS during a defrg could be very inconvenient.
You should have backups anyway. What if your hard drive crashes 2 days after the defrag? You said the computer is 4 years old. I assume drives last 3 to 5 years.
umbra
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LadyDay
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Posted: Wednesday September 27th, 2006 17:14 |
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umbrarchist wrote: It depends on how paranoid you are. I have never had a computer crash during a defrag but a power failure without a UPS during a defrg could be very inconvenient.
You should have backups anyway. What if your hard drive crashes 2 days after the defrag? You said the computer is 4 years old. I assume drives last 3 to 5 years.
umbra
ok
what should i back up? and how?
i will indeed back up photos and music
what else
ps how long does defragging take
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MCP
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Posted: Wednesday September 27th, 2006 21:48 |
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Ladyday.
Don't worry about backing up your program before defragging your pc. The defragging process will only tidy up your pc. Your files and folders will still be where they were previously.
The process of defragging your pc, especially with the time factor depends on how much tidying the process needs to do. If you haven't done so in a while, it may take some time to do so. I would recommend at least once a month defrag your pc.
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umbrarchist
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Posted: Thursday September 28th, 2006 00:05 |
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I use the InCD program that comes with Nero to backup my most data. It treats a CD-RW as a big floppy disk and I use XCOPY to copy files from the hard drive to the CD-RW. I have written batch files to get the subdirectories I want.
I treat MP3s somewhat differently and use Nero to make music CDs or DVDs. I don't want most of that stuff cluttering up my hard drive anyway.
umbra
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Israfil
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Posted: Saturday September 30th, 2006 11:52 |
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LadyDay wrote: my main pc is 4 yrs old
i run the defrag test and it always says doesnt need de fragging
what else can i do to speed it up
should i just buy more memory
If your pc is a pentium III you should try another os such as Windowds 2000
adding more memory wont help and defrag is not the solution
but if those options are no options 4 you
than you should open the taskmanager processes and look what processes your pc is using
than try 2 close some processes wich the user is using not the system or the local service or the network service
you wil see that maybe your pc is starting unnessecary programs and that is why it is so slow
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