Question for you computer guys

[TRBON8R]

My computer has been acting weird lately. I can start it up and cruise the internet for a while and it works great. Eventually it starts slowing down and running like crap. I try to type in an address to a website and the computer just sits there forever chugging away before it finally brings up the page. As soon as I reboot the computer the problem is gone. It runs lightning quick once again. What's the problem here? Thanks.

 

[orion681]

chances are you are running an older version of windows. you system processor has a memory cache of 64 KB called your system resources. everytime you run a program, you use up a little bit of system resources and even when you close the program, you never get those resources back until you restart the machine. so the longer the machine runs, the slower it gets until you restart and the memory clears. in my experience, windows XP is phoenominal. i am on a 6 year old gateway pentium 2 300mmx, or you could say a mouse on a wheel. i upgraded to a 120 gig hard drive and tacked on 256 megs of ram, and that helped a little bit, but when i installed winXP, it was a whole new world. the OS just seems to manage everything a little better.

 

[TRBON8R]

Ray,

You may have hit the nail on the head. I'm running Windows 98. Maybe I should upgrade? Thanks. I know squat about computers, about as much as your average housewife knows about Turbo Buicks.....lol. Thanks for the info.

 

[gnXfan]

Originally posted by TRBON8R
Ray,

You may have hit the nail on the head. I'm running Windows 98. Maybe I should upgrade? Thanks. I know squat about computers, about as much as your average housewife knows about Turbo Buicks.....lol. Thanks for the info.

You may not have to upgrade. Computers are so cheap it may be better to get a new machine. I just got a new Sony Laptop, 2GHZ with a 40g hd for 1300 bucks. You can get decent desktops for 4-500 bucks.

What processor are you running and how much ram do you have?

 

[TRBON8R]

I'm running an AMD Athlon 1000 MHZ processor. Ram is 512 mb. Thanks.

 

[TurboJunky]

Windows XP SUCKS!. I have a 400Mhz AMD K62 with 226 megs of ram. Ran great on Windows 2000 but was forced to upgrade to XP due to the addition of a multi function printer. Talk about a friggin speed break. The OS runs fine but it's version of Media Player sucks, chugs and chugs. Now it can't play a .mpg file smoothly like under 2000.

Hmmmmm, same computer but with different OS's. Runs FAST under 2000, slow under XP....you be the judge.

 

[lp2]

TT/A1233, you can still use the old version of media player, look for mplayer2.exe, and start running it instead.

TRBON8R, You shouldn't have massive slowdowns with a 1gig system, I would do the typical geek things to see whats up:

#1) Defrag the harddrive
#2) Do a complete virus scan with new virus definitions
#3) Get adaware or a similar program and look for any spyware on the computer
#4) Check how much hard drive space you have, if your really low, you will see slowdowns.

 

[orion681]

win2000 is also a good OS, but i skipped that step and went for XP pro because a friend gave it to me. win2000 and XP are both built on the more stable business oriented WINNT platform. win NT was a great OS for running really stable, but is not very multimedia friendly and security on it is a pain because you have to define everything. win2000 was a version of windows that was designed to present the security and stability of win NT with the multimedia features of the consumer windows products, e.g. 95,98,ME, but never, NEVER use ME. that is the worst windows platform ever, and thats why it didnt last very long.

 

[The Pro]

Uh, what do you mean by "64k memory cache" in Windows?


Windows 95, 98, 98SE, and ME are all based upon the same kernel, and they all dynamically adress physical and virtual memory. They also don't do too much with RAM larger than 128 mb. Actually, it's more like 100 mb, but I digress.

Also, if someone is having problems with XP, I bet you did an "in place upgrade" of the OS. It's considered a "best practice" to do a clean install and use the transfer wizard to move files and settings. Also, ~90% of the time, the problem is traced back to either hardware problems OR misconfigured settings. The other 10% is driver instability or program incompatibility.

XP and Windows 2000 are both good operating systems, but XP is much more stable and versatile.