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Geek Culture / Computer slower then it should be

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heyufool1
16
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Joined: 14th Feb 2009
Location: My quiet place
Posted: 14th Jun 2009 21:00
Hi! Recently I have had the urge to make my computer faster so I bought 2gb ram and threw it into my computer and it recognizes it and it works, but it's not too much faster. So, I kept on searching on what could be causing my computer to be slower then it should be. I found that my CPU usage is usually pretty high (50%), and one CPU is being maxed out while the other one is hardly doing doing anything. I also found out that a lot of the drivers for Intel(R) things are out of date, but I can't find a good program to update these drivers so I can't mess it up. So what could be the problem?


My current specs are:
32 Bit Windows XP Professional
2 - Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00 GHZ
3GB Ram
Nvidia 6800 GT

And I have 3 Hard drives, C drive, a S drive and then a Z drive to backup my S drive which I'm doing using Acronis True Image Backup.

P.S. I have defragmented, ran many virus scans, and cleaned up the registry.

NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
20
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Joined: 10th Apr 2005
Location: The Fifth Plane of Oblivion
Posted: 14th Jun 2009 21:49
Look in your Processes list in Task Manager. (ctrl-alt-del) Find the offending processes and list them.

The Wilderbeast
19
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Joined: 14th Nov 2005
Location: UK
Posted: 14th Jun 2009 21:56
We have a what was once top-of-the-line machine from a couple years back and it is unbearably slow, seriously I can't use it properly because it hangs so much. Basically it's because it is full of crap, half of which isn't even used any more. It's so full up I'm afraid I'm going to have to wipe the HDD and do a fresh install, but my advice would be to uninstall as many things as you can which you aren't using.

heyufool1
16
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Location: My quiet place
Posted: 14th Jun 2009 22:02
Well there is a whole lot of processes so I just took a screen shot:

(Ignore the yellow marked processes ones)
A few things I'm wondering about the list:
-Why is firefox taking up a lot of memory? (I have 1 tab open, which is looking at this topic)
-Why are there so many svchosts? I know there should be multiple but I have 7 running and sometime 9 or so.

Grandma
19
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Joined: 26th Dec 2005
Location: Norway, Guiding the New World Order
Posted: 14th Jun 2009 22:09 Edited at: 14th Jun 2009 22:10
Make sure your CPU heatsink doesn't look like this.

And this was after I cleaned it.

This message was brought to you by Grandma industries.

Making yesterdays games, today!
heyufool1
16
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Posted: 14th Jun 2009 22:12 Edited at: 14th Jun 2009 22:13
How to i take out the heatsink like the picture is? I have vacuumed out my computer semi recently but I only got what I could see without removing things.

NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 14th Jun 2009 22:14
That's about normal for Firefox because people can't program any more.

I see you have iTunes installed, therefore Quicktime and Bonjour.

Tick the "show all users" box at the bottom.

heyufool1
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Posted: 14th Jun 2009 22:18
I ticked it and nothing changed, I am the only user on my OS.

The Wilderbeast
19
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Location: UK
Posted: 14th Jun 2009 22:19
Presumably you only have one antivirus installed?

heyufool1
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Posted: 14th Jun 2009 22:20
Yea I have Avast Home Edition, then I also have Spybot Search & Destroy for scanning.

Grandma
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Location: Norway, Guiding the New World Order
Posted: 14th Jun 2009 22:33
You can still clean the heatsink without taking it completely off if you only remove the fan that usually lies on top of it. The difficulty in that varies, depending on the fan involved. Some can be quite stubborn. If you're not sure how to remove it after examining it, I'd suggest you don't try anything stupid.

This message was brought to you by Grandma industries.

Making yesterdays games, today!
heyufool1
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Posted: 14th Jun 2009 22:35
I think i might take a peak in later and see if i can see any obvious signs of dust build up then clean it depending on what i see. Although anything else that could speed my computer up is greatly appreciated! Also do you think a full wipe of my c drive and reinstalling windows would help at all? I have all files backed up but is it worth the time?

The Wilderbeast
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Posted: 14th Jun 2009 23:06
I would definitely recommend it, you can go through all of your files and think - do I really need that?

NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 14th Jun 2009 23:26
Quote: "Some can be quite stubborn."


I'll say. The screws in mine have fused to the fan. Using a screwdriver just removes the tread from the screws.

Roxas
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Joined: 11th Nov 2005
Location: http://forum.thegamecreators.com
Posted: 15th Jun 2009 00:32
It's common problem in Windows, when you use it some years it becomes slower each day and finally die and you have to format. Also Firefox is not good as everyone makes it think.

NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 15th Jun 2009 01:36 Edited at: 15th Jun 2009 01:37
The state of your hard drive can make a huuuge difference. My PC was awful slow on its 5 year old 40Gb Maxtor with 35Gb free and no fragmentation, it was silly. Even after a format. When the drive died and the data from that drive was mirrored onto a new 500Gb, it boots in under 5 seconds once the ancient BIOS sits on "Verifying DMI Pool Data" for about 40 seconds. Not to mention that everything's snappier, like dizzyingly fast. So if a format doesn't fix an odd slowdown, it might be the hard drive itself.

Oh, and the RAM might be slower than what you had beforehand. Swap it back and see if the performance returns. You did keep it, right?

heyufool1
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Posted: 15th Jun 2009 04:48
Thanks for the responses! I only had the computer for about 2 years, and I didn't remove and RAM I only added RAM. I'll try formatting the hard drive after I back it up again. Thanks!

NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 15th Jun 2009 08:59
If you added new RAM that is slower than what you already had, they are both clocked to match so the older, faster RAM will be essentially dragged down by the newer, slower RAM.

Benjamin
22
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Location: France
Posted: 15th Jun 2009 15:17
It's probably loads of services and crap that has been installed, it happens over time. The only way to easily get everything running like it was is to reinstall Windows. Of course it could be something hardware-related but I'm not so sure.

David R
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Location: 3.14
Posted: 15th Jun 2009 16:54 Edited at: 15th Jun 2009 16:55
Quote: "It's common problem in Windows, when you use it some years it becomes slower each day and finally die and you have to format. Also Firefox is not good as everyone makes it think."


I wouldn't continue to post that link anywhere... half of what it states is either flat out wrong, or just irrelevant.

For example, the section about system requirements is pointless. Of course FF is going to have higher requirements - it's a platform neutral browser, that relies on text data to be flexible (heavy emphasis on UI definitions via XML, XUL/XBL etc.). IE targets one platform, and doesn't have to do that kind of work (platform neutrality comes at a cost that IE doesn't have to pay)

Also, my biggest pet peeve with these lists (and critique of FF in general):

Quote: "Reality - Firefox is anything but Secure. Since Firefox was released, users have been exposed to over 400 security vulnerabilities and counting. You only need one vulnerability to be insecure."


The only reason IE may have lower security issue counts is because MS aren't obligated to release details of the flaws they find. So if it's found internally, but is a big ogre of a flaw to fix, they can just put it off without releasing details, and nobody knows (unless external researchers find it too). This way, of course IE will have lower flaw counts - because half the flaws won't be disclosed. Unlike a FOSS application, where every single bug and flaw is visible.

09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0
heyufool1
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Location: My quiet place
Posted: 15th Jun 2009 21:43
Thanks! I did clean out the heatsink which was really bad but so far all it did was make my computer restart on its own when ever I first load my desktop (after clicking on my account in window's welcome page). Now I'm assuming my computer's speed has something to do with it being really hot. But I have 3 fans in my computer, so I don't know if that is relevant or not.

NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
20
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Posted: 15th Jun 2009 21:47
Uh... was there a grey paste under that heatsink?

Lemonade
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Posted: 15th Jun 2009 22:26
Quote: "Uh... was there a grey paste under that heatsink?"


Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Check out my tech blog below!
http://cooltech-sciencelab.blogspot.com/
NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 15th Jun 2009 22:42
That tuna paste doesn't mesh well with x86 processors?

heyufool1
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Posted: 17th Jun 2009 04:22
Well it's been running better now, so I think I made it as good as it will be without upgrading the hardware. Thanks for all of the replies!

P.S. And yes, there was thermal paste on top of the CPU

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