computer problems

[low_delta]

What's up with my computer? It seems to have a limit on things that can be opened before it becomes nearly nonfunctional. Tonight I opened tons of image pages on Flickr, and at a certain point, it was so busy that it couldn't do anything. The drive kept crunching at full blast, and it was sometimes minutes before it could refresh a page or switch windows. I've also had this happen with Photoshop, and MS Office fills it up pretty quickly too. When it gets to this point, it doesn't matter what I shut down, the box seems to enjoy replaying these images over and over in its head. Tonight, I shut down Firefox, and it returned to normal, but if Photoshop caused the problem, a reboot is required.

Can anyone tell me what's going on here?

Comments

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Manolo says it's *probably* one of two things:
Win-doze

and

you need more memory in the computer.

Also, how old is it? What kind of processor does it have?

It may also need de-fragging or reformatting or (horrors) a Win-doze re-install.
Have you checked for trojans and virus? (And there are some that even the best anti-virus won't pick up).
Also...software today requires more and more memory and processing power and when you run several things at once, Win-doze goes crazy.

Any or all of the above can cause what you describe.

Of course, the HD or motherboard could be dying as well.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

you need more memory in the computer.
Probably true.

Also, how old is it? What kind of processor does it have?
Five years? No idea.

It may also need de-fragging Nope.

Have you checked for trojans and virus?
Only with Norton.

Also...software today requires more and more memory and processing power
Firefox is the latest and greatest, but everything else is old stuff. Except MS Office, which slows things down, but isn't a factor during the times I'm complaining about. Photoshop is an older version.

Thanks!

[banana.livejournal.com]

If you close firefox and things get better, that sounds like you are out of memory. Windows will guess at what parts of memory aren't being used and swap them to disk. Then if you need them, everything stops while they swapped back.

Look at the task manager. On the performance tab there's a graph of usage. The labelling varies with windows version. On XP it's called "Commit charge" and (!) "PF usage". Ideally you want this to be less than the amount of memory, although depending on what you're doing it can get quite a bit higher without too much of a problem.

On the other hand if you close photoshop and things don't get better, it's more complicated. The task manager can help you again by showing you whether photoshop has actually closed down. Look at the processes tab. Make it display the "VM Size" column (again may be called something else if you're not on XP), and sort by that. Look at what the largest things are. Or try sorting by CPU usage. A large process that's constantly using a few % of CPU while your disk light is on is probably disk swapping.

If memory is the problem, there are a few things you can do. Install some more - it's not so expensive. Try using only one app at a time. Try having fewer tabs open in firefox, or fewer images open in photoshop. Buy a new computer.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I'm on XP.

I'll have to watch all this more closely the next time I have this problem. I could understand why having too many windows open would cause the system to bog down, but I don't understand why it would not come back up to speed after I closed them all.

I could hardly do anything to cause the PF/Page File Usage/Commit Charge to go up tonight. It's right around 700 of 1225.

I'll probably end up trying to install more memory.

Thanks!

[banana.livejournal.com]

How much memory do you have?

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

How do I find out?

[banana.livejournal.com]

Right-click on "My Computer". At the bottom of the "General" tab it should say "x.y GB of RAM" or similar.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Pentium 4 CPU 3.00GHz
3.00GHz, 504 MB of RAM

[banana.livejournal.com]

So you have 504M but you are using 700M. Ouch.

I have the same amount of memory in my laptop, and I often find that it stops responding for a minute or two if I have too many things open, and the hard disk light is on constantly. Have a look at the price of some more memory.

If you have 700M in use without running any big apps, that's pretty high. Look at what processes are running.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Right now I've got nothing running bout Outlook Express and Firefox. Firefox takes up 133,300 K, and everything else is 18,000K or lower. The total is less than 240,000K. It's says the Commit Charge is 560M / 1225M. What does that mean? That's the number that I reported as 700, earlier.

[banana.livejournal.com]

560 is the amount in use, and 1225 is the current max (although if you get near the max, it will just make it bigger)

So evn though 560 is more than 504, that's not too bad. I expect that everything is trundling along happily. Stuff that's not being used gets swapped to disk. But if you open dozens of firefox tabs or start photoshopping then you reach a point where almost anything you want to do involves memory that's been swapped out and has to be fetched from disk. Try it and keep the task manager open.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

So... I have a dozen tabs open, and that requires too much memory, so it transfers the ones I'm not using, to the disk? But if I have 50 tabs open, that's too much to even swap easily?

[banana.livejournal.com]

Yes, kind of. Windows doesn't know what you're going to use, so it gets rid of bits of memory that you used least recently. If you open a lot of tabs, you've looked at a lot of things recently, and so it's quite likely that whatever you do will involve some memory that's been swapped. Tabs running javascript that might well keep some of the background stuff in use even though you're not looking at it.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

What really drives me crazy is when the box is really crunching hard, and the task manager doesn't show anything amiss. No unusual applications are running, and nothing is showing a large allocation of memory. Any idea what's up with that?

[banana.livejournal.com]

Try sorting processes by CPU in task manager. Even processes that are waiting for swap should appear near the top.

I generally find that by the time I've switched to the task manager, found the right tab and sorted, the problem has gone away. 8~)

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

What does Process Explorer do, exactly?

I've got Advanced System Care. I'm not sure I use it to it's fullest capability, but I've never noticed any difference. And it pissed me off. Ever since you told me about it and I installed it, until a few weeks ago, it would ask me every time I booted up, to download and install updates, no matter how recently I did it. Annoying as hell.

Smart RAM could be good.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I think I just now figured out why ASC was pissing me off. When you hit the "get updates", or whatever it's called, it downloads a file, but it doesn't integrate it into its database, you have to go get that file and install it. All this time, whenever I got the update, it didn't do anything, because I assumed it was automatic, like all the other AV programs I've run.

I'm still pissed off.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm not really pissed off. It's just annoying. But I should have figured it out sooner.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I saw it, but I wasn't really sure what it was trying to tell me. It looked like an improved task manager, but I'm not sure specifically how that would help me.