Genealogy Chat

nudge for future reference

Peter, That is a LOT of usefull information. I have printed it off and will look at it again tomorrow. I keep seeing things about Firefox being better than IE. - I think I will have to look into this. Thanks again for all the info (It makes more sense to me than tips on how to use the vacuum cleaner and iron a shirt). ! Many thanks, Dea x

Most of the points have been covered but I think it important to understand that there are a number of factors which affect performance and all for different reasons. CPU Usage. The main processor, this bit in the computer that does all the work. Normally idle but kicks into life whenever you ask the computer to run something. If it is at a high percent when you are doing nothing, then the chances are that you have a program running somewhere that you don't know about, ie Spyware or some other nasty. You can't change the CPU's performance without upgrading to a more powerful PC. Memory management. The amount of memory that you have controls how fast the CPU can access the data for the various programs you are running. If there is insufficient memory to hold all the data the program needs in one go, then things slow down ad the CPU has to continually fetch data from the disk. You can increase memory by buying and installing extra chips. Virtual memory is a section of disk set aside to add additional cpacity. Normally set to 1.5 times the real memory. Can be changed but you need to know what you are doing or can make things worse. Shortage of memory is more noticable if you are running programs which handel a lot of data such as large spreadsheets or video games. Disk fragmentation. This does not affect performance directly but a badly fragmented disk takes longer to read from and write to. If you are not processing large amounts of data then de-fraging will not improve things that much. Do it once a month and you should be ok Internet Cache. This includes your cookie and temp internet files. If they are not cleaned out regularly then you will see it taking longer to load internet pages. In clearing out your cookies, take care that you don't remove the ones that have login details etc you have saved for your favourite sites of you will have to type them in again. If IE is crashing regulary there is a also the posibility that the program has become corrupted. It is not the best software browser and is known to cause problems. Try uploading the latest updates and see if this helps. If you use XP there is also a built in diagnostic program you could run. go to start, run and tyoe in 'sfc /scannow' - no quotes. You will need to insert your original system disc when prompted. This works for me when I have problems with any of the microsoft programs such as explorer, outlook, media player, etc. I now only use IE as a backup standby and find that Firefox is much more stable and less prone to problems.

That's fine. Jim

Thanks to everyone for their advice: Steve, All unecessary programmes disabled! Walter, No, I have not added any new software ! Ted, Dishes still in the sink waiting for 'hubby' - I have been hanging wallpaper all afternoon - not sure if that could be classed as a 'lady thing' or not !!! Xxx Brennan, I empty 'Temporary Internet Files' every couple of days ! Jim, I think I might just keep rebooting, after all, this keeps things under control - If things get out of hand I may get back to you. Thanks again everyone for your suggestions. Dea Xxx

Hi Dea, I think Bren may have hit the problem. If you are short of freespace on your hard disk, or if it is badly organised, that could cause the system to 'freeze' as it keeps looking for space to store something. It's a problem that can creep up on you, without you realising. Temporary disk files certainly contribute to this poblem, but there are other things as well. There are things you can do to check. Happy to advise further if you think that might be the problem, but it could be a lengthy message .... Jim

Hi Dea Do you clear your 'Temporary Internet Files', it may not cure your problem but if you have never done it you will have thousands of stored files in Explorer. Bren

Dea, yea I think walter has hit the nail on the head, as sit were. have you loaded any new software or programme. I loaded a new wireless mouse a couple of months ago and it gave me the same sort of fault. removed sit and started again and bingo, it worked. Now get back to the sink and wash those dirty dishes. TED XX

I would ask one question - Have these problems just started since you installed a new software programme? If so then remove it and see what happens

I would also disable programmes that start up automatically like your media players etc. Steve.

Dea, 'Virtual memory' is a function where you can allocate a certain amount of disc space to add to the ram (memory) in the pc for when your mem gets used up by doing too many things at once. all those little icons by the clock,are progs that are running,from startup. do you need all of them? right click and disable those that you are not using. that might help a little..... even using 'CPU usage' is using up memory space. Another thing which can eat up memory, is using too high a colour setting if you are using 'true colour' or 64 bit, you are wasting space go to 16 bit or medium, your eyes wont see the difference but your PC will, Bob

Didnt someone else have this the other day and some sort of trojan was eating at their space or something? She downloaded avg7 free and ran it through and found the trojan.

Explorer shouldn't need that much memory allocated. I had a similar problem several months ago - Explorer was causing my system to chew up all the memory and hang for no apparent reason. Took it back to the shop and even the techies there couldn't explain why - but we fixed it by re-installing XP. That was a bit of a pain, but unlike earlier operating systems, at least you don't lose all your data and/or settings. Still took a whole afternoon to sort out though :( Richard

Ted, Sorry, I don't often do the 'lady things' like washing, ironing, cleaning etc. because I spend too much time on here BUT I think you are saying what I have at the back of my mind, I just don't know the terminology for it. The virtual memory - I have a feeling I should be allocating more to Internet Explorer and that by doing this I will solve the problem?? I have no idea though how much memory it needs, or how much I should give it. Dea x

Thank you Malcolm (and for the p.m.) I do understand the concept and what you are saying. I have Mcafee antivirus and antispyware etc. - I am sure my system is clear of all these. If I watch the CPU usage as I use the site, the CPU goes up and down and adds up to 100% with the system idle rate - there doesn't seem to be anything else using it up. Could it not be that I need to allocate more memory into Explorer? Dea

Dea, pardon me in disputing anything which has been told you, but how on earth can the CPU which is the main processor in your pc FREEZE UP as it were. It just cant. lets put it this way. when you start cleaning and washing and everything else you ladies do, you could go on for ever but you run out of TIME because you have so many jobs to do. The answer? well save the jobs for another day. Thats what memory is in a pc. It takes care of all the jobs that needs doing and when it reaches its limit it shuts down your pc. Now to get round this,the very clever pc experts who designed the pc, made what is known as virtual memory and used that, a bit too technical for us all, but on the control panel you should be able to find VIRTUAL MEMORY and it can be checked and altered manually to suit your needs. I dont know about XP cos Im still an old fogie using WINS 98, and I adjust mine manually instead of letting WINDOWS do it for me. TED.

hiya dea as your not technical lets do it another way take yourself you start vacuuming then your asked to make tea then throw the washing in the machine then start dusting an making beds very soon your doing loads an nothing is getting completed and your poor old body says sod this and you sit down and do nothing this is the same with your CPU it starts a task then another prog starts running then another until it say sod it and freezes now because your pc freezes i suggest shutting down some progs and not have too many running at the same time BUT i strongly suspect your pc is infected with adware malware and spyware which are progs that run in the background unknown to yourself the cure for this is to download an anti spyware programme i use 'ad aware ' you can get this by typing www.lavasoft.com in google i also suggest you download AVG virus scan which can be downloaded from www.grisoft.com once youve downloaded and installed these progs ( they are both free although be careful with avg as there is a trial download and a free download make sure ya choose free download ) )run them on a weekly basis just a footnote cpu usage is information on how much your cpu is being used also as you say your not techie CPU stands for central processing unit and is the brain of your pc malc ps i notice although i put dot com after those website addys it doesnt appear in the message so put dotcom after lavasoft and grisoft

I am not VERY techie, but 100% usage would probably cause the freezing. I think that by looking at the Processes readout you will be able to see what's using up the memory and take it from there.

Thanks Brian, What I really need to know is - If it is showing 100% usage - Is this why everything freezes? If so, should I be altering settings somewhere to allow more memory to a certain programme e.g. to Internet Explorer, in order to stop it using up 100% and causing the problem? I hope you understand what I am trying to say - as you can see, I am not very technical. Dea

CPU usage is simply the percentage of available processing capacity which is being used. If you look at 'Processes' in the Task Manager under the CPU column it will break that down and show which applications are using the memory.