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  1. Try what Sergio suggested. Although a 5-6 year old pc might need to go to the trash dump instead. You could buy some new parts (new videocard, motherboard and such). Just to keep the thing updated and quick.
  2. Reinstalling is the easiest way indeed. You can also try to remove as much programs as possible, dont allow programs to start at boot and defrag your harddisk.

    PC of 5-6 years is not fast but should still be more than enough for simple tasks.
  3. Yeh it worked perfectly before it happened so I'll just try the reformatting and that thanks lads


  4. Can you if you haven't already formatted right-click on the start menu and go Task Manager and under Processes, see if there's a huge amount (in Memory Usage) that's popped up? Quite possibly it's something like a virus scanner or something resource-hungry doing it.

    I know iTunes can take up to 250MB minimum on W7 and Vista but I don't think so on XP it gets like that and Firefox if you're using it can go to 700MB minimum after running a few web pages and flash videos on sites. Just have a look 'cos that could be half the problem - I know it was for me.

    Also go to Start > Run and type msconfig, under Start Up Items or something similar see what's in the list - don't untick anything - but just list back here what they are and maybe that could be another issue. Just trying to think of things I'd be checking for problems and memory leaks and whatever.
  5. Originally posted by drewhiggins:[..]

    Can you if you haven't already formatted right-click on the start menu and go Task Manager and under Processes, see if there's a huge amount (in Memory Usage) that's popped up? Quite possibly it's something like a virus scanner or something resource-hungry doing it.

    I know iTunes can take up to 250MB minimum on W7 and Vista but I don't think so on XP it gets like that and Firefox if you're using it can go to 700MB minimum after running a few web pages and flash videos on sites. Just have a look 'cos that could be half the problem - I know it was for me.

    Also go to Start > Run and type msconfig, under Start Up Items or something similar see what's in the list - don't untick anything - but just list back here what they are and maybe that could be another issue. Just trying to think of things I'd be checking for problems and memory leaks and whatever.



    Yeh mate I'll try that later cheers

    Edit: Ok there isn't any Task Manager when I right click the start menu? And the list when I ran msconfig is really long and full of random things like "smax4pnp" and "ISUSPM"?
  6. Originally posted by jofice:[..]


    Yeh mate I'll try that later cheers

    Edit: Ok there isn't any Task Manager when I right click the start menu? And the list when I ran msconfig is really long and full of random things like "smax4pnp" and "ISUSPM"?


    He means right-click the big (blue, if you have Windows XP, dark grey if you have Vista, etc) bar on the low part of the screen where programs and windows open.
    Otherwise, push Ctrl + Alt + Supr at the same time and the Task Manager will open. Then look for the tab saying "Processes" or something like that and check if there's any taking a big part of your memory
  7. Originally posted by LikeASong:[..]

    He means right-click the big (blue, if you have Windows XP, dark grey if you have Vista, etc) bar on the low part of the screen where programs and windows open.
    Otherwise, push Ctrl + Alt + Supr at the same time and the Task Manager will open. Then look for the tab saying "Processes" or something like that and check if there's any taking a big part of your memory


    I feel like an idiot around you guys lol

    Edit: Its full of all those random processes again :S


  8. Maybe the reason you right-clicked is because you can't do that in XP (right-click on the Start Menu where there's a blank space, or were you right-clicking on the green Start button?). I'm on Windows 7 and haven't used XP for ages, so it's kind of a forgotten thing - only at work I use XP and 2000.

    The reason I'm trying to do this is because if you install the same app again and it happens again, we've got more of an idea of what might be doing it and time to get a different version of another app or something. A reformat is easier but more time-consuming...up to you though!


    What I mean in the Task Manager is this:



    See how firefox.exe is using 108,500Kb in the first column and 128,000Kb in the next? Apply that to the .exe that's running that happens be the largest number in the columns - that's how much virtual memory is being used in Windows, which if too much virtual memory is being used, Windows becomes unresponsive until you close the offending app or shut down the computer.

    If I can get the exact name of whatever .exe I can tell you if I've had the same problem or find out more on help pages and that kind of stuff and maybe work on it from there, unless you wanna reformat - up to you!



    Now, the msconfig thing is the same. When you go into msconfig, press PrintScreen on your keyboard, paste into Paint and upload to Imageshack so I can see it and maybe I can work from there. It's better than writing them all down otherwise it takes forever.

  9. I'd re-format the hard disk anyway.
    If the PC is 5 years old is the same, mine is 4 or 5 too and works perfectly; I do a reformat every 4-6 months to keep things tidied up
  10. Originally posted by LikeASong:I'd re-format the hard disk anyway.
    If the PC is 5 years old is the same, mine is 4 or 5 too and works perfectly; I do a reformat every 4-6 months to keep things tidied up



    I usually give it a year in between but watch what I install. With iTunes as I see jofice has you don't actually need to install everything and on an older system it might be beneficial. When I install iTunes it's usually like this: Rename the iTunesSetup.exe file to iTunesSetup.rar and drag out the following to somewhere on your Desktop:

    QuickTime
    iTunes
    AppleMobileDeviceSupport
    AppleApplicationSupport


    Don't drag out Bonjour, MobileMe and Apple Software Update - leave those in the .rar file and close the .rar file, then rename back to iTunesSetup.exe or iTunesSetup.msi - whatever it was called originally. I don't actually remember.

    Then hit Start > Run and type cmd. In that type cd Desktop and then type the following:

    QuickTime.msi /passive
    iTunes.msi /passive
    AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi /passive
    AppleApplicationSupport /passive

    Let each one install - this is a silent install so it installs without your needing to muck about with it and then open iTunes after you've installed all four. It'll complain about Bonjour - you don't need it, only for home networking and networked media and then hit OK and iTunes should up to 50% faster.



  11. Full of shit I haven't got a clue about?

    Edit: You need to see it full size for it to be clear


  12. I wouldn't expect you to. I keep getting an error on u2start's side about the full image and some array crap but from what I can see, the main culprits are:

    MSMoEnglish.exe is taking up the most - also you said the computer is about six years old, right? That might be a little old to run Vista - at least on most systems I tried it on it was even killing two-year-old ones. You also have AskService.exe from Ask.com running which isn't really needed considering Ask isn't even worth using anymore. iTunesHelper can be stopped on starting up as can QTTask (QuickTime Player) and reader_sl I think is something to do with Adobe Acrobat. Windows Search also can be stopped though I'm not sure if it works again or if you have to go in to the app and disable it that way.

    There's more down below - can you find out what those are?

    SearchHostFilter I'd not heard of before but it seems on some systems to take up 35% at minimum - so whatever it does god only knows but it seems to be bogging down the system. Maybe I've never installed it so I don't know what it does, but apparently to disable it:



    Open Windows Explorer (My Computer) and right-click the hard drive icon (C, select Properties and click on the General tab. Disable Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching. Wait for the hard drive activity to stop, then repeat for any other drives.

    Next go to Start > Control Panel > Admin Tools > Services. Scroll down to Indexing Service and double click it to open its Properties. Click the Stop button and then change the Startup Type to Disabled. Click OK, close down all programs and reboot.



    All up, it should be running fine since it seems to have 1GB RAM and the current CPU usage is well below what Vista usually uses (my new 2009 laptop used around 20% doing shit all). You've checked for viruses, spyware, rootkits, adware, bloated cookies - all that stuff?

    I can tell all that from that screen.
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