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Thread ID: 25600	2002-10-07 21:58:00	XP major slowdown	Chilling_Silence (9)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
86995	2002-10-07 21:58:00	I've just been round to a friends place to have a look at their new PC. AFAIK, Its and AMD Athlong XP 1800+, 256MB RAM, 40GB HDD... Runing XP Home, its going really slowly. It would every now and then come up with a message online for them sayoing doze was increasing its virtual memory. I've had this before in 2K.. nothing big, it jsut slows down for about 30-40 seconds. Now, I checked out their virtual memory and it was set to: Minimum: 290 Maximum:500 Reccommended: 393 So I set it to auto assign the memory. Rebooted and it came up with the request to increase the VM. Restarted and it took quite a while to get going.... As son as I was in I tried to bring up the properties by right clicking on My Computer, to check the status of VM, but it took about 1 and a half minutes. I tried setting it to the reccommended 393 with a max of 900 (They had no shortage of HDD space... Why not?). Same problems... Restarted and changed the max to 395... Same problems. Ran MSConfig and disabled a few things from startup, Norton Antivirus, MSN and one or two other small progs. No difference. I've left System Works, Nortons I think, running a defrag and stuff. They said it only happened on saturday while sending a large email file to a friend. Apparently at times they have difficulty connecting to Paradise because of this virtual memory error message that appears. Why would it be doing this, Its about 10 days old, barely used by them, and yet it goes slower than my 200Mhz at home! Any suggestions would be reatly appreciated Cheers Chilling_Silence	Chilling_Silence (9)
86996	2002-10-07 23:42:00	I can't answer you question, but I tend to ignore the recommended setting for virtul memory. It is always 1.5 times the amount of RAM in the system - no matter how much RAM, and it is not dependent on any other factors (like how the PC is used, etc - which of course it should be). That is why it is usually best to let windows manage it. Sorry that didn't answer your question. G P	Graham Petrie (449)
86997	2002-10-07 23:49:00	Cheers.. Caleed them over the phone, and told them what to set it too, but no difference, its set to auto assign. Anybody else have any suggestions?	Chilling_Silence (9)
86998	2002-10-08 00:02:00	isn't there a fault with nortons firewall and XP that causes that error message??	tweak'e (174)
86999	2002-10-08 00:53:00	> Why would it be doing this, Its about 10 days old, > barely used by them, and yet it goes slower than my > 200Mhz at home! Take it back to the shop and get it fixed. That's what a warranty is for. Have they installed any server type software? They won't show up in the startup page, as they're usually loaded as services rather than programs, and can really slow the system down (speaking from experience here - installed Oracle...) :D Mike.	Mike (15)
87000	2002-10-08 00:54:00	Norton's firewall won't cause a big slowdown though - it just displays a message on shutdown. So it could be the reason for the message, and there is a fix for it, but won't be the reason for the slowdown. Mike.	Mike (15)
87001	2002-10-08 01:29:00	So tell 'em to take it back to the shop while its still under warranty!?	Chilling_Silence (9)
87002	2002-10-08 02:59:00	If it only started on saturday ? why not try using system restore & take it back to friday? sounds like you have nothing to loose. Cheers Steve	Steve Askew (119)
87003	2002-10-08 08:18:00	You could try the "performance" /system monitor diagnostic tool. Open "help nd support" - type performance into the search box It should display a list that includes "using performance" click on "using performance" then click on "open performance" which should appear in the right hand pane When performance is running, click on help and under the index tab, look for "processors" / bottlenecks, finding - then read what it says about checking out CPU usage and finding performance problems. Dunno if it'll help but could be worth trying. Does the PC have a LAN connection - ever since I installed/enabled networking between my XP pro PC and Win98, both PCs sometimes just freeze for 30 seconds for no apparent reason. Graeme	Graeme (1537)
87004	2002-10-08 10:12:00	>I've just been round to a friends place to have a look at their new PC. >AFAIK, Its and AMD Athlong XP 1800+, 256MB RAM, 40GB HDD... >Runing XP Home, its going really slowly. It would every now and then >come up with a message online for them sayoing doze was increasing >its virtual memory. I've had this before in 2K.. nothing big, it jsut slows >down for about 30-40 seconds. Hmmmmm.... I built a computer about two months ago with the same specs but running XP Pro. The guy clicked on an Email attachment which opened Notepad then the screen went blank. He then couldn't boot into WinXP Using Outlook and Norton Antivirus 2002 with the virus checker set to auto-update. I took his computer to my place and removed his hard drive and put it in MY system. I then ran a complete virus check which turned up nothing. I then put his hard drive back into his computer and started it using a Win98 boot disk and copied over to the D: drive heaps of important files like everything in "My Docs" etc. I then formatted C: using the Win98 boot disk to FAT32. Booted off WinXP CDRom and reinstalled everything except the printer and scanner which I didn't have at my place. I went to his place on Sunday last and setup the computer and installed scanner, printer etc. Everything working perfectly. NOW THE INTERESTING BIT!! :-( He called tonight at 7:30 p.m. and said the computer is running really slow! I went around and rebooted the computer. Clicked on Outlook shortcut and waited and waited and waited. Took about 5 minutes to open... Every icon I clicked took ages to open... Rebooted again and open Outlook and Norton... Hmmmm.... Taskbar Icon on right comes up telling be CPU at 100% loading with only two programs trying to run apart from all the services that run normally anyway. Did a system restore that took the computer back to B4 I took it to his place and everthing fine again speedwise. Re-installed printer and scanner. OK.... Open Outlook.. Bang... right there on the screen!!! Good!! Preview a few Emails. Up pops a message about unsigned macro in Word Word is set as the Email editor. Then it wants to run a Visual Basic Script. I opened Word with no document loaded and got the message about macro and VBS again. I did a search of the hard drive for *.vbs and only found the usual onesthat install by default I did a repair install of Office XP and all problems went away. :-) So I suggest you have a look at CPU usage instead of Virtual memory. I hope this helps.	Elephant (599)
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