More RAM?

Hi all.
Since 'upgrading' to 7 I have had serious slow issues with internet browsing.
I only have 1.5gb of RAM and am wondering if this is the issue.
I have had task manager running and when I open a IE9 window or go to a site such as this one, my CPU shows 100% usage.
Just leaving my comp alone while having this page open shows the CPU usage up and down from 10% to 25% ish.
It also says that 30 - 45% of my physical memory is in use when i'm doing next to nothing.
I've looked at Windows 7 system requirements and it says 1gb of RAM on a 32 bit system (which this is) and this is quite a jump from the 128mb recommended for XP which I upgraded from.
I can have a maximum of 3gb on my board.
Cheers.

 

This is normal RAM usage for W7 as the philosophy is to keep as much of W7 in RAM to speed up application loading as opposed to XP which has the opposite philosophy. W7 has excellent memory management if more space is needed, it'll just hide in the page file.

Since you have a very old single CPU, I'd try a lighter browser like Firefox as I'd suspect anything newer will put a large load on it. The 'sweet spot' for W7 is generally accepted as 2GB RAM but you already have enough memory IMO.

 

I have always used IE and never had an issue when I was using XP.
Is IE 9 that much more hungry than the previous versions I would have used in XP?

 

No idea at all. You may have underlying software issues and I'm not good with software.

 

Had the same situation on a Vista rig.
Turned out to be some product up-daters running in the background.
Turned them off, problem solved.

 

Had the same situation on a Vista rig.
Turned out to be some product up-daters running in the background.
Turned them off, problem solved.

 

and where may these little effers be hiding?
This is ridiculous.
I roll the mouse wheel and the page moves seconds later.
I type this and if I make a mistake and hit the delete button there is a delay deleting letters.
I'm almost ready to wipe and go back to XP!!

 

Try using this program. The one I use.

http://majorgeeks.com/WinPatrol_d3380.html

Also, when was the last good defrag run?

 

I've downloaded and installed WinPatrol, will learn what it does and how later (I hope).
Defrag run- I've only just 'upgraded' to 7 so didn't think i'd need one yet but thinking about it the upgrade left a huge amount of data in a folder named 'windows old'.
I got rid of that so perhaps there is alot of fragged files, i'll set it to go now before I head out to work.

 

Nothing has worked.
I have now uninstalled IE9 and reverted back to IE8.
I will see what happens.
If that doesn't work I will try augiedoggies suggestion of Firefox.
If that doesn't work I may reinstall XP.
Perhaps my pc is dying.

 

Is your Windows 7 32-bit or 64-bit?

 

to GeeksChat:
Reread post 1. Says 32 bit.

 

Ah, so it does - missed it :-o

 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.............................

My, things are happening!
Tried to repair windows 7, didn't help.
Bit the bullet and went for clean install, last time it just upgraded and kept my old os in a folder.
This time i deleted the c drive and started from scratch.
Had hassle getting it to boot from the dvd even though the boot order was correct.
After many tries i formatted c using my xp disc and started a clean install of this instead, what could possbily go wrong?
The install was going well until almost the end.
It was saying it would be complete in approx 7 minutes, then, 20 minutes later it said 6 minutes.
An hour and a half later it tells me it is done.
Then i have hassle with windows update as update wont allow xp to use it until service pack 1b or service pack 2 is installed.
Couldn't get my video drivers installed as my dvd drive wasn't recognising the disc so every web page was a nightmare to use.
Installed the latest driver via update, on restart it just hung, i could see the driver was in but it was unresponsive.
Had to take it out using safe mode.
Installed the driver from Nvidia, same thing happened.
Still on basic video settings and had several crashes while installing updates.
I am now trying to use Seatools to check my HDD but that told me it needed network 4 to work.
Eventually got that installed after yet another crash.
Tried running Seatools, told me it had encountered a problem.
Phew, this is such fun.