Low System Resources

About a month ago I went through the process of cleaning my computer of any Malware per the instructions, but I still seem to have a problem that I believe is related to system memory. Often my programs such as Quicken, Word, Excel etc are really slow to open, save, etc. or I can't right/left click anywhere until it "catches up". I occasionally see a header that states there is not enough system resources, but the digilog box that used to pop up (virtual memory low) no longer appears. (it is set at 3069). It always looked like a classic case of needing more memory, but I added another gig of memory (1, 512, and 2x256) and while there was a little improvement it did not solve the problem. I'm wondering if the processor or mother board is on its way out, or if getting another gig would fix the problem. Even so, since I have different memory modules, how do I make the first that is used the 1 gig, followed by the smaller ones.
One other thing I notice is that Windows Task Manager is almost always at 100%. Is that normal? I use XP, 9 of 40 gig's free, 2 gig RAM, 2.59mhz P4 processor.

 

Hi Bald,

Virtual memory is Hard drive space used to store programs and/or data temporarily because there is not enough real memory to hold everything you are trying to run. Try seting Virtual mem to let Windoze handle it. Sounds like your problem is too little Virtual mem setup or not enough free space on the Hard Drive. You need about 20 to 25% free space on a hard drive wiggle room.

Good Luck, Jim

 

I hate to post in someones thread, but I have that pop up in bottom right to once in while "when iam doing to much for the computer to handle" as I say it. And Yet I have more then half computer free of space.

 

100% cpu usage is only normal when you're doing a cpu-intensive task, and is then usually just spiking, and dropping back down. If you are seeing 100% cpu usage all the time, my guess is you've got a bug (which, BTW is likely also responisble for your system's unpredictable memory management)

As a brute force approach, boot into safe mode (repeatedly press F8 while booting and choose safe made from the screen that comes up). If your performane and cpu usage seem normal in safae mode, you've pretty much ruled out hardware as the problem.

Next up, you could use MSCONFIG to disable startup programs and services as a way of possibly discovering which process is the culprit.

One question... when you open task manager, if you sort the processes by CPU usage, what process is using the most CPU?

 

It is always Firefox, AVG, and explorer.exe, along with svchost's. Nothing that jumps out as unusual (like the Yahoo widgets did at one point).

I don't think it is a bug since AVG, Malware bytes, SuperAntiSpyware, AdAware and Spybot have not found them. If you still think it is a bug I'll follow the steps in the other part of the forum again.

I am now setting my page file to zero and defragging the computer. I will then restore it to 2560. Perhaps something had caused a problem in there? Worth a shot anyway.
Your help is appreciated.

 

a badly fragmented swapfile could certainly slow overall performance, did you try the safe mode boot?

 

I always use custom installs, although I cant really recall per se what good that did me with AVG. I know that i did not install teatimer with Spybot.
Now that I have cleaned the pages out I am going to try the computer for a dozen hours or so and see if there has been an improvement. IF not, safe mode is next and I'll report back.

 

Make sure you are looking at the CPU column not memory usage. One or two programs should be clogging the CPU.

**2 gigs of memory is plenty for those Office programs.

 

System idle process 92, and the rest 2 - 3
mccitracyapp.exe
nmsrvc.exe
explorer.exe

I also just cleaned the computer again:
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?p=1277999&posted=1#post1277999

After cleaning the computer my usage has dropped down to 10 - 11%, although it did the same last time as well.