Processor

Hi, my computer seems to be running a little slow, the problem is not with spyware or anything but then again i have put a few extra things on my pc that may have increased the load.
Im no computer expert but my machine is 6 years old and despite me upgrading the ram slightly to 712 the processor is a pentium3 1.59 ghz, is it possible this is a little slow for todays world? I may be talking rubbish but just thought i would come to THE place to get an answer for my question. My connection speed is 1mb BT broadband but it wont support any more.

 

Hi scully91,

Three things that can slow you down that are often overlooked.

Defrag your hard drives... Built into windows.

Clean your registry... RegSeeker
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download2579.html

Clean up temporary files and junk... CCleaner.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4191.html

Bad out.

 

Many thanks, the main problems are say trying to scroll down a page and it has a job to keep up so clearly not a connection problem as the page is already there, any ideas?

 

as stated in the above post, you should check out your hard drive, defrag and such.. your computer uses virtual memory on your hard drive, and if your hard drive is running sluggish, it could make everything else a little sluggish too. and also make sure there is sufficient empty space on your drive. (20% or so)

 

You dont think i already did that!!!!

 

Next thing, i need to find the name etc of my graphics card, how do i do this please.

 

http://www.majorgeeks.com/EVEREST_Free_Edition_d4181.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/SIW_System_Info_d4387.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Belarc_Advisor_d1385.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/AIDA32_-_Personal_System_Information_d181.html

Any of these will give you detailed info about your hardware and software configuration.

 

My First Guess would be a driver problem with your graphics card. When you Find out what card it is uninstall the old driver if it is on your computer and then reinstall the new driver. If the old driver is on your system uninstall through add or remove console and the use this |MG| Free Download - Driver Cleaner Professional 1.5
restart your computer and install the new driver.

 

I havent updated it since i bought the machine in 1999 so do you reckon it needs doing ha ha.

 

card is nvidia tnt 2 riva 64 so went to download and it downloaded a 40mb file and it said it could find no compatible drivers, the man at the computer shop says he has heard of this before and maybe a slightly earlier driver might be better but i have no idea how or where to find it, thanks for all the help im getting.

 

Here are drivers for your card:

Windows 2000/XP:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_91.31.html

Win95/98/ME:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/win9x_81.98.html

 

Many thanks and here is what it says
"The NVDIA setup program could not locate any drivers that are compatible with your current hardware. Set up will now exit."

 

I would have to agree that sometimes it is better to use older driver ver for older cards. Your card should be noted as "RIVA TNT2 Model 64" from coarse research and here are a few links from google for drivers:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/win/39659

http://www.soft32.com/download_174414.html

http://www.voodoofiles.com/4673

Files are a lot smaller than 40Mb and are older. I must say I don't know any of these sites so be aware. This one I do trust;

http://members.driverguide.com/inde...NT2+Model+64&qa5=11&qa6=744&dp=3&sm=b&jmd=and

 

Many many thanks for that but im afraid that driver is 2001, mine seems to say 2003 so maybe its not so out of date, saying that the main concern is slow running, not mega slow but slow enough to notice, definate slow scrolling of pages too, hijackthis shows nothing untoward. Any more ideas?

 

You might still try going with one of the older drivers Bold Eagle has suggested. Even in 2003, that card was pretty out of date, so using drivers that were actually made for that card might yield better results. I've used drivers off of voodoo files before. Namely for my Voodoo3 3000 card I have in my wife's computer.

Make sure you use the driver cleaner program, posted by jamcgriff, before you try and install the other drivers.

 

Have you done a full fresh install since then?

If you still have the driver disks and OS disks that originally came with the computer you probably would be better off wiping the hard drive and starting from scratch.

I do a fresh install at least once a year just to clear out the cobwebs. (If you've got the proper drivers handy it's usually a lot faster than trying to nickle and dime your way through bringing an old install back up to speed).

 

A full install once a year! Who else agrees with that? Who else does it? Seems a load of grief (albeit it will sort everything out)

 

There is a windows update my pc has been trying to install for ages and it just wont install it, wonder if this is anything to do with it? Same on my laptop too, just wont install it, i have tried turning automatic off and doing it manually but same result, could this be connected?

 

i do it maybe not once a year, but a year to 2 years. i just keep my documents folders on another hard drive, so when i install new, i can point to the other location for my docs. and if youre real particular about keeping settings, you can run a wizard to move your settings from one computer/install to another.

 

Heh.... I did the math a couple of times and decided that doing a full install only took up about 6 hours of my time, while trying to track down a problem which wasn't easily solved normally took a lot longer.

I don't suggest it for every little thing that comes along, but it's often the quickest solution. (I've also recently done a full reload on a newly built system after three weeks of tweaking/ocing/benchmarking... the performance improvement after only three weeks was noticable).

 

The only problem with the methodology is that you may not have isoltaed the causal agent and find yourself back in the same predicament in the very near future. Identify and isolate the problem is certainly my preferred method, my 2c.

 

If it's identifiable it's probably a quick fix so sure, fix it and carry on.

OTOH, just about every computer that is brought to me for repair hasn't had a fresh install in 3-4 years which means that it's more than likely a combination of many different issues leading to a large performance hit over all.

Anywise.... sorry folks, didn't mean to hijack the thread with this, it was only a suggestion that sometimes it's better to just do it from scratch and carry on.