[help]Should I add more RAM to my system?

[victor_rambo]

Hi guyz,
I need your suggestion.

My computer has become somewhat slow these days. The PF usage is about 400 MB out of 600 MB and sometimes even exceeds 550 MB!


This is my Config:
Processor: Intel P4 2.6 GHz
HDD: 80 GB (of which 70 GB is utilimized)
RAM 256 MB



Thank you.

 

[nish_higher]

yes..add more ram.
should be 512atleast.

 

[MetalheadGautham]

Hi guyz,
I need your suggestion.

My computer has become somewhat slow these days. The PF usage is about 400 MB out of 600 MB and sometimes even exceeds 550 MB!


This is my Config:
Processor: Intel P4 2.6 GHz
HDD: 80 GB (of which 70 GB is utilimized)
RAM 256 MB



Thank you.

wow! I have the exact same configuration and the exact same OS.

I never suffered such problems. Here are the steps I advice you to optimise performance:

1. Use NTFS instead of FAT32

2. Move Programs and Documents & Settings to a partition other than windows

3. Defragment every week

4. ditch real player, quicktime player, winamp, etc and instead install klite mega codec pack for qt/real and codecs and foobar2000 for audio

5. downgrade wmp to 6.4

6. Disable IE fast startup if you use firefox

7. Remove unwanted items from startup

8. Avoid heavy weight background software like Norton Internet Security

9. from as many programs as possible, disable unwanted features like tray icons

10. Avast is a good AV. Use its free home edition.

11. Do a complete reinstall of everything and do a boot time scan

12. Try to move the page file to a seperate exclusive partition of its own[a 600mb partition for page file]. I am not sure weather ntfs or fat is better here though. But it certainly increases performance.

13. Always have 3GB free on windows partition.

 

[dOm1naTOr]

but with todays apps, 256 seems ver low. Get atleast another 256 or 512. be warned, DDR comes for higher price. almost more than double of DDR2.
512 will be around 1k.

 

[victor_rambo]

Thanks Nish, Gautham and Domi.........

@Gautham, I just recovered 10 Gb space!

 

[realdan]

point 12...have tried that long time back but doesnt seem to be that effective..dont bother to do it, not worth it according to my personal experience

but do scan your system with antivirus and antispyware software if it has become slow all of a sudden

YES, you need more ram...but dont spend too much on it..add ram so that total amount of it is 512mb or <=1gb

go to this site for details as to which windows service to disable to speed up your systems....*www.blackviper.com/index.html

 

[MetalheadGautham]

Thanks Nish, Gautham and Domi.........

@Gautham, I just recovered 10 Gb space!

how ?

point 12...have tried that long time back but doesnt seem to be that effective..dont bother to do it, not worth it according to my personal experience

here is how it works:

1. page file does not reserve area in harddisc
2. if you fill up hdd space and continuous area of 600mb isn't available on hdd, pagefile is broken to fragments
3. this means more time accessing data on pagefile
4. now comp is slower


I learnt about this from using linux. There, virtual memory is called "swap". You are always adviced to make a swap partition for this reason.

guys like him and me with 80 gig HDDs usually end up fragmenting their tiny discs pretty quickly, so such a measure becomes nessassary.

 

[j1n M@tt]

^^changing page file to an another partition than the window partition do increases performance......this helps in seeking of system files during execution of applications without the need to interfere the access of page files in between the execution process from the same partition.

But do remember to allocate the min. and max. size of the page file the same size......to prevent fragmentation of PF.

 

[victor_rambo]

@Gautham,

I had TV recordings which were in .AVI format and were eating up 10 Gb space!

 

[johnjjx]

^Sure thing. Bt using k-lite is heavy too. Just use mpc+mpeg4 codec+ac3 and vlc. U can download codecs of real media files too if needd. Also using classic style eats up less resources.

 

[victor_rambo]

Thanks all for your suggestions. I am going to schedule a Avast boot scan to see of any virus is responsible for this headache.

I also get that irritating error message: Windows Generic host error for windows 32....blah blah and suddenly internet stops working, speakers stop outputting sound, looks become those Windows 98 style and then again returns to XP style. It required a restart then!

@realdan: I had a look at that, also followed some VG's guides! That was helpful!

@j1n m@tt: I am not much of an advanced Windows user, so i doubt if I can gather the courage to plat with PF, esp. because I hadrly know anything about it
@johnjjx: One thing I don't like about MPC is that it does not have repeat functionality(or may be my bad, i have not played eneough with it to discover that or may be beacuse I havn'e updated it since the past year). But I will look into it! Thanks!