HELP! what's wrong w/ my computer???

stevexyz

Senior member
Sep 20, 2001
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hi all, i need some advice here, plz help!

my computer: Prostar 5694 notebook, P4 2.4GHz, 512MB DDR, ATI Mobility Radeon 7500, 40GB harddrive, with 4 partitions, and still plenty of free space in each partition. Win98/Win2k Pro dual boot.

i have had my laptop w/ this setup for about half a year now. a strange problem has occurred about a week ago: every time after a continuous heavy load program (like prime95 or 3D game quake3, counter strike, etc) for more than 10-20 min. or so, my computer suddenly becomes very slow. like when i'm playing CS, the movement suddenly becomes very jerky, the counter measure drops from about 60-70fps to less then 10fps. or like during the prime95 torture test, the time to finish one line test suddently increase from about 20 sec. to about 2 min. my computer keeps running slow even after i quit these programs. i run the SiSoft Sandra benchmarks (CPU, CPU Multi-Media, and Memory), the scores after the heavy load drop to less than a quarter of the scores before the load. i have to restart my computer in order to make my computer to run fast again.

i've never had this problem before, i have not installed any new software/hardware recently. don't know why this problem happened so suddenly. it happened under both Win98 and Win2k, i've tried reinstalling both OS, but still coudnt solve the problem. so i'm suspecting it's a hardware problem, maybe something wrong w/ my cpu or memory? is it a memory leak or something?
 

alm4rr

Diamond Member
Dec 21, 2000
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i dont know about win2k, but try changing your swap drive to a fixed set amount instead of letting windows handle the size "on the fly"
 

_Tron_

Member
Jan 14, 2000
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When this is happening, open the task manager with ctrl-alt-del and look at the processes running.
Which seem to be using the most cpu time?
 

stevexyz

Senior member
Sep 20, 2001
405
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Originally posted by: alm4rr
i dont know about win2k, but try changing your swap drive to a fixed set amount instead of letting windows handle the size "on the fly"

u mean to change the paging file size, rite? i've tried that already. it didnt help. any other idea of what might go wrong? thx!

 

stevexyz

Senior member
Sep 20, 2001
405
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91
Originally posted by: _Tron_
When this is happening, open the task manager with ctrl-alt-del and look at the processes running.
Which seem to be using the most cpu time?


as long as i keep running the heavy load program, the program itself use most of cpu time (more than 95%). after i quit the program, the cpu usage drops down to almost 0%, just like normal. but only everything runs very slow, like a PII computer.
 

stevexyz

Senior member
Sep 20, 2001
405
5
91
Originally posted by: alm4rr
no virii or spyware, right? are you on broadband?


i dunno wut virii or spyware is. so i dun think i have those. i'm on 1.5mb adsl.
 

mechBgon

Super Moderator<br>Elite Member
Oct 31, 1999
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virii is plural of "virus." Your lappie might simply be getting so hot under the load that it kicks in thermal throttling in order to prevent further overheating.
 

stevexyz

Senior member
Sep 20, 2001
405
5
91
Originally posted by: mechBgon
virii is plural of "virus." Your lappie might simply be getting so hot under the load that it kicks in thermal throttling in order to prevent further overheating.

oic, but i dun think overheating cause the problem tho, cuz after i quit the heavy load program and let my laptop sit there for a long time w/o shutting down the system, even after the extra thermal control fan shuts itself down automatically (which means the laptop is cool enough), but the system still runs very slow. the only way to make the computer run at the original speed is to restart the system. any other idea? thx!
 

alm4rr

Diamond Member
Dec 21, 2000
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yea, check for any virii using norton or a free anti virus product. then use spybot or ad-aware to check your system. This is just good general maintenance that will be good to do, whether it is related or not.

I don't know much about it, but what about the p4 mobile power/speed step thing? (where it cuts its power consumption by lowering its speed.)
 

stevexyz

Senior member
Sep 20, 2001
405
5
91
yeah, you guys are right about the overheating. summer is coming, it's getting hot now. and dust has been building up for months but i've never cleaned it before.

i just did the clean up on the heatsink and fans. now i also have a house fan blowing on the laptop too. my laptop has been running prime95 for more than 30 min. now, there's no sign of slow down. that's a great news for me! i'll let it run for 12 hours and see how it goes, thx:D
 

alm4rr

Diamond Member
Dec 21, 2000
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the heat suggestion was all mechBgon =P
hah good to hear it worked out


(but STILL do virii and spyware check :) )
 

stevexyz

Senior member
Sep 20, 2001
405
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91
yeah, thx! i have norton run virus check every week, so my computer should be free from virus:)