- Dec 26, 1999
- 25,074
- 4
- 0
A friend at work emailed this around asking for help - I wasn't too sure what the problem could be. Can anyone offer more insight to this? Here's the symptoms:
"Here are the details:
Gateway System:
Pentium III
450mhz
192 megs of RAM
45gigs of hard drive space (partitioned to 3 drives, 20 or so free).
4 weeks ago or so I put in the new 30gig, 7200rpm, IBM hard drive I got from you. I made that the master and slaved my old
13.7gig. At the same time, I loaded a new video card, GE Force 2MX 32mb card. I formatted the old hard drive. I partitioned the
NEW hard drive 3 ways. 2gig for the OS (so if OS crashes, I just lose Windows and can just format and re-load - plus I hate the
idea of "Program Files"
, 10gigs for just programs, 16 for movies, downloads and junk and I made the old 13.7gig drive the MP3
drive after formatting. At this point all of the drives have plenty of space free and I defragment every week or so. I also
upgraded from Win98SE to WinME at that time. Everything pretty much worked out fine except I had a little trouble with my CD-R,
but got it all to work within a few days.
I went into my system resources and decided to specify my own virtual memory settings, since I know that Windows always allocates
too much. I may change that back though because it doesn't seem to be helping and I don't want to hurt anything. I also went into
the System Config Utility and cleared my resources out by removing certain (unnecessary) programs from loading at startup -
including everything in the system tray. That brought my resources up a bit but after opening a few programs and doing things on
the computer, they go back down. If you right-click on My Computer and go to Properties and then Performance tab, those resources
should be around 90% a lot of the time - especially with 192 RAM. They are usually in the 70's for me, but after the computer is
on for a long time, they slip to the 60's and even low 50's.
I know that the system (in general) is running slower because the same programs I used to use while other things were open are now
running very slowly and causing Winamp to skip (one example), also with Winamp playing music, I used to have no problems while on
the Internet. Now, every link I click on, while music is playing, the computer (song) skips.....other programs load slow, run slow
and the whole system drags. I could give a few more examples, but this is getting a bit long. I am not sure what else to try now
and after speaking with a Gateway Tech tonight, he suggested I upgrade my power supply. I told him all the specs of my machine and
mentioned that I had a CD-R, ZIP drive, CDROM, Floppy and now those 2 hard drives and he said that currently my computer has a
200-watt power supply. He told me I should be using a 250 or 300 for all the things I have connected to it and that could
definitely be a reason why it is dragging."
"Here are the details:
Gateway System:
Pentium III
450mhz
192 megs of RAM
45gigs of hard drive space (partitioned to 3 drives, 20 or so free).
4 weeks ago or so I put in the new 30gig, 7200rpm, IBM hard drive I got from you. I made that the master and slaved my old
13.7gig. At the same time, I loaded a new video card, GE Force 2MX 32mb card. I formatted the old hard drive. I partitioned the
NEW hard drive 3 ways. 2gig for the OS (so if OS crashes, I just lose Windows and can just format and re-load - plus I hate the
idea of "Program Files"
, 10gigs for just programs, 16 for movies, downloads and junk and I made the old 13.7gig drive the MP3drive after formatting. At this point all of the drives have plenty of space free and I defragment every week or so. I also
upgraded from Win98SE to WinME at that time. Everything pretty much worked out fine except I had a little trouble with my CD-R,
but got it all to work within a few days.
I went into my system resources and decided to specify my own virtual memory settings, since I know that Windows always allocates
too much. I may change that back though because it doesn't seem to be helping and I don't want to hurt anything. I also went into
the System Config Utility and cleared my resources out by removing certain (unnecessary) programs from loading at startup -
including everything in the system tray. That brought my resources up a bit but after opening a few programs and doing things on
the computer, they go back down. If you right-click on My Computer and go to Properties and then Performance tab, those resources
should be around 90% a lot of the time - especially with 192 RAM. They are usually in the 70's for me, but after the computer is
on for a long time, they slip to the 60's and even low 50's.
I know that the system (in general) is running slower because the same programs I used to use while other things were open are now
running very slowly and causing Winamp to skip (one example), also with Winamp playing music, I used to have no problems while on
the Internet. Now, every link I click on, while music is playing, the computer (song) skips.....other programs load slow, run slow
and the whole system drags. I could give a few more examples, but this is getting a bit long. I am not sure what else to try now
and after speaking with a Gateway Tech tonight, he suggested I upgrade my power supply. I told him all the specs of my machine and
mentioned that I had a CD-R, ZIP drive, CDROM, Floppy and now those 2 hard drives and he said that currently my computer has a
200-watt power supply. He told me I should be using a 250 or 300 for all the things I have connected to it and that could
definitely be a reason why it is dragging."
Facebook
Twitter