XP Home very slow after quitting a program (and other sluggishness signs)

[GreenGhost]

I have a Dell 4550 (2.8GHz) with 256MB and a GeForce Ti4200-64. Never opened the case, never changed anything. Recently, I noticed that when I quit a program (any game for example) everything is frozen for several seconds, until the desktop is redrawn and the computer springs back to life. It was not like that before.

Another weird thing my wife is always complaing about is that while playing Diablo II, it momentarily freezes when heavier visual effects appear. She's blaming the video card, but Diablo II is not a demanding game for that card, and the key is, it started to behave like that a couple of weeks ago. I installed new nVidia drivers, but no apparently change. The game uses less than 50MB of memory (for a total of 167MB), so it's hard to blame the problem on having only 256MB RAM.

I used Spybot and AdAware, don't see anything suspicious, defragmented HD, AVG never reported any virus.

What can it be?

 

[MrChad]

Have you installed any new programs recently? How about driver updates?

 

[imported_LobbDogg]

I would say maybe the lack of ram might be at fault. XP is a ram pig.

 

[MattA]

Sounds like you need to defrag to me. I would do a defrag and see if that cleared up any performance issues. Also if that doesnt work try to minimize on the backround programs running. In otherwords close all programs that you dont need running when playing video games ect. If that doesnt work, I would scan for any virus's and such. If it still did nothing I would do a reformat. Hope that helps

 

[PsharkJF]

XP likes >256 meg of ram.

 

[rogue1979]

Run msconfig and turn off what you don't need. 256MB for WinXP is alright until all of your software starts loading up programs that run in the background. Also turn off System Restore if you don't use it. Turn your video settings to performance and check the bottom two as well as smooth edges of fonts and your desktop will still look almost the same.

Go to Black Viper's Lair and use the "safe" tweaks for turning off services.

With only 256MB of memory you will notice a tremedous increase in desktop speed, even with 512MB it still makes a noticable difference.

 

[bluehorizon]

The likely causes for this issue.

1. Dust in your system. Seriously, if you've "never" opened the case, it's probably pretty dusty. Dust traps heat beneath it on the computer internals. Take a can of compressed air, open that baby up and get rid of ALL the dust. Make sure you spray off the CPU heatsink effectively.

2.

2A. Adware/spyware and other background programs. Download Ad-aware from www.ad-aware.com. Update the definitions (there's a link right there on the program) and run it. You'll be amazed by how many objects it finds, I'm sure.

2B. Go into Documents and settings/your profile name/local settings and delete everything from Temp and temp internet files.

2C. Edit the startup strings for your registry. Go to Start > Run > type "regedit. Browse to the following straing: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > Software > Microsoft > Windows > Run. What you see under Run is everything that's set to start up when windows starts. Likely you'll have some spyware stuff here (even after ad-aware). Delete everything that you don't recognize. If you post a screenshot of the list I can tell you what to delete and what not to.


All that stuff will help TREMENDOUSLY. Also, seriously consider getting more ram.

 

[GreenGhost]

I'll double check what else is being started. Couldn't find anything suspicious looking at process names and msconfig, but who knows... More memory would be nice, but I think there's something else...

Thanks for the suggestions...


Green

 

[screw3d]

Seriously, you would really want at least 512MB of RAM for WinXP to run programs smoothly!

 

[lucrioual]

def. the ram\

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: screw3d
Seriously, you would really want at least 512MB of RAM for WinXP to run programs smoothly!

Ditto!

Getting a little off topic here but even though AVG is a good preventative I would want something more thorough once in a while. I would recommend doing the Online AntiVirus scan at www.panda.com.

 

[Jiggz]

When the system slows down, press the three finger salute, Ctrl+Alt+Del and invoke the Task manager. Look on the processes and find out which service is hogging down your cpu. Then shut that particular service down. Close Task Manager and then see if the system wakes up again. Then to find out which program got afected by the service you shut down, run some of your favorite programs. The one that normally runs and would not run anymore is probably the program that got affected. Goodluck. Remember in task manager, the system idel service is actually your reserve cpu power.