HELP !!! My PC is crawling like a snail since yesterday.?

Question

Although my PC is old with configuration - Pentium-III 500 MHz, 384 RAM, 10 GB HDD, WIN-XP SE. But it was working fine until yesterday. Now it has gone really very slow. It works for 30 seconds and then hangs for 15 seconds. I removed all temporary files. I scanned for viruses but couldn't find any. At a time I am working on only single application. I don't know what else to do. There is a message that keeps coming after every few minutes - saying that the system is low on virtual memory. Why it has gone so low ? Please suggest something.

Answer 1

You can use a registry cleaner to clean up your computer and then make your computer faster,Why?the reason is that there may be some registry errors and remnant,corrupt files and temp files in your computer to cause "computer slow".

Every time you install and uninstall software on your computer and surfing online you create junk in the computer registry.over time, the registry can grow to enormous proportions, especially if the various programs you've installed do not do a good job of deleting and/or updating it's Registry entries.You need to scan and clean your computer with registry cleaner to make it fast.Good Registry Cleaner will improve your computer and Internet performance dramatically!

There are some comparison and review of TOP 5 registry cleaners.

http://make-computer-faster.com

You can download and scan your computer for free.

Answer 2

Cleaning the Prefetch Directory



WindowsXP has a new feature called Prefetch. This keeps a shortcut to recently used programs.

However it can fill up with old and obsolete programs.



To clean this periodically go to:



Star / Run / Prefetch

Press Ctrl-A to highlight all the shorcuts

Delete them



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Not Displaying Logon, Logoff, Startup and Shutdown Status Messages



To turn these off:



Start Regedit

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionpoliciessystem

If it is not already there, create a DWORD value named DisableStatusMessages

Give it a value of 1



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Clearing the Page File on Shutdown



Click on the Start button

Go to the Control Panel

Administrative Tools

Local Security Policy

Local Policies

Click on Security Options

Right hand menu - right click on "Shutdown: Clear Virtual Memory Pagefile"

Select "Enable"

Reboot



For regedit users.....

If you want to clear the page file on each shutdown:



Start Regedit

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory ManagementClearPageFileAtShutdown

Set the value to 1



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No GUI Boot



If you don't need to see the XP boot logo,



Run MSCONFIG

Click on the BOOT.INI tab

Check the box for /NOGUIBOOT



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Speeding the Startup of Some CD Burner Programs



If you use program other than the native WindowsXP CD Burner software,

you might be able to increase the speed that it loads.



Go to Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Services

Double-click on IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service

For the Startup Type, select Disabled

Click on the OK button and then close the Services window

If you dont You should notice



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Getting Rid of Unread Email Messages



To remove the Unread Email message by user's login names:



Start Regedit

For a single user: Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUnreadMail

For all users: Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionUnreadMail

Create a DWORD key called MessageExpiryDays

Give it a value of 0



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Decreasing Boot Time



Microsoft has made available a program to analyze and decrease the time it takes to boot to WindowsXP

The program is called BootVis



Uncompress the file.

Run BOOTVIS.EXE

For a starting point, run Trace / Next Boot + Driver Delays

This will reboot your computer and provide a benchmark

After the reboot, BootVis will take a minute or two to show graphs of your system startup.

Note how much time it takes for your system to load (click on the red vertical line)

Then run Trace / Optimize System

Re-Run the Next Boot + Drive Delays

Note how much the time has decreased

Mine went from approximately 33 to 25 seconds.



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Increasing Graphics Performance



By default, WindowsXP turns on a lot of shadows, fades, slides etc to menu items.

Most simply slow down their display.



To turn these off selectively:



Right click on the My Computer icon

Select Properties

Click on the Advanced tab

Under Performance, click on the Settings button

To turn them all of, select Adjust for best performance

My preference is to leave them all off except for Show shadows under mouse pointer and Show window contents while dragging



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Increasing System Performance



If you have 512 megs or more of memory, you can increase system performance

by having the core system kept in memory.



Start Regedit

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerMemory ManagementDisablePagingExecutive

Set the value to be 1

Reboot the computer

Answer 3

Set virtual memory reasonably



Windows XP always set a big virtual memory for security default, which wastes much hard disk space. In fact, we can set it a little bit smaller to optimize system.



Enter Control Panel/System/ Advanced/ Property/ Setting/ Advanced/ Virtual memory/ Change; you can see the virtual memory setting window.

Firstly, make sure which drive letter your page files are on, and then forbid all page files on other drive letter. The suggestion to set page files on other disks but not C disk (system disk) is in order to increase the speed of hard disk and therefore be good for speeding up system. According to Microsoft’s proposal, page files should be 1.5 times bigger than RAM. If you have a large RAM, the space page files taking up is significant.

So, I suggest that if your RAM is below 1GB, you can set virtual memory 1.5 times with the same maximum and minimum;

if RAM is from 1GB to 2GB, set it 1 time;

if RAM is above 2GB, just setting it half of RAM is completely workable.

What you have to notice is that if you install big games or software, you must keep a certain virtual memory because they need too much RAM.





And you can speed up your computer by the following ways:



1.run a antivirus software to scan your computer fully.



virus usually impacts the speed of computer.

If there is no virus, see the possible reasons that make computers slow down and solutions.



2.Registry is the centre database of your computer operating system which contains information and settings for hardware, operating system software, most non-operating system software, and per-user settings. You must load the registry whenever you launch any programs on your computer. If the registry is too fat or with some errors, computer's performance will seriously be impacted. So, you need to clean up registry and fix its errors.



If you are not familiar with registry, don't remove files away from it and clean up it easily for you may delete important things that will make your computer in trouble. You'd better choose to use a professional registry cleaner,personally,I like wondershare registry optimizer,it's safe to operating system.



3.There must be too many programs start up automatically when you start your computer.Run a registry optimizer or cleaner to stop those unnecessary start-up programs.



4.Have you ever clean up your computer since you bought it? If the answer is never, I am sure that there are lots of junk files on it. Junk files is also one of reasons that will cause computer slowing down. You'd better delete them regularly.



2,3,4 can be realized by a registry optimizer.



5.If a registry optimizer doesn't work, add RAM or do a fresh reinstall of windows. Before you do a reinstall, please remember to back up.However, you should know that frequent reinstall is harm to hard disk.



6.Put programs on other drivers ,not C driver, because commonly C is for operating system. And defrag hard disks every 2 months.



Good luck.

Answer 4

This problem usually occurs due to Anti virus application. Just disable it once and then check your system speed. Also check the memory status, as indicated by your system.

Answer 5

Hi,

Your system speed i.e RAM is to low and it can't load fast for WIN_XP .



It would be better you can use Win-98 or Upgrade ur RAM. Please try to get a new PC with high configuration.

Answer 6

I had something similar once. Try to shut off the anti-virus, maybe it does some sort of monthly scan.

Answer 7

increase your virtual memory. it takes from hardisk. also try to get new pc as latest application need good configuration

Answer 8

Friend,

Go to Program> Accessaries> System tools > system restore



Restore it to 2-3 earlier date.



It will start working properly.



Good Luck , Bye. Sanjay-

Answer 9

Go to http://pc-optimizer-pro-download.com

You can safely clean, repair and optimize your computer.

It will help improve your system performance without expensive hardware upgrades.

Answer 10

virtual mem means ur RAM, switch to 512MB RAM

Answer 11

Your Ram module sounds like it is going bad. I would replace it with a 512MB.

Answer 12

it seams you are running out of disc space

Answer 13

uR COMPUTR IS TOOO OLD CHANGE PROCESSOR RAM HD