Computer Help??

[jjeling]

I need someone with some real PC know how. My PC is starting to slow down again. There are not any viruses or malware on it that I know of. I run scans almost daily and nothing has turned up. I really only go on this site, facebook, a hockey forum, a pentax forum, and sometimes ebay. Lately, I have not been able to keep PS open and the internet at the same time. When I try an action in PS or browse the internet at the same time, the CPU runs up to >90% everytime. Once that happens, it nearly kills itself and I am forced to wait so it can process itself. A new computer is out of the question for now. Got the computer back in 2003. Its an older 2.52GHz Pentium 4 processor, 768mb ram. Its old so I dont expect it to be blazing fast, but its running much slower than normal. Anyone with some PC knowledge that might help me out?


Also, would like to hear what you guys are using to edit your pictures?
What kind of specs your computer has? PC/MAC?

[jjeling]

Ok, now its getting me frustrated. With just itunes and the internet open(no photoshop), the music freezes and starts while browsing between internet pages......

[fante]

Looking at the specs it might I guess it's some years old now. If you haven't ever formatted it it might be the time. Even though it takes some time and you will have to backup all your files, it's worth it and I am 100% sure it will make your computer faster. If you don't know how to do this just post here and I'll help you

About specs: I use a PC with Vista, with an Intel Core Duo 2.8GHz processor, 4GB ram and a HIS Radeon HD 4850 512MB graphics card. Using it for gaming and video editing as well, so I spent some money on it ^^

[Gem]

My laptop's is less than a year old, and I'm sort of in the same boat. It only started last week; if I have multiple windows open, it'll freeze for like 2-3 seconds every few minutes. I've ran scans multiple times and there are no viruses or malware so I'm pretty lost as to why this is happening

ETA: My task manager is missing the top menu bar (applications, processes, etc). Anyone know what's up with that?

[GregL]

...ETA: My task manager is missing the top menu bar (applications, processes, etc). Anyone know what's up with that?

double click on the grey border of task manager and the file menus will come back

[GregL]

I need someone with some real PC know how. My PC is starting to slow down again. There are not any viruses or malware on it that I know of. I run scans almost daily and nothing has turned up. I really only go on this site, facebook, a hockey forum, a pentax forum, and sometimes ebay. Lately, I have not been able to keep PS open and the internet at the same time. When I try an action in PS or browse the internet at the same time, the CPU runs up to >90% everytime. Once that happens, it nearly kills itself and I am forced to wait so it can process itself. A new computer is out of the question for now. Got the computer back in 2003. Its an older 2.52GHz Pentium 4 processor, 768mb ram. Its old so I dont expect it to be blazing fast, but its running much slower than normal. Anyone with some PC knowledge that might help me out?


Also, would like to hear what you guys are using to edit your pictures?
What kind of specs your computer has? PC/MAC?

jjeling, I have a couple of computers. One is pretty old, probably about the same vintage as yours. It really slows down when the hard disk is almost full. The other thing that has helped is defragmenting the disk (you'll need about 10% of free disk space to do this).

Just my hopefully others can help as well. A computer that is playing up is a real pain in the...

[jjeling]

There is almost nothing on the computer. I keep everything on external hard drives in case of a crash. Ill try defragging. Ive processed a LOT of work in the time since Ive reinstalled windows.

[jjeling]

Fante - Ive reformatted this computer on several occasions. Most recently just before I joined this forum. So maybe 6 months ago? I think Greg is right

Greg - I went to defrag the computer and analyzed it first. The computer said. DO IT!!! I also did the disk cleanup first and it cleaned up over 50,000 kb of stuff. Hmmmm. I started the defrag almost 3 hours ago and its still not done. I should have been taking screen shots to show the progress. Its an 80gb hard drive and only 13gb are being used. However, the defrag analyzer thing is having a party. It seems to be getting faster as the defrag continues.

[jjeling]

Yep, that did the trick. Thanks Greg. Should have checked that in the first place. Funny how we miss the most obvious things sometimes.

[GregL]

jjeling No worries. Glad to help. Often it's not that simple.

I've been struggling with my main PC for a few days with Outlook freezing. Finally realised today that it may have coincided with putting Google desktop seach on my machine. Sure enough, disabling Google search, Outlook works fine. Too many dependencies across hardware, software etc.

This is usually where Mac users come out saying there set up is much more stable and reliable