Computer problem

[blue collar]

I have an E-Machine 2.6 celeron that is upgraded to 1 gig of ram (512x2 PNY) brand. I did the upgrade about a month ago and now it seems as if my pc is running slower here lately than when I first installed the new ram. I use Ad Aware Se and Spybot just about on a daily basis and my antivirus (Nortons 2004) is current and finding no infections. I don't see any strange processes running and everything seems to be clear. I'm doing the same work (video creation) that I did before the upgrade and wondering if anyone has any helpful suggestions about troubleshooting this. I was wondering if it is possible I have some type of problem in the memory itself.

[bunyip]

When you boot, does your system still report the CPU speed as 2600 (or has it dropped?).
A friend of mine has a 2600 and occasionlly the CPU speed drops back to 1800.
We finally found the cause was the memory DRAM frequency setting in his BIOS, it would sometimes re-set itself to 100mhz and pull the CPU down with it.
Re-setting this back to 133mhz pushed the CPU back up to full speed.
You might have a similar problem.

[Soopafresh]

Lots of things can contribute to your system running slowly.


How much free space is left on your system ? Try not to fall below 20% free space on any drive.

What gets loaded when your system starts ? Use StartupCPL to tell you - Http://www.mlin.net

Have you run a defrag lately ? Dirms is a good command line defragger. http://www.dlugosz.com/tools/dirms/

Uninstall apps you rarely use.


Finally, you might just have "bit rot" and it is time to do a fresh reinstall of your OS. I recently did, and my system has that "New PC Smell" now.

[handyguy]

Also clean & defrag the registry.

I set my computer properties to network server for more speed.

[blue collar]

Thanks for the replies. I did check the cpu and it's still where it should be. Today I cleaned the heat sink and noticed there was a ton of caked on dust in the fan and sink itself. As for the available space left on the hard drive, you may be onto something there as here lately it stays just about full. Gonna do some more tinkering this weekend and I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks!!

[krnjason]

well all ya really need is a anti-virus program,Winxp Manager(great xp tweaker),ad-aware, and a once-in-awhile disk defragment .....