Slow PC Performance and Other Problems...Help!

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Kyemack45687

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Mar 12, 2005
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I have a Dell Dimension 4400 with a Pentium 4, 1.8GHZ, and 256MB RAM. I'm running Windows XP. My system has continued to get slower over the last few months, and all operations have slowed way down. Opening a program takes much longer, and simple tasks take longer than usual.


I've noticed that when I leave the computer sitting for 10 minutes or so without any activity, it is especially slow the first few minutes I come back and try to use it.

One last problem I've noticed is that when playing music especially, the system seems to "stutter" and music playing skips almost like a compact disc orften does, but this is when I'm playing MP3 files on the harddrive. I noticed earlier that this stutter doesn't seem to affect only music, but also the loading of webpages, typing, etc.; things are delayed for a split second. Not a huge deal, but quite annoying and frustrating.

Can anyone help me out? Just to note, I have AVG Antivirus, Ad-Aware, Spybot Search and Destroy, and Microsoft Antispyware. I run all those programs regularly.

EDIT: Would installing more memory on my computer help speed things along? What would be the advantages of doing this?
 
Kyemack45687 said:
I have a Dell Dimension 4400 with a Pentium 4, 1.8GHZ, and 256MB RAM. I'm running Windows XP. My system has continued to get slower over the last few months, and all operations have slowed way down. Opening a program takes much longer, and simple tasks take longer than usual.


I've noticed that when I leave the computer sitting for 10 minutes or so without any activity, it is especially slow the first few minutes I come back and try to use it.

One last problem I've noticed is that when playing music especially, the system seems to "stutter" and music playing skips almost like a compact disc orften does, but this is when I'm playing MP3 files on the harddrive. I noticed earlier that this stutter doesn't seem to affect only music, but also the loading of webpages, typing, etc.; things are delayed for a split second. Not a huge deal, but quite annoying and frustrating.

Can anyone help me out? Just to note, I have AVG Antivirus, Ad-Aware, Spybot Search and Destroy, and Microsoft Antispyware. I run all those programs regularly.

EDIT: Would installing more memory on my computer help speed things along? What would be the advantages of doing this?
Click to expand...

well, you pc specs explain it all. and yes add more memory. get 1GB
 
Yeah, with 256megs, you will probably be running mostly in virtual memory so thats nice and slow. If you were to bump up your memory to say 1gig then you will hopefully get less disk caching and will operate faster.

Considering that you have scanned for viruses and spyware, we can hope that isnt an issue so it comes down to ram.

Something COMPLETLY off the top of my head... is the computer overheating? Install speedfan or something and see if the cpu is getting soo hot that it would kick in the thermal underclocking.
 
Well, I dont know how often you keep up your computer but... You should clean up all your temp files, and do a defrag.

Deffinatly adding more memory will help... i would go up to 1GB... thats about good for todays standards.
You deffinatly dont have a top of the line computer, so its not really going to be fast, but you can deffinatly improve in areas now without spending alot of money.

A Clean Format and Install of the OS would be good too, concedering who knows the last time that was done... if ever.
 
I recently had that same problem with one of our systems.

The stuttering was caused by one of the cd drives (a plextor!) that decided to set itself to PIO mode. Make sure everything is running in Ultra DMA mode if it supports it. I'm 90% sure that this is your problem. Of course, some more ram will definately help after you've fixed the problem. If the drive refuses to detect UDMA suport, then unplug the drive, restart, then reconnect it so it will do a complete re-detect.
 
Thanks to all of you for the responses.

Bear in mind that I know a bit about computers, but when it comes down to it, I guess I'm really not that proficient.

I have defragged my harddrive, and cleaned out cache and temp files.

If I were to reinstall the operating system....is there a way to do that and keep all my files and things I've downloaded? How would I do that?

And to the most recent poster, how do I check to see that my cd drive is in "Ultra DMA" mode? And as far as unplugging my cd drive...you're meaning I open the tower up and physically unplug it? I must note also that my dvd rom drive has been messed up for a while and has trouble reading discs quite often. I called a tech at Dell and after troubleshooting he told me it was just broken. Is there a way I can fix that or could this all be connected?
 
Control Panel > System > Hardware Tab > Device Manager > IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers > Right click properties and it should show the current mode there. If the HDD was in PIO mode then it would be PAINFULLLY slow..
 
In the primary IDE channel:

Transfer Mode: DMA (If Available)
Current Transfer Mode: Ultra DMA Mode 6

Secondary IDE Channel:

Transfer Mode: PIO Only
Current Transfer Mode: PIO Mode


Does that mean anything?
 
I was able to run a dell p4 2.4 with 256mb memory for weeks at a time without slowage. That's with fileserving, gaming, pretty much everything. It would be nice if you could swap out your 256 module with a different one to see if the mem was the prob.
 
I guess I'm going to go ahead and reinstall Windows XP. How do I save all my files and documents so that I don't lose them with the install? I also have no clue how to remove and/or reinstall XP. Where do I start?
 
Kyemack45687 said:
In the primary IDE channel:

Transfer Mode: DMA (If Available)
Current Transfer Mode: Ultra DMA Mode 6

Secondary IDE Channel:

Transfer Mode: PIO Only
Current Transfer Mode: PIO Mode


Does that mean anything?
Click to expand...


Yes. First, try physically disconnecting the DVD drive. If your problem is fixed by that, then it's the PIO mode that's killing it. Reconnect it and it should re-detect to Ultra DMA mode.
 
Kyemack45687 said:
I guess I'm going to go ahead and reinstall Windows XP. How do I save all my files and documents so that I don't lose them with the install? I also have no clue how to remove and/or reinstall XP. Where do I start?
Click to expand...
If you have no clue what you are doing. Dont do it.

As easy as it is for me to format and reinstall... since I do it alot :rolleyes: (thanks MS) anyway, Is not that hard, but their may be a point where you get stuck and then you wont have a computer to get on here and ask for help. My recomendation is dont do it unless you are certain how to.

But you ask how do you save all your files.... Just burn them to a cd? or a USB thumb drive? External HDD? Another computer on the network? Lots of easy ways to do that
 
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