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Computer Question

ChristianTaylor

ChristianTaylor

Member
Hey guys, hows it going for all you.

I recently bought a new laptop (about 3 weeks ago). Its an hp and came with windows vista on it. Anyway, I was so worried about it getting screwed up that I got all the latest firewall, virus protection, spyware protection, etc.

Anyways, now its acting all fucked. It will have these 5 min periods where it runs really slow and choppy. Like music or a movie will start playing all choppy and when I try to exit something or open something or do anything it will delay. I deleted a lot of programs I downloaded (Firefox, Wyzo, Mirc, etc) and it workes a little better but still gets these periods where its all fucked. Restarting help usually but is a pain in the ass.

Anyone have any useful info they would like to share. It will be appreciated.

Later

-CT
 
PhenoMenal

PhenoMenal

Hairdresser
Veteran
Press Ctrl + Alt + Del on your keyboard to bring up Task Manager. Go to the Processes tab, and press the CPU column so that the list is sorted by CPU usage. You may find that one or more processes is using a lot of your CPU, in which case killing it off should give you your speed back.

btw you dont need to delete programs to test if they're the culprit, you just need to close/kill them so that theyre not running.
 
S

Steaks

Member
During these 5-min periods is your virus-scan trying to update? Ive seen a lot of comps stop damn near completly when it tries to auto-update, dl files, install files, etc.
 
T

treble

Active member
right click your task bar - where the little program app buttons go. Choose Task Manager. Click on the processes tab. Check the box "show processes from all users". This window shows all the processes running on the pc. You can click on any of the column headings and it will sort the list in that order, like name or CPU usage.

so Click on the CPU heading. It will then sort the list according to how much CPU is being used. It may go from 0 down to high number or high number down to zero. You want the second of those two so just click the CPU heading again until it sorts high cpu usage to zero. This should help identify any thing using all your CPU which sounds like it is happening.

As for security - here are some suggestions from me:
Anti virus - AVG - free.grisoft.com - exceptional product. Free! Been using for many years. I use pay for AV but this one is good for home users or soho's. I will infact be buying their payfor soon.

Firewall - PC tools personal firewall. www.pctools.com I struggled to find a free firewall that worked. This one is and does. And its vista compatible.

Clean trojans/spy - DRWebs Clean it. www.drweb.com Free again, does great job. No need to be suspicious of this product...some people are. If you research the developer you might be surprised who you find.

Anti spyware - get Microsoft's own Defender - free and actually good. Designed by 3rd party. www.microsoft.com/defender

Why these products good. Because they all focus on a core task. They do only that but they do it very very well. Unlike crap like symantec (nortons) which I should warn everyone is by far and away the most rubbish software product every sold. Since 2004 this product has continued to decline. I now consider it to be a virus in its own right.

treb
 
Last edited:
T

treble

Active member
oh just another thing in that processes list. You will see items in the list move up and down in the list. If you see an app you want to follow as it changes CPU usage simply click on it in the list so that it becomes highlighted. Then as it moves up and down in the list you can easily see it because it is highlighted

cheers
treb
 
ChristianTaylor

ChristianTaylor

Member
deleted the temp files already. made it run a little faster.

durning these 5 min periods virus scan is not trying to update.

Right now the computer is working well. no delays or choppy music. I opened my task manager and cpu usage is jumping between 13%-30%. I will try to see if this changes durning one of thes periods.

Currently under processes in the task manage the things using the most are:
My torrents downloader 47564k
dwm.exe desktop windows manager 26096k
explorer.exe dont know what that is 4908k
iexplore.exe internet explorer i assume 56912k
mfpmp.exe media foundation protected pipeline exe (whatever the hell that is) 6720k
sidebar.exe 5744k
wmplayer.exe 9228k

dont know but sometimes it starts running choppy even when i dont have the torrent downloader open. Doesnt make sense.

Thanks for the help

-CT
 
PhenoMenal

PhenoMenal

Hairdresser
Veteran
With 50 processes running my CPU is currently sitting at 2%, occassionally jumping to 4%. If youve sitting between 13-30% then something is obviously chewing up your CPU usage, youll be able to see exactly which one(s) by its individual CPU % in the processes list
 
ChristianTaylor

ChristianTaylor

Member
Well when I first got the computer I could have run the same programs and not seen any of the slowness that I'm seeing now. Not to mention sometimes it will start getting choppy when the only thing i have running that consumes any real cpu is the video player.

Go Figure. Gotta figure out whats going on though.
 
T

treble

Active member
My torrents downloader 47564k
Click to expand...
. Dont know what that app is but some are more hungry than others. And some will spawn off you, meaning they are letting people dowmload their software but it is coming from you, not a web server.

Based on what you just added, I would be focusing on RAM - amount of, and swap file. When the notebook starts choking, just have a look and see if the hard drive is furiously writing data... check the HD light on the notebook.

It almost sounds like your swap file is being used heavily and that may be because the video card is using shared memory from the notebooks own RAM. Very often the case with entry level notebooks... again I don't know what you have there.

If the machine needs more RAM to run the graphics ... DVD's etc... then it will free some up by writing existing data to hard drive - the swap file. Then it loads the new stuff in to ram and uses it... for playback or whatever. This will cause a pause while your computer re-arranges everything.

So how much RAM, does the graphics card share this RAM or does it have its own?

treb
 
ChristianTaylor

ChristianTaylor

Member
I dont know how to check that.

Additionally when i wrote those numbers (####k) that was under the "memory (private working set)", i dont exactly know what that means but i think that might be reffering to the amount of hard drive its using. Which would explain why my torrents downloaders are using so much more than other things, along with internet explorer.

However, under the cpu colum in the task manager things are assigned a two digit number. The highest being "Media Foundation Protected Pipeline exe". Dont know what this is, im gonna search it on googlenow. Sounds like it has something to do with my media lol.

I dont know what the hell is going on but for how much i paid it shouldnt be doing this.

Thanks for the help so far treble

-CT
 
T

treble

Active member
^hehe Gunter... agreed although I think SP's might be a thing of the past now or soon. There are a lot... a lot of updates out of the box for vista.

vista is actually not bad. there are lots of incompatabilities for sure but it runs ok and for a notebook I actually think it has several improvements. Its memory intensive though.... so it needs a system spec'd for it.

ChristianTaylor, you have any specs on your notebook there? RAM? Graphics card memory are what I would like to know.

My torrents downloader 47564k.... the number there is the amount of ram this program is using. It was using 47Mb on its own.

If you click on the performance tab in that screen you can see how much CPU% is being used and how much RAM. its kind of summary of the 1st tab. "Page File" on that screen shows how much operating data the PC is writing on hard drive when RAM is full. Writing on disk is slower than RAM. More Pc needs to do this the Slower the PC goes. We are getting into technical area so I don't want you to get frustrated with it...

If you PC starts going off again look in here and see what CPU usage is.... and Memory is it like 100% or some such? My CPU is low like 10% when just typing... video much higher... Memory usage same.

treb
 
Blackvelvet

Blackvelvet

Member
I guess your defragmenting your harddrive, right? You can also regularly defragment your ram. I had to delete Mcaffee security because it screwed things up. Got avast antivirus and zone alarm firewall for free. Both run fine in Vista.
 
G

Guest

It sounds like to me that when you installed all of the extra programs for antivirus, firewall etc. Those programs can really be memory and cpu intensive. They all usually run some sort of realtime scanner that at times can really hog all of your resources. Check on those and try setting the options for a lower priority. Also companies like Dell and Hp are really bad about not putting enough ram in a system unless you ask for it and they also like to over load them with unneeded bullshit.

Good Luck Bro

Mo,
 
G

Guest

Also be careful with torrent software they usually open your computer up to the world without your knowledge.
 
G

Guest

Man its a shame your brand new computer runs like that. I don't want to come off as a zealot here (which I am) but if you have the time to invest and are willing to learn a new system linux would free you from the following problems, for starters:

A: buy a new computer every few years as they crash in on themselves
B: have that slower computer run the newer and 'better' software slower than your old one ran
C being subject to malware on a daily basis (I'm imagining)
D:this is where I stop to avoid zealotry

It is a learning curve, things are different but in the process you free yourself from all control when it comes to the use of your pc. I'm currently running suse linux.

In the past this was not ready for your average non-nerd desktop user, but I've been running suse desktop linux from novell for the last 6 months after 8 years on slackware and this stuff is polished, easily install software of all types (name your application), is fast, pretty, and best of all FREE (as in speech and beer)

If anyone wants help freeing themselves from the chains of vista (I can enumerate) just drop me a line.

Good luck whatever you choose lol vista makes my head explode!
 
Verite

Verite

My little pony.. my little pony
Veteran
Imo most peeps try to skimp on the system RAM and then wonder why the system chunks on normal load.

XP runs ok on 512mb but needs 1 GB to run fast and all windows upgrades have followed the 'double ram' principle so if you arent running Vista at 2Gb then expect it to chunk without some major tweaks.

Im sure Vista has doubled the amount of graphical tweaks that XP added to 2000. So if you want performance improvement get rid of the graphics baggage. In XP its control panel>system>advanced>performance>settings> and check the point for best performance.
 
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