Re: Slow Computer Response:

Daave wrote:

If buying another PC is out of the question, then tinkering is your
only recourse. Your bottleneck (assuming you are 100% malware-free)
is a low amount of RAM. Unfortunately, your PC, I believe, takes a
rare and expensive type of RAM:

http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=DC738DFBA5CA7304

(that link should work better than the last one I posted)

That's $264.99 a pop, and you will need to buy two of them because
"your system requires that you install memory in pairs." That's why
I had suggested purchasing a new PC!

Robert wrote:

Yikes! I had no idea they would be that expensive, but why do I need
to buy two? If I already have (1) 256 RAM chip can't I just buy (1)
more to give me 512 RAM? I guess I should have thought ahead at the
time of purchase and increased the RAM size then.



Your motherboard only accepts matching pairs.

And according to your Everest report in another post, you currently have
two sticks of 128MB PC800 RDRAM. So, basically, your choices are to get
two more (if you can find them) for Slots 3 and 4 (for a total of 512
MB), get two sticks of 256MB PC800 RDRAM, or two sticks of 512MB PC800
RDRAM. Sure, you *could* remove your current two sticks and get *four*
sticks of the 512MB RAM, but it's probably overkill and the cost would
be more than a new PC! Actually, what I had found (see the link above)
would cost you more than a new PC!


Perhaps there are other RAM sticks available; you'll need to dig
deeper, or perhaps someone else here could post that information.

Do I absolutely need to buy the sticks from Dell or can I get them
from anywhere? I believe Gerry stated I needed PC800 RDRAM sticks?

Gerry was correct. But you don't need to buy them from Dell. The link I
gave is to crucial.com. I had also looked at kingston.com but came up
empty-handed. However, you may want to look at memoryx.net:

http://www.memoryx.net/deldim82ser.html

I just turned them up in a Google search, so I know nothing about them.
Also, I wasn't sure how fast your FSB is, so I chose 400 MHz. A bit more
affordable than the other one!

Finally, you may want to communicate with other Dell owners:

http://www.dellcommunity.com/


I also noted in another post you are running something called ImageX.
Why don't you experiment and quit using it for a while and see if
your performance improves? You should be also be able to configure
it to not run at startup.

ImageX is part of my Dell Imaging software and I have quite a few jpg
file/folders on there but according to Gerry this shouldn't affect its
performance. As you both pointed out its my RAM that bottlenecking
everything. I still think it's kind of strange that this just started
happening.

Gerry said that the amount of *data* (including .jpg files) on your hard
drive won't slow you down. (But you should always have at least 20% of
your hard drive free, as a rule). However, if ImageX isn't essential,
you certainly don't need to use it. I'm not familiar with this program;
what do you do with it? Whatever it is, I imagine you might be happier
with Irfanview, which is free:

http://www.irfanview.com/


Once you're running as lean as possible, try Gerry's method again
(noting the Total, Limit, and Peak values for Commit Charge). If you
can get your Total and Peak numbers as low as 262,144 (not easy!),
you'll be golden.- Hide quoted text -

I would like to lean out my computer very much but I'm afraid of
getting rid of something and messing things up and making things even
worst than they presently are. It's alot like using CCleaner which I
understand is good but you sure can do some harm if you don't know
what your doing so I stay away from using it.

Ccleaner is good for deleting different types of temp files, and you
should certainly use it. However, you are wise to avoid the
"Issues"/registry cleaning function. But that's not what I was referring
to. I was talking about configuring your PC not to automatically run
unneeded programs and processes, especially since you hardly have any
RAM. There shouldn't be any harm at all in disabling startup items (you
can always re-enable them). Then again, you should always be making
backups anyway *just in case*.


.

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