Re: xp pro blue screen

"Pam" <pam_staley-remove-this@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

thank you Ron - will breathe a bit easier and not buy another 'help' program
:-) .... just wish I could figure out why all the sudden my pc is running so
slow when opening anything - mostly IE though I guess.... and of course this
stupid fp IIS problem I have

thanks again!


Two main reasons for slow performance:

1. Background "tools and toys" that are using up CPU cycles, leaving
less time for processing of the current task. Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete
to bring up the Windows Task Manager. Go to the Processes tab and
click twice on the CPU column header to sort the list into descending
order based on CPU usage. The "System idle process" (= time when the
computer has nothing to do) should be at the top of the list and
normally would account for 95 to 98 percent of the CPU time. If the
system idle is less than 95% make note of the 4 or 5 other top items
on the list and post that information back here.

2. Insufficient RAM. Windows XP performance is very sensitive to
the amount of RAM, and performance seems to suffer quite badly if and
when Windows XP gets into any significant amount of actual usage of
the paging (=swap) file. Note that the PFUsage figure reported by
Windows Task Manager is basically useless for this type of assessment
as it almost always includes a substantial amount of "phantom" usage.
For example, my own system at this moment is reporting PFUsage as 453
mb. However the actual paging file (pagefile.sys) is only 80 mb in
size, so there is something else that Task Manager is also counting as
PFUsage (and quite legitimately so, based on the definition of PFUsage
that Microsoft uses). But for the purposes of checking on the
adequacy of the current installed amount of RAM what is needed is a
measure of the amount of active memory content that is currently
residing in the pagefile because Windows needed that RAM for other,
currently more important tasks. Again on my system, that value at
the moment is 39 mb. The utility that I use to find out this
information was written by MVP Bill James and can be downloaded from
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

If that utility reports actual Pagefile usage (as I have desribed it
above) as more than 50 mb on a regular basis then it is quite likely
that your computer's performance would benefit from having additional
RAM.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."
.

Relevant Pages

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