corsair

Sorry for posting here,I couldnt find a place in the forum for general questions about puters.And I didnt want the mods to rap my knuckles for posting in a topic specific place.Here goes:
How do I find cpu usage in win 9x?
I have win xp and at times my puter stars slowing down something terrible.Could a high internet traffic cause this?At times my media player freezes if I click on a new song.


Um,my cousin got a new puter sometime back and they ended up with a c: drive with about 100 mb space remaining(outta 19.5 Gb available on c:).The d,e,f drives are completely empty.I, um advised 'em to keep as much free space in c: as possible and install stuff into other drives evenly so's not to clog up individual drives-was that a good piece of advice?They asked why and uh,all I could say was about swap files,space reserved for restore/recycle stuff and that if something goes wrong in c: and they have to format they'd have to install all the stuff in the puter again where as another drive would mean they could just format that drive and reinstall stuff in that drive.Now,I kinda wonder whether my info was really right?And I have this feeling I missed a few points.(I know,shoulda kept me durn mouf shut!)
Their antivirus is ooold.(I dont know how this happened but I am told the last update was*sigh*30 months ago.I told 'em the antivirus was pretty much useless that way(Do say atleast that was a right statement?)
I personally use AVG(the free one-woe is me,I am always broke)Would it be a disservice if I loaded up AVG with updates for 'em instead of their triassic McAfee?
You folks prolly guessed this but it's my cousin's kids(two girls) who use that puter.Their cousins (two boys) live next door comes over and fiddle with this puter and um,kinda "experiment stuff".Now,I myself do fiddle around with everything I can lay my hands on(well, as long as its mine!) but these boys, um, are pretty much really careless.When they install a program,they just install it without even reading the name of the program.Honest!.And they dont have a clue what the programs they installed are for?(No they have this stubborn resolution not to read even the readme file come hell or high water).And they dont like using the uninstall button for anything.Just plain delete stuff.Well,I told 'em to be more careful about these things.Did I do wrong?(no, didnt shout at 'em or anything,just told 'em they are being mighty careless).Ah,before I wind up, them boys scrounged up a movie DVD from somebody and they cant get it to play on the dvd/cd combo drive in this particular puter.They've written off the drive as "crap" but still wanna try flashing away region protection.What I do find irritating is that they wont go and put that gawd awful DVD into another dvd drive/player and see if it works.
Nor will they put into another DVD into this drive and see if that works.
Now,I dunno anything about puter stuff but I though that was a good step?Perhaps someone could gimme a pointer about what troubles usually crop up with DVD's causing 'em not to play?
Sorry about that longwinded letter *sheepish *

Done_Fishin

I think you'd need an bit of software do this, haven't seen anything specific within windows

this can be caused by many things including defragmentation, too many processes, spyware in the background etc .. If you're downloading at high speed , yes that could influence but it depends upon your puter speed against the download speed, modern puters are so many times faster that they can easily outrun the incoming data. Even Antivirus software can do this if the software is a resource eater.

I think you got the most of it .. I also like partitions even though they aren't so critical as I used to think they were.
I advocate using a C: drive for all installed programs and the Operatuing system. Partitions are used to as a means to keeop the house tidy like keeping downloads and installation files on one whilst putting all my music files on another. That is up to the user. Advabntages are that witha partitioned drive you can keep images easier (although better to do it on a separate drive for speed and limits the heads from jumping across extremes of disk surface). A partition helps keep the head movement to a minimum when constantly accessing files of a similar nature, assuming of course that the drive is kept fairly well defragmented.
By keeping your files on partitions you have a safety barrier against requiring to format your disk and needing to download again, if you get a nasty virus.


Antivirus is now a necessary evil. get them to put AVG which is free and does a pretty good job without straining resources. It also tends to update automatically in the background so you don't have to remember!
You did well to point out this to them, and point out that virus like CIH can cost them a lot of time and lost work that won't be recoverable if the drive gets hit.

you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
Point out that they are doing things wrong, install AVG and run a virus scan .. also download the trial version of the AVG antispyware and scan with that too. See what the programs turn up. then leave it up to them. kepp an eye on them to make sure that they aren't getting into trouble with anything that they shouldn't and just wait and see if there luck holds out. Be there to guide them. You can't do much more. Push too hard and they'll go against you, like most youngsters. Guidance is far easier. If they don't want to listen, just leave them to it unless you an see something really dangerous happening.
Don't go talking behind their backs either to the parents. The kids will figure it out and will never trust you again. You can mention a few thjings in passing to the parents in an effort to get them (parents) to keep an eye on the kids but don't accuse the kids of doing anything .. if you get my drift.

as for that dvd, usually they play unless the region is wrong or the wrong program / codec is being used to play it. Maybe some sort of parental lock has been invoked .. can't say more, I don't know.