[Steven]

Hi: I am a newbie to this forum and computer operations, and my company "computer tech" does not understand my problems. Any help from the forum experts are greatly appreciated.
I have:
H/P Pavilion 4440 Pentium 333
256K ram
4 Gig hard drive (still have 2.0 gig free space remaining)
AT&T cable modem and internet service
System tray has open: McAfee Virus Scan, Volume, Task scheduler, Ram booster, flat bed scanner utilities, palm pilot sychro. icon


My computer has a few problems which I need help on.
1. The system resources starts at 79% then drops to below 60% after opening of a couple of websites, after closing those websites, the system resources remains below 60%. How do I increase the system resouces.
2. My ram booster informs me that my CPU-usage is consistantly 70% or higher and the available rams drops below 30% quite frequently requiring me to optimize the ram booster to free up the ram, otherwise it will drop to 3% (alarm level)
3. Use to get a lot of blue screen (error messages) until after increasing my ram from 128K to 256K. Now it is much better.
The entire system just seems slow then when the computer was new, that is because of all the junk I have placed on the computer. Blue screens has been solved.

How do I increase the system resources?
Why is my CPU-usage 70% or higher even when all of the websites and open applications has been closed?
Why does my ram constantly drop below 3%? (I only have outlook express, yahoo website opened, everything else is closed)
Thank you for your help and information.
Steven.

 

[Valiant]

Are you running windows 95 or 98?
and do you really have 256k of ram or is it 256 MB ?

 

[Steven]

Ram information

Hi Valiant:
Running Windows 98
According to my ram booster:
CPU -usage 83%
Free Ram at the moment 90672 Kb
Target level of free RAM 129 Mb
Alarm level 63 Mb
I was informed by my company computer tech that my computer has 256 Mb SDRAM, sorry for the confusion.
Steven.

 

[thedeuce75]

The first step is to run MSCONFIG and take everything you can out of the Start Options. How much stuff do you have in your sys tray in bottom right hand corner. That's where a lot of your memory is going.

 

[Valiant]

Deuce is right, of course especially since 256MB should be plenty for Win98... the 333Mhz could be a problem though... I would think seriously about upgrading some time in the near future. You'll notice a significant improvement in web surfing when you CPU can actually handle all the data the modem is spitting at it. But since I understand not everyone is in a rush to go upgrade, I'm crusing downloads.com looking for a program that may be of use.

 

[JAMMAN]

I don't know Mcdaffy virus scan, but can you do a definition update like norty? if so do one and scan for viri. Then for an experiment disable virus protection temporarily and see if that frees you up.
A guy at a place I worked bought a brand new Dell p4 last year- and after he got sick of my puny p3 800 consistantly outrunning his p4 we looked in to some things. Dis ableing virus protection as dangerous as it sounded was the only thing that made it work normal.

Maybe someone could give a possible reason?

 

[Valiant]

Norty has the feature called autoprotect, it is constantly monitoring and scanning the computer, so basically all data that does anything goes through Norty's filter first, thus slowing things down incredibly... even the most efficient code would have some lag, and any one who knows Norty knows they're not too big on efficiency. So that's probably it, plus it uses massive amount of CPU cycles in the process of scanning ( it has like 6 different sub routines doing the monitoring) I'm open to any other explanations

 

[Steven]

Thanks, Valiant2003,jamman,thedeuce75:
I will follow your instructions with the exception of disabling the virus protection. There has been too many virus emails coming into my company lately, so disabling is "not an option".
Thanks again.
THE DEUCE75:
On the bottom right corner I have in the sys tray:
McAfee virus icon
Volume icon
Task scheduler icon
Ram booster icon
Scanner utilities icon
Palm pilot icon
I might be able to get rid of Task scheduler, but that is it. Everything else is used on a daily basis. I guess Valiant2003 suggestion for an upgrade is in order and soon.
Thanks everyone for your reply

 

[JAMMAN]

Dude, you can pull the cat5 for two minutes to check it out. No known airborn, clairvoyant or osmossis based computer viri have been discovered.

 

[Valiant]

diffusion DIFFUSION.... Osmosis is the diffusion of water through a semipermiable membrane... the proper term would be diffusion, get it right

 

[Steven]

Hi everyone:
Just disable my McAfee Virus Scan and my ram booster reported:
CPU Usage 40% +/-
Free RAM at the moment 164792 Kb
Free Ram (% of 255 Mb) 63%
Processing speed seems to be quicker, But download speed seems about the same.
That is almost a 50% improvement, Wow that is where all of my memory, CPU usage, etc. has been going to.
Unfortunately, the company requires us to have the virus scan enable 100% of the time.
Thanks again to everyone. Mystery solved.
Steven.