@Hel,

You know what needs to be done for regular maintenance right? Defrag, etc.
Check around for the easy answers first. How many programs running in background, etc., how much RAM, when's last time friend defragged, stuff like that.

Question is too open ended for your uhber techies (not me) to respond, I'd dare say.

Yeah on further investigation the drives are defragged, unsure of background progs and Ram is like 256

Edit _ I personally think it;'s either the Virtual Memory or something more serious

Edited by - Heltak on 4/13/2004 11:57:46 AM

Ed's right. the usual cause for this, if it's not fragged to f***, is too much stuff running in the background, eating up RAM. The second usual cause is too little RAM (ok that's much the same, but some base systems which work fine on spec, can't really cope with the demands being made on them) This latter is esp true of the dreaded shared memory mobos (usual oem and branded stuff) WHERE THE ram provided XMS and also VRAM. Thirdly, antivirus progs installed after the pcs been purchased, if hamfistedly installed can be tremendous drain or resources. The fourth and also v v common reason is the hard drive may be so full as to not allow the paging file to expand and contract properly. There may also be corruption of ActiveX components which cause slowness and lack of response, also very common in home systems.

They probably have a badly configured copy of SETI running . I can't add much to the discourses of my learned colleagues until I acquire more information, but which version of Windows is it? What kind of CPU do they have? Etc, etc. We need more information to make an effective diagnosis.

'kin hate SETI. pointless anyway. no aliens

Edited by - Tawakalna on 4/13/2004 4:21:58 PM

I hate those damn "distributed computing" programs! They take up valuable resources, and people keep installing them on the machines at work (including the bloody IT staff), and then they set them to gobble up all the CPU time so that it takes five minutes to load the Task Manager and shut them down! Bastards.

My PC is slow as a dog too,
defragged it 3 times in a row
with three 120mm case fans
and a CPU fan the processor
is running at 63 degrees C!
there is no dust inside at all!
(i can see throught the clear case)

startup is slower than a slug
in a sprint, taking ten minutes to load
the desktop! with 20 processes
running, G-D DAMN SVCHOST.exe!

all i ask is WHY?

oi stop knocking seti
anyway it makes very little difference on a home pc until you run something really heavy
as for no aliens ....if you dont look how will you know !
it also makes quite a good benchmark for how a pc is running
ps. my new barton 3000 is chugging away happily on seti as of 3 hrs ago when i finished it

Edited by - [steel on 4/13/2004 5:19:02 PM

AoD - Windows is probably clogged up with old files, etc. Reinstall it (again) . Why is your processor running at 63C? You need some thermal paste old son.

Steel - I'm not saying that they aren't useful, it's when people start installing them on the work PCs that irritates me.

exactly.

Don't you thermal paste me!
i've been buildign PC's for two
years now, the processor has
thermal paste, arctic silver three
mind that. and i can't re-install
windows because i dont have an
XP disk!, i think the installation
was buggered in the first place;
stupid HP

---

Esquilax---Why is your processor running at 63C?

---

thats what i want to know!
Congrats Taw in Vice Admiral *salutes*

The Angel of Darkness, lock evader extraordinare!

Fight Like Warlord

Edited by - Aod on 4/13/2004 6:26:59 PM

Nice and succinct; that's what I like about Taw; he doesn't bore you with excessive detail .

no, you just said what I was going to say. This is great, you can write all my posts for me and I can just type "yeh" "whatever" " that's right" "fookin A" "what Arch said" (except you're Esq)

AoD - Well excuse me! Get your own damn tech advice then! *Turns back, offended* . Arctic Silver III? You should be using Artic Silver V or "Arctic Silver Ceramique" . Don't blame ME if you buy HP computers! You should know better if you've been "building PCs for more than two years"! *Mental note: That was evil Esky! Well, he had it coming Esquilax*.

Taw - Fair enough. I'll post, you say "yeah" if you agree. That's efficiency! .