My previous version of Opera was running slowly, and it sounds as though the computer's fan is whirring away, so I downloaded version 10.53 and it's even worse.
My operating system is Windows XP, and I have 1 gig of RAM. I've defragmented and cleaned up my hard drive. Any suggestions re improving things, or of alternative browsers that will run better?
|
Google chrome browser is the one with least overhead and most speed.
Alas tho I fear you have issues elsehwere with your XP instal. You can usually improve the speed by 50% of an XP system, by reformattng the drive and reinstalling windows.
If you dont want to do that, you need to find out what you have loading at startup. The chances are you have lots of resident programs running and eating your precious 1gb memory (putting in another 1gb to make 2gb in total would help)
run msconfig, and check whats in the startup tab.
defragging your hard drive or cleaning up your registry, rarely achieves much of note.
|
Pete
Do you know which fan is making the noise? It could be a power supply fan or might be the CPU.
What were you doing when the fan noise happens - visiting a particular website or doing very little? Have you checked how busy the CPU was in task manager. If you need help on what to check then post here.
|
|
If you're a bit techy (ok, a lot techy), then perfmon is your friend for a deeper analysis of what's afoot with your system.
|
>> Pete
>>
>> Do you know which fan is making the noise? It could be a power supply
>> fan or might be the CPU.
or the Video GPU fan.
As a genral principal for fan noises, 50% of the time the cause is due to the heat sink behind the fan, being heavily caked in compacted dust and general carp.
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 18 Jun 10 at 16:15
|
Thanks very much for the suggestions.
I need to say that I'm not at all techy. How can I tell which fan is making the noise?
I have run msconfig and there are 27 items ticked under the startup tab. Is this too many? If so, how do I decide which ones to untick?
Thanks again
|
Go to control panel then system. Check what speed your processor is running at.
Then press ALT CTRL DELETE and bring up the task manager. It should tell you how much RAM you're using in KB. 27 does sound like a lot but you really need to have a look at task manager to see what is going on.
|
OK. I have opened control panel then system. How do I find what speed my system is running at? It's a pentium 4 2.8ghz, is that what you meant?
I've unticked everything in the startup tab of msconfig and cleaned out all the dust from inside the casing. Now when I open task manager it shows Opera using 73,028k, Internet Explorer 63,564k and 38 other process, a three of which are using about 25k, and the rest 2-5k. Does that make any sense? Thanks again for the help
|
|
Actually, 27 is not bad, its quite a low number.
|
|
TBH, you will only speed this up by formatting the disk and reinstalling windows, or sticking another 1gb of memory in it.
|
Zero might be right but the fact this is so slow and the fans running might be something else. A Pentium 4 CPU will throttle performance when overheating. Could be something along these lines. Or maybe not.
If you live near Manchester then ask Rattle to call. Otherwise try to switch Task Manager to show CPU usage and confirm what is using the processor time.
|
>> Zero might be right but the fact this is so slow and the fans running
>> might be something else. A Pentium 4 CPU will throttle performance when overheating. Could be
>> something along these lines. Or maybe not.
>>
>> If you live near Manchester then ask Rattle to call. Otherwise try to switch Task
>> Manager to show CPU usage and confirm what is using the processor time.
>>
Unfortunately I don't live near Manchester - but if I did, my first call would be to Rattle. I'm a little bit at a loss for what to try next. It sounds like installing some more RAM might be the way to go, though it looks like it will cost me £100 to get to 2gb of Kingston memory.
|
|
when you cleaned it, did you blow all the crap out of the heatsink fins on top of the CPU chip?
|
>> It sounds like installing some more RAM might be the way to go, though it
>> looks like it will cost me £100 to get to 2gb of Kingston memory.
Noooooooooooooo
You have 1gb of memory, you only need another stick of (probably ddr2) 1gb memory
about 20 quid.
|
|
I have 2 x 512mb sticks installed already. I thought I had to install it in matching pairs (he says, after an afternoon of depressing googling). Can I just buy 1gig more and stick it in the 3rd slot?
Last edited by: Pete on Fri 18 Jun 10 at 18:16
|
>> Can I just buy 1gig more and stick it in the 3rd slot
Possibly... you ought to match the memory speed and latency and some memory might not work okay. If this isn't used for gaming then it will probably be fine.
Even if you had to match memory speeds, then 2 x 1Gb for your system is cheap. But memory might not be the problem. For XP 1Gb should be okay as a minimum.
EDIT: If you live near zero...?
Last edited by: rtj70 on Fri 18 Jun 10 at 18:30
|
|
I live in South Yorkshire
|
>> For XP 1Gb should be okay as a minimum.
I ran Win XP for 3 or 4 years on 512 MB of RAM without any problem. It was only when I started a lot of movie and music editing that I upped it to initially 1 GB, then to 2 GB, because as you say, it was cheap to do so.
|
As Zero said, it might be the video fan making a noise, which might indicate a problem with the graphics driver. If it's using the default Windows driver it could explain the slow down. Try downloading and installing the latest version of the graphics driver.
And try to find which process is taking the most CPU time, using the task manager.
|
You originally said your browsing is going slowly - how do you mean? Slow to load pages, or slow to find them? What speed is your line and what type is it, who is the ISP? Browsing slowness could be a fault on your line.
Is your computer generally running slowly, for instance opening Word or is it just when browsing?
The noise could be power supply unit. Either way, IMO the noise isn't necessarily related to the performance, but they both need sorting out. I certainly wouldn't chuck any memory at it until you have more idea of what is going on. That could simply mask an underlying problem.
I also think that unchecking the stuff in msconfig was a bad move as again you are masking issues and by not having stuff ticked you might find things don't work as well any more (some of the items could be creating quick start stubs for applications, and others may be essential for things to work properly). As you've already done this and it doesn't seem to have improved things I'd put them back in.
Lastly, if it's just browsing which is bad, what's it like under Internet Explorer?
Last edited by: smokie on Fri 18 Jun 10 at 22:29
|
The browser has speeded up and the fan has quietened down since I got rid of just about everything optional in the Startup tab using msconfig. However it does take a long time to load up everything when I switch the computer on, and there are 36 processes running before I've even launched any programmes. I suspect the Superantispyware software might be slowing the startup so I'll untick that box too.
How do I find out if any of the processes in Task Manager are ones I don't need/shouldn't have? And if any of them are not useful, how do I get rid of them?
Thanks again for all the suggestions.
|
>> How do I find out if any of the processes in Task Manager are ones
>> I don't need/shouldn't have? And if any of them are not useful, how do I
>> get rid of them?
we dont know what tasks you have running so we dont know if you need them or not.
|
Sorry, I forgot to mention in my last message that it was mainly the browser that was running slowly, particularly on the BBC and Yahoo homepages. It's similar with Internet Explorer. I think there might be some kind of animation on those pages which is using a lot of processing power or RAM. Everything else is running quickly enough.
I can't see any easy way of replicating on this site the processes that are showing in Task Manager. There doesn't seem to be any way of copying/pasting the list.
|
>> I think there might be some kind of animation on those pages which is using a lot of processing power
Probably Adobe Flash based.... what graphic card do you have and what version of Flash?
|
|
I have version 10 of Adobe Flash. I'm not sure what graphics card I have - is it the graphics controller? If so it's Intel 82865g - I've just checked that the driver is up to date.
|
When the PC was running slow and the fans making a noise... what was running?
As I said, pay Rattle for a trip across from Manchester. Maybe fixed fee? Or pay someone local?
|
i suspect that your pc dirty, have you cleaned the case? also delete your temp folder and run a disk cleaner, you prob got lot of wasted space there.
if you run msconfig then click on hide ms services you can untick wat yu want, and this will prob help your pc run faster.
run a reg cleaner as well that will cull the registry and speed up your pc
|
|
Yes, I have opened up the case and cleaned everything out. It was pretty dusty in there. A small silve metal box felt hot to the touch (don't know what it's housing).
|
|
Cover the expenses and Rattle might like a trip across the M62? If you pay for his travels.
|
three things in your pc wil be hot.
The GPU chip on the video card, The CPU heat sink, and the chip (on the motherboard) called the bridge. The CPU and GPU can burn your fingers.
|
|
Thanks - it's reassuring to know that the heat I was feeling isn't necessarily a problem.
|
>> How do I find out if any of the processes in Task Manager are ones I don't need/shouldn't have?
List them and tell us what should be running? Or pay someone to visit?
|
I'll see if I can google an easy way of doing this. I notice that there are 8 svchost.exe processes running with just Opera, Control Panel and Outlook running. Is that a problem?
If I knew someone good I would invite them round to have a look at the machine, but various friends have horror stories about local computer 'experts'
|
>> I'll see if I can google an easy way of doing this. I notice that
>> there are 8 svchost.exe processes running with just Opera, Control Panel and Outlook running. Is
>> that a problem?
>>
SpybotS&D has a how to export startup list
www.safer-networking.org/en/howto/startup.html
S&D uses information from the site below to identify what each startup entry means
www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php
Your slow browser and noisy fan issues -
Clean the PC internal hardware thoroughly
www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/13/ventblockers/
Clean out bloated software, eg. replace your current bloated Antivirus with the Microsoft free version. Use blockers to stop active script controls, eg. use the NoScript add-on with Firefox.
Use a free simple firewall if your current firewall is bloatware. Choose one that suits you best from here - www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-firewall.htm
Online Armor Free and Outpost Firewall Free are both well regarded lightweights.
p.s. "Hijackthis" also lists and exports startup entries.
Last edited by: John H on Sat 19 Jun 10 at 00:32
|
|
Thanks John. I'll investigate your suggestions. Things seem to have improved after cleaning out the case and unticking most of the programmes in the startup process.
|
Did you check the clock speed your processor is running at? If the CMOS loosing its settings it will revert back to a fail save meaning that your processor could be very under clocked.
Also it might be a good idea to look in the event manager and then system to see if there are any serious errors. If the hard drive is failing sometimes it can be recorded in there.
It is what those tricky things without seeing the machine it is impossible to know what is causing it. May have just been the dust causing the processor to over heat.
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Sat 19 Jun 10 at 16:59
|
Hi Rattle
I saw your earlier post, but I don't know exactly how to check my 'clock speed'. Similarly, I don't know where to find the 'event manager' or how to identify what might be serious errors. I'm very non-technical I'm afraid.
When I went into 'Device Manager' I did notice that my processor is listed twice, for some reason. Is that significant?
Last edited by: Pete on Sat 19 Jun 10 at 18:41
|
Pete, before you get sent off on too many wild goose chases, I think it would be helpful if you describe anew the problem you are seeing. You previously said slow start up and slow browsing on a few sites, with performance of other applications being OK and now the original issues are somewhat better. You also had some noise.
I am only trying to make sure that the response from our learned friends is in proportion - if your problems are by and large cured, I would respectfully suggest to them to not throw any more overly-technical solutions at you, just in case you end up with no computer!!
|
Thanks Smokie! I think that's probably good advice. I'm pretty happy with how things are now, and you're right - I could get myself into a right tangle with all this.
Maybe we could close the thread? Thanks very much to everyone for helping me sort the problem out.
|
Computer Running Slowly using Opera - Zero
