Slow PC

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jimmy83

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James
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PC is quite old now, had windows 7 on it since release...maybe its time for a reinstall.

The main problem is that iTunes always hangs my PC every few seconds once ive started it. Once its loaded and iPhone and iPad are shown under devices it works fine.

General work, copying files, opening LR and PS etc seems sluggish aswell can anyone give me some advice on how I can speed things up abit?

E6600 // Asus P5Q Pro // X1950 PRO // 4GB Corsair RAM // Corsair HX 520 // X2 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 // Lain LI PC7 Black // Windows7 X64 //
 
Can it take more RAM?
 
Pretty sure it can yeah only using x2 slots atm
 
Before u reinstall ( I do mine every couple if months) clear down your temp files, empty the prefetch folder in windows and have a look at the files that run on startup (like iTunes) also your anti virus software can slow it down.
 
Adding RAM will always improve the performance, worth trying at current prices before spending a lot of time hair-pulling.
 
4G should be fine. Something is slowing your PC down that shouldn't be there. There should NEVER be any need to reinstall once you have enough memory (I have only ever reinstalled once in 13 years here and there are 5 win PCs in the house at the moment).

Start with seeing what is started at boot. This: http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showpost.php?p=4279309&postcount=9 post will give you a heads up on that.
 
arad85 said:
4G should be fine. Something is slowing your PC down that shouldn't be there. There should NEVER be any need to reinstall once you have enough memory (I have only ever reinstalled once in 13 years here and there are 5 win PCs in the house at the moment).

Start with seeing what is started at boot. This: http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showpost.php?p=4279309&postcount=9 post will give you a heads up on that.
Click to expand...

Yeah I would have thought 4GB should be plenty too...yeah ive already dis-abled quite afew start-up programs that I dont use. Not touched the services.

My boot up time isnt that bad its just general windows performance really
 
What's your memory usage like (right click on the taskbar->start task manager->performance->Physical memory)?

I have 16G here and I'm currently using 12G (mostly PS/LR)....
 
If iam reading it right, I think iam using 1.85GB. Seems quite abit only got Chrome running with 4 tabs, foobar, and CCleaner...
 
Make sure you're not running reduced power settings.

Ive had many hissy fits over my computers running slowly, deleting programs, changing start up programs, testing ram, usual defrag etc. with no success. Coming close to the point of reinstalling the OS and starting with a clean slate.

Only to find out Ive been throttling all the power :bang:
 
someguy201 said:
This article that might help:
Is your PC running slow?

You shouldn't need a reinstall for slow computer issues.
Click to expand...


Thanks will check that out.

faddius said:
Make sure you're not running reduced power settings.

Ive had many hissy fits over my computers running slowly, deleting programs, changing start up programs, testing ram, usual defrag etc. with no success. Coming close to the point of reinstalling the OS and starting with a clean slate.

Only to find out Ive been throttling all the power :bang:
Click to expand...

Does that not just apply to laptops?
 
Sometimes it's just easier to do a clean reinstall, as long as you have your stuff backed up.

I would say your memory usage was about right.
 
Mikesphotaes said:
Sometimes it's just easier to do a clean reinstall, as long as you have your stuff backed up.
Click to expand...

Yeah I was always under this impression....


Mikesphotaes said:
I would say your memory usage was about right.
Click to expand...

ah right, well iTunes max's it out when it loads for a good few minutes. Very annoying :thumbsdown:
 
It's easier to learn what's slowing down your system. Windows 7 is stable, and a good OS - it shouldn't need reinstalling for an issue like this. Besides, if you reinstall it will only get slower again unless you learn how to maintain the system.
 
Was having a discussion with a friend a short while ago and he made a pretty valid point. You can throw all the ram at your pc that it can handle, but surely there comes a point where the speed your hdd's can access data becomes an issue.

I've never used one as of yet, but I'm assuming using an ssd would speed things up considerably?
 
There is a handy little thing in Win7 James called Programmes and features :thumbs: Find Itunes and hit the uninstall :D
 
u8myufo said:
There is a handy little thing in Win7 James called Programmes and features :thumbs: Find Itunes and hit the uninstall :D
Click to expand...

Totally agree with that biggest hog of resource just for playing music total crap. Not going back on my newly installed Ssd.
Plenty of guides online to clean up your computer to get it running at full speed.
 
antihero said:
Was having a discussion with a friend a short while ago and he made a pretty valid point. You can throw all the ram at your pc that it can handle, but surely there comes a point where the speed your hdd's can access data becomes an issue.
Click to expand...
Yes... and no. It depends where the bottleneck is. HDD is used in two different parts of the system. Getting programs into memory so they can be run and getting data off/onto the disk so you can do things like editing photos.

The problem that is RAM bound is when you don't have enough to hold all the programs (and their data) in memory at once. What happens then is the OS manages the memory and swaps some of it to a "page file" which is located on disk. It then reuses the memory for something else knowing it can always access the original contents from the page file.

The problem here is the disk is 10's of thousands times slower to access data than the memory. Consequently if the system is constantly fighting for physical memory, the accesses to disk continue and the system grinds to a halt. I currently have 12G in use of my 16G....

Additionally, if you have spare memory, Windows 7 can use that as filesystem cache. Say you are reading a file in to process it a bit at a time. The OS can recognise that and read the data off the disk and have it resident in memory so it can be used when it is needed. Having spare capacity is also useful too.

The file reads/writes are likely to be secondary affects. If a computer is slowing down to the extent described by the OP, it's either a process eating all the CPU (in which case it needs to be diagnosed) or too much running to be kept all in memory at once so everything competing for the resource.

Have to say, my solution would be to uninstall iTunes as well ;)
 
Photoshop: 4.6G
Lightroom: 1.8G

Next is Chrome at 330M, next 3 progs use 250M each etc...
 
Download and run CCleaner.

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

Download that AND NOTHING ELSE!

Then run it and agree to let it delete anything it finds.
(Ccleaner used to be called Cra p Cleaner)



If you download and run HIJACkTHIS it will tell you everything that is running on your computer. It doesn't do anything else, but it will if you ask it to.

It certainly will do no harm for you to see what is running and it is very fast.

Also START/RUN -- type in MSCONFIG and look at startup (Hopefully '7' is the same as XP) - this tells you what boots up when you start your computer and you can google each entry and find out if they are required or not,

A re-install will be back to this slow state in no time.
 
It certainly will do no harm for you to see what is running and it is very fast.
Click to expand...

Just acting on information displayed in HJT will cause harm. It's something that used to be used for malware removal a few years ago, be careful what you delete with it.
 
arad85 said:
Have to say, my solution would be to uninstall iTunes as well ;)
Click to expand...

Before iOS 5 iTunes was running fine for me. I need to keep it as I use it with my iDevices.

neil_g said:
hang on are you talking cpu usage or memory?
Click to expand...

CPU usage! I know its awful :(


rizla01 said:
Download and run CCleaner.

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

Download that AND NOTHING ELSE!

Then run it and agree to let it delete anything it finds.
(Ccleaner used to be called Cra p Cleaner)



If you download and run HIJACkTHIS it will tell you everything that is running on your computer. It doesn't do anything else, but it will if you ask it to.

It certainly will do no harm for you to see what is running and it is very fast.

Also START/RUN -- type in MSCONFIG and look at startup (Hopefully '7' is the same as XP) - this tells you what boots up when you start your computer and you can google each entry and find out if they are required or not,

A re-install will be back to this slow state in no time.
Click to expand...

Thanks I actually already use this program, great bit of kit too. Yup had already had disabled quite a few programs from start-up.
 
What makes you think the CPU is faulty?
 
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