Help! PC is broken NLC

[David]

I'm struggling with a very slow laptop. IT is not my thing and wondered if anyone can help.

Symptoms are:

Running slow with hard drive running most of the time.

In task manager physical memory is 2999 MB, cached goes up to about 2100 MB and free goes down to 0 MB. The machine should have 4GB of RAM

In resource monitor I getting 20-30 memory hard faults a second. Is that normal?

[robin]

If you're running a 32 bit OS you'll only get to use 3 out of 4 GB, so perhaps that's why you're 1GB short.

However, you've either got a virus or something brain damaged like McAfee or Norton doing a "non-intrusive background scan" - try switching laptop on and just leaving it for 48-72 hours - it sounds mad, but actually that might "fix" it.

Cheers,
Robin

[r10crw]

However, you've either got a virus or something brain damaged like McAfee or Norton doing a "non-intrusive background scan" - try switching laptop on and just leaving it for 48-72 hours - it sounds mad, but actually that might "fix" it.

Cheers,
Robin

I require an explanation

[tut]

Will explain it to you tomorrow Craig.........

tut

[r10crw]

Will explain it to you tomorrow Craig.........

tut

I look forward to it , I take it you can print off Robins reply

[David]

Thanks Robin - it is a 32 bit OS and I since found out they have allocated 1GB to the graphics. You are right too about the McAfee as it is currently using over 1.2GB memory and the machine seems to work OK when it is disabled. Vista recently install an upgrade and the trouble seems to have started after that so I'll leave it switched on, as you suggest, and see if it will settle down.

[robin]

Yes, it makes sense in a UMA machine running 32-bit OS - give the s/w 3GB (max visible in 32-bit mode under Windows) and give the other 1GB to the graphics.

Cheers,
Robin

[neil]

Is your best option not to remove McAfee completely and install something decent like AVG or Avast?

[robin]

If McAfee works for you, my advice is to leave well alone. Of course the real solution is to uninstall windows ....

Cheers,
Robin

[Mr Momo]

can anyone still remember how to use ms-dos ?

/remembers the days of autoexec.bat

[BiggestNizzy]

can anyone still remember how to use ms-dos ?

/remembers the days of autoexec.bat

No I was using AmigaOS when that was kicking about as MS-DOS was gash

[robin]

MS-DOS, pah, CP/M, that was a proper operating system ... not.

Somewhere I still have my original DOS programmer's manual listing all the INT calls including all the register codes to use for different functions. You would not believe how primitive it really was. I once wrote a graphical multi-tasking windowing system for MS-DOS based computers (around the era when 286's were new and Windows 2 had just been released) using TurboC, my own tasking system and direct access to the VGA (or HGA if that's what you had) frame buffer.

Does that count as remembering it?

Cheers,
Robin

[David]

OK, that didn't work - left it switched on for a few days and it just got slower so I decided to restore it back to the factory software and that cured it. I'll probably never know what the problem was but there were a few images that had been downloaded and could no longer be viewed - so maybe a virus there.

Thanks anyway

David.