Computer questions

Can anyone recommend a program that analyses your hard disk and tells you which folders are the biggest? I've had something like that before, but not for ages. Those programs are useful when you're trying to clear space.

 

This is what I use: http://windirstat.info/

 

the biggest folder is always the one with all the porn in it.

 

Thanks fellas! The Veronica Moser folder was 45GB. Who'd a thunk it?

 

Why is it when my internet is running slow my computer freezes? I can't open tabs, close down the programme or even access folders and other programmes.

I check the task manager and the CPU isn't even redlining. I'm thinking it's the provider having traffic clogging the line as it's sporadic but why does it affect the PC?

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Which browser are you using?

 

It could be an anti-virus program scanning the traffic and causing a bottleneck, grinding everything to a halt. Try changing settings to stop any anti-virus programs from actively scanning your web activity.

 

Try watching the HDD light on your case when it happens. Is the light almost constantly on?

 

I changed to Firefox after experiencing the same with Chrome and it was going good for some time.

Yeah I removed all that as well as all the automatic updates, etc.

Possibly, my laptop stand covers it so will let you know next time but sometimes the CPU usage does light up to 100%

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I have just found part of windows media player causing trouble similar to this- try disabling windows media player network sharing service:

open control panel/administrative tools/services and right click windows media player network sharing service, click properties. Change startup type to disabled. Bloody thing was using 2Gb of Ram on the machine for no useful purpose too.

If you want to test this theory before disabling stuff, wait until the machine experiences the symptoms, hit ctrl-alt-del and select task manager. Go to the processes tab, click the cpu heading to sort the processes by the amount of CPU they are using, if it's not windows media player network sharing service that might give you some clues as to the actual culprit.

another thing I've seen use massive amounts of resources is the system volume snapshot service, I tend to disable that too, but if you like to access pervious versions of files or roll back to before you installed something that might not be a useful tip for you. I cna tell you for sure though that if it is running it will massively affect your computer performance, particularly when you only have one hdd and your volume snapshot writer is reading from and writing to the same disk!

 

Can't find this in 'services'. I've got Windows XP

I often do this and the main culprits are System Idle Process and firefox.exe.

I don't know if Chrome was worse, it had many processes going whereas firefox has one.

s

 

Yes.

s

 

Another thing worth checking in Task Manager: under processes, make the GDI Objects and USER Objects columns visible. If programs have a leak and use a few thousand or more of those it can freeze things up, although usually it causes crazy effects like text and buttons disappearing first.

 

The big ones using my memory are firefox.exe @ 360k and plugin-container @ 11k

Firefox also tops the GDI followed by explorer.exe, only triple digits though.

This is Windows Explorer right? I don't have explorer open though.

s

 

Another thing you can try. Download Process Explorer from SysInternals / Microsoft, which is basically a more advanced version of task manager.

1. Once you have it go to View --> Select Columns.
2. Under the Process Performance tab, select I/O Delta Total Bytes. Click Ok
3. Sort by the I/O Delta Total Bytes column.
4. Choose View --> Update Speed --> 10 Seconds.

Leave it running minimised. It will be a black icon down near the time. When the problem occurs double click the icon and see what process is performing so much IO. The icon is actually a tiny graph, so the colour will change when your system is under load.

You can get process explorer here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

 

I've used Spybot and it says - The antispyware scan found 1 results.

When I go into Show Scan Results, nothing shows up for me to remove. Is there a bot that's making itself invisible to the Spybot result page?

s

 

Perhaps whatever was detected had been moved / deleted by the time the scan completed. I'm not sure what SpyBot would do in that circumstance.

Did you run the scan in safe mode?
Was any other anti-virus / anti-malware software running during the scan?

 

Could this have anything to do with it and what is the next best version to get that won't bog my laptop?

Windows XP support has ended

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows/end-support-help

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