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Ram issue??????

Flame

Flame

New Member
I am having a strange problem on my computer. I tried to open Dreamweaver yesteday, and it started to bring it up and then just dinged, and closed it. I tried again 5 times, and it did the same thing. So, I thought... "that was sure weird" and went on to another project.

Next thing I noticed, I can only have 4 applications open at once, anymore than that and I get the same result as when I was trying to open Dreamweaver. Just a ding and it closes it. Or, if it's IE, it starts to open and then just freezes.

I checked my hard drive I'm running and it was 93% full. I cleaned some stuff up and it's down to 79% full. I thought maybe it was a hard drive or RAM issue (like it can only handle so much stuff at once). But I don't know... I'm kind of just stabbing in the dark.

I am thinking it could be a virus, as I just recently downloaded limewire on this computer (which, I know... is just ASKING for troubles). But I did a virus scan.... shouldn't that catch it?




Sorry for being so long winded. If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them. I want to get this thing working right.
 
iSign

iSign

New Member
93% full is not a good thing, but are you saying that now even at 79% full it still gives the same problems?

I've had to reinstall programs before, without ever knowing why things got wierd, a remove & reinstall has solved wierd issues for me when they only applied to one program.

The other issue with only 4 apps open sounds like it could be the ram. How is it now at 79% full.

Also, what is the drive full of? Sign job data files? These are backed up at least one other place right?

I think you should consider spending $200 - $300 on a 400 gig external drive (or network attached storage device) so you can keep that production computer well below 79% full.
 
Flame

Flame

New Member
Oh yeah, my bad.

Acer Aspire 5000 notebook. 1GB of ram, dual hard drives totalling 100GB. 1.60GHZ, Windows XP. This is NOT my design station, this is just my personal laptop, and my web computer. Only stuff I have on here is music and all my web files ( I do my web designing on this one).

Here's a weird thing, I have it setup for 2 users. 1 user gets one hard drive, the other user gets the other hard drive. Ended up just being me using the computer, so only come on as one user. Anyhoo..... the username I never use, well everything works fine under him. Programs and everything!

How is that? Same computer....
 
Ken

Ken

New Member
Yep, Spiderman is giving good advice here. You may also want to check your virtual ram and see how much of that is allocated. With a full hard drive there may not be enough room left for the virtual memory.
If your virtual ram is set at 10 percent of the total HD space then you're still again close to 90 percent full. Not good.
And yes, make a back-up of everything you feel is essential.
A de-frag may help. A large external drive is a good idea to help prevent the squeeze. A few months back I added a 500GB Western Digital drive, breathing easy now.
Good luck.
Ken
 
iSign

iSign

New Member
well, sounds like you're not talking about 2 user names on one drive, you're saying each user is operating off a seperate drive right?

Not a partioned drive, but 2 seperate phisycal drives?

The drive that was 93% full was the one with problems right? And at 79%, all the issues are still present?

Can you use one drive for applications & one drive for data? Move all the data to the "other guy's" drive & see if that helps.
 
Flame

Flame

New Member
I may try to spread the stuff around a little... and see how that goes.

They're just internal drives. I just have as default one guy on drive C, one guy on drive D.

How do I check my virtual memory? I'm sorry, I'm not the most computer literate person yet.
 
Ken

Ken

New Member
This is from Windows help file:

To change the size of the virtual memory paging file
You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group in order to complete this procedure. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings might also prevent you from completing this procedure.

Open System in Control Panel.
On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.
On the Advanced tab, under Virtual memory, click Change.
Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file you want to change.
Under Paging file size for selected drive, click Custom size, and type a new paging file size in megabytes in the Initial size (MB) or Maximum size (MB) box, and then click Set.
If you decrease the size of either the initial or maximum page file settings, you must restart your computer to see the effects of those changes. Increases typically do not require a restart.

Notes

To open System, click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click System.
To have Windows choose the best paging file size, click System managed size.
For best performance, do not set the initial size to less than the minimum recommended size under Total paging file size for all drives. The recommended size is equivalent to 1.5 times the amount of RAM on your system. Usually, you should leave the paging file at its recommended size, although you might increase its size if you routinely use programs that require a lot of memory.
To delete a paging file, set both initial size and maximum size to zero, or click No paging file. Microsoft strongly recommends that you do not disable or delete the paging file.
 
Flame

Flame

New Member
Limewire is gone. Toast. Deleted permanently from everywhere I could find it.

I checked the settings thing Ken... and it's set up for 1440MB . Seems fine to me?

Maybe I should restart the system after the defrag is done and see what happens?
 
iSign

iSign

New Member
did you buy the laptop new? Did it come with restore discs? You would have to reload programs, but if nothing else works, restore discs can be handy sometimes.
 
mladams7259

mladams7259

New Member
Flame, You might have to add more ram, I think that will solve your problem. I would also get an external drive and free up as much hard drive space as possible.
A side note...
I reformat my pc's every year. Amazing how much faster they run.
 
Flame

Flame

New Member
Alright guys, I got it figured out. Someone suggested trying ad-aware, so I downloaded it.

189 adware/spyware programs were running........ I deleted them all and now I'm golden. Looks like everything is working great.


lol. Talk about being bogged down with spyware........





BTW, just to let you know They were all linked back to star search., STAY AWAY FROM STAR SEARCH!!!
 
mladams7259

mladams7259

New Member
I used adware in the past, recently i downloaded spyware terminator and It found several items that adware did not. Needless to say I now use spyware terminator. BTW ITS FREE
 
Ken

Ken

New Member
Thanks Flame for letting us know about that. I also use Ad-Aware (about once a week).
Mike..I haven't tried The Terminator ( Governator..lol) do you really think it is better, or it just happened to find a couple of cookies ?
Thanks ...Ken
 
mladams7259

mladams7259

New Member
Ken, I really believe its a better program. It found a .exe spyware file that adware missed and a couple of registry entries.
 
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