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Quartermaine · Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2007 7:34 am Post subject: My PC is getting Slow

I notice that when I run games like warcraft III or GTA III, the graphics seems to be choppy.. Its not like that before 'coz it runs smoothly even though my ram is only 256MB and my video card is built in 64MB.. I suspect that there's a virus but after I scanned my PC with McAfee, it didn't find any virii..

What seems to be the problem of my PC?

Please help.

Stevo · GURU Joined: 09 Apr 2006 Posts: 308 Location: Tennessee

Make sure you have plenty of free space on your hard drive. You may also want to defrag. The more you have (especially fragmented) causes longer load times. As the DirectX loads the graphics when the scene changes during the game, it can only go as fast as the hard drive lets it.

Hope that helps.

Stevo
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nemisis_tfc · Forum Regular Joined: 09 Mar 2007 Posts: 26

as above, runa defrag. the problem is going to get worse the more you install on your pc, WHat you will find is that more applications are rnning in the background eating up ram

you have 256MB but im presuming your onboard eats 64MB of thta so in reality you have 192MB

the bare minimum for windows XP is 128 so you are leaving yourself very thin on the ground for anything else
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Please note that i am a contract engineer, the views or opinions i express on this board are not that of dell computers LTD and no warranty is implied on any suggested fixes

Quartermaine · Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 3:35 am Post subject: Re: My PC is getting Slow

@Stevo

I have defraged my PC but still, the graphics is still as choppy as ever..

@nemisis_tfc

I suspect there's a running program that eats up my memory that causes my games to chop.. any recommendations on how to detect a running program?

I ran dxdiag and it says that my memory is 246MB.. maybe the internal graphics display only eat up 10MB..

Please help..

Stevo · GURU Joined: 09 Apr 2006 Posts: 308 Location: Tennessee

You can see currently running programs and their resource usage using the process tab of the task manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc).

Again, it's not just defragging that will speed up your hard drive. You also have to have plenty (~40%) free space.

Stevo
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Quartermaine · Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 3:35 pm Post subject: Re: My PC is getting Slow

I've tried everything.. defragging my PC, uninstalling programs, even disk cleanup but still, my PC performs choppy.. I even reduced C: into 15.2 MB capacity (the free space is 23.8 MB)

should I reformat it or should I not?

Stevo · GURU Joined: 09 Apr 2006 Posts: 308 Location: Tennessee

Reformatting should be your last resort. Too many things can go wrong. What processes were running?

Stevo
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Quartermaine · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 6:32 am Post subject: Re: My PC is getting Slow

here are the list of processes running:

IEXPLORER.exe
cidaemon.exe
mcvsftsn.exe
cidaemon.exe
NMIndexStoreSvr.exe
taskmgr.exe
SERVIC~.exe
ctfmon.exe
vsnpstd3.exe
NMBgMonitor.exe
msmsgs.exe
CameraFixer.exe
tsnpstd3.exe
igfxtray.exe
McVSEscn.exe
svchost.exe
svchost.exe
MDM.exe
McTskshd.exe
McShield.exe
Mcdetect.exe
cisvc.exe
spoolsv.exe
mcvsshld.exe
svchost.exe
svchost.exe
mcagent.exe
winampa.exe
svchost.exe
svchost.exe
DataLayer.exe
svchost.exe
oasclnt.exe
igfxpers.exe
lsass.exe
winlogon.exe
csrss.exe
vcdplayx.exe
smss.exe
explorer.exe
LaunchApplication.exe
vdtask.exe
alg.exe
wscntfy.exe
GoogleToolbarNotifier.exe
System
System Idle Process

Stevo · GURU Joined: 09 Apr 2006 Posts: 308 Location: Tennessee

Are there any standouts for particularly high CPU or memory usage?

Stevo
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Quartermaine · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 12:39 pm Post subject: Re: My PC is getting Slow

IEXPLORER.exe eats up a lot of memory with 28K memory usage

Stevo · GURU Joined: 09 Apr 2006 Posts: 308 Location: Tennessee

That's internet explorer. You probably have it closed while you are playing. Try looking at the taskmanager while the game is running (Alt + Tab might work if you already have the man opened).

Stevo
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Quartermaine · Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 4:09 am Post subject: Re: My PC is getting Slow

I disconnected my internet before I run my games but still it performs slow.

Is formatting my computer my last hope?

rlhs76 · Contributor Joined: 17 Apr 2007 Posts: 5

Spyware can also slow your PC to a crawl. Download spybot, be sure to update and run it and see what it finds.