Any ideas why my PC keeps almost stopping?

I've got a fairly low spec Compaq (just 448MB RAM). running Windows XP Home and although fine when I first start up it gets slower and slower with time eventually taking as much as 20 seconds to respond to a mouse click.

I also have regular problems with programms stopping responding which won't even shut-down forcing me to physically switch the computer off. In addition the mouse often just stops responding and again I am forced to shut down.

I did think there may be a hard disk problem but I'm now running PC-Doctor Hard Drive Monitor which reports all is OK. I also got rid of AVG Free and set up Microsoft Security Essentials but nothing seems to permanently make any difference.

Curiously although running CHKDSK doesn't find any problems the speed is fine immediately afterwards but within a few hours it's all stop again.

It almost seems as though something is causing the problem with passing time irrespective of which programms are running or even if the machine is left on but not actually used.

Neither AVG nor Microsoft Security have found any viruses and I also ran anti-malware with no problems found.

Any ideas?

John.

does it keep saying virtual memory is low? mine did, so i just disabled the page file thing. seems better/faster so far...

the pc is very short of RAM try upgrading to at least 1GB - preferably 2GB.

It will never run right even if there are no other problems - if there are other problems you won't be able to get it running well enough to find them with so little RAM

Edit:you aren't running AVG and MS security together are you? that would cause a big problem. AVG is enough to kill the performance on it's own and I would uninstall that anyway

[Edited on 20/11/11 by mookaloid]

No, I uninstalled AVG as I was told it could be the problem and replaced it with Microsoft Security Essentials.

ok a good web site for identifying what you need for a RAM update is crucial it can scan your system for you.

download, install and run Malwarebytes Anti-Malware

http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html?tag=rb_content;main


Then download, install and run ccleaner

http://download.cnet.com/ccleaner/?tag=mncol;1


that usually clears any crap that is lurking

If your hard disk is going mad all the time then yeah it's a ram problem

I tried all the various suggestions and CCleaner found masses of issues with the registry which has made things a lot better although it still seems that programms have to be "woken up" if you leave them running but unused for a while.

I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and increase the RAM but at leat it's useable now.

Thanks to everyone for their advice,

John.

I got a 2gb upgrade for my laptop, cost me £18. It's not massively expensive

Right,

I'm going to upgrade the RAM which seems fairly straightforward but I'm not so sure what to do about the hard drive.

Been into Maplin this morning and they were syggesting I buy a 1TB SATA drive which is around £70.

At the moment I have a an IDE drive and unfortunately because the computer came pre-loaded with Windows XP I don't have the operating system on disk although I believe I can make a restore disk.

I checked in the BIOS and it seems the motherboard will support both IDE and SATA drives although I've not actually looked at it so don't know if there are actually any physical connectors obvious.

Should I buy an IDE drive and configure it as a slave to the existing (suspect) drive so at least I can copy over any critical files. (I assume a SATA drive would be installed completely seperately to the existing drive - is that correct).

If I went for the SATA option could this be a slave drive or would I have to find some way of installing the operating system on this new drive?

As you can see I'm not totally clear on any of this so advice would be appreciated.

John.

It doesn't really matter if you choose a SATA or IDE drive as long as it'll physically connect to your motherboard. I'd suggest sticking with IDE since you know that works.

Put the 2nd drive in as a slave alongside the old drive, and then download the free edition of HDClone. Burn HDCLone onto a CD (or floppy disk) and boot from it. This will let you clone the entire old disk onto the new one. When it's finished, remove the old drive and reboot. Job done.

Ed.

what kind of RAM is it you need ?

I've got various old types going spare

Try editing the start menu click start-run-type msconfig- select startup choose disable all- ok - restart the machine.
Cheers,
Bob

I found running "Eusing free registry cleaner" sorted my laptop out.

HTH

Neil