computer blues.....can anyone help?
 

my laptop has this irritating problem and i can't get to the bottom of it. when i type a password or search topic etc or when i am deleting lots of text there seems to be a noticable delay every couple of seconds where the computer sort of pauses, then catches up with what im typing/deleting. i even see the same 'pause' if im watching a clip on youtube or in windows media player etc. the image will run for three or four seconds then pause for a second then resume playing then pause etc etc...its almost like the laptop has this continual hickup in the processor that affects every running task.

its a dell ispiron 6400, 6months old with a due core processor, 2gig ram running vista ultimate. ive switched off all the pretty stuff that kills performance (or at least i think i have) and i have norton 360'd and adaware'd it and although it found a couple of threats they have been removed so it is in theory clean.

anyone seen this before?

Welcome to Vista.

http://www.ubuntu.com/ - it's free, easy, fast, and stable.

Here's another
http://www.thinkgos.com/index.html

something is a miss...even with Vista it shouldnt be that way...perhaps you have a virus/spyware/malware that has installed itself on your system and is affecting your computers performance. You can try downloading Adaware from Lavasoft.com to eliminate any adware.... or try downloading the free Avast program...it wouldnt hurt to check.

Another thing you can try, if this is a recent situation.... do a Windows system restore and restore the operating system back to when it was working well. You will need to reinstall any programs that you had installed after that restore point was noted in Windows.

To do this go: Start/allprograms/accessories/systemtools/systemrestore and choose a restore point on the calendar that shows up there.

Dont' forget that Vista uses a lot of cpu cycles, etc. to make sure you aren't possibly something that may possibly have a copyright on it...

/ one more vote for www.ubuntu.com

I thought I had something by Jimmy Thackery but haven't been able to locate the track.
Jim

Do you live near Jimmy? I've been watching him play for 30 years (since his days with the Nighthawks)...one helluva guitar player! On a "blues cruise" several years ago, I spent the better part of the day sitting at the "ship pool bar" (while most went ashore in Jamaica) with Jimmy and his wife shooting the breeze...nice guy to boot :)!

The last I heard he was located out of Eurika Springs (hour & 1/2 away). I can only blame my unusually large moment of inertia for my failure to see him live. Some friends of ours have done the blues cruise thing, they had a great time also.
Jim

Have you tried Defragmenting the disk?

ctrl>alt>delete
Task Manager
Processes

What is the %CPU usage after you watch it for 30 seconds or so?

Then switch to Performance

How many MB's on the Memory graph?
What is total Physical Memory?

hi blokes, thanks for all your replies. I had another look for any old apps that i didn't need/use and deleted them. also i had a couple of things running on startup that i didn't recognise so i deleted them. I had already run a full norton 360 scan and adaware scan (lavasoft) they both came up with the same issues-two tracking cookies. they were deleted but the problem was still there.
sonic, I went to system restore but the only restore point was at a time AFTER the problem! im sure i created a restore point when a bought the computer a few months ago but it wasn't there.
450, just did a defrag. thought it was being done automatically but it wasn't scheduled.
gr8, in 'processes my cpu usage is jumping from 0 to 60%! and yet none of the processes in the list are doing anything more than around 5% max!
physical memory says 2037mb, don't really understand what you mean by 'how many mb on the memory graph' sorry!

You have 2 gigs of ram which is fine for Vista.
I was just curiuos how many MB of your ram is being used while the computer is idling.
Doesn't really matter much to your problem.

If your cpu is hitting 60% as you watch it for a minute or so, with no major programs running, then you have some kind of program running in the background. This will slow down your computer just like trying to run too many processor intensive programs at the same time.

You have to find out what is running. Google is your friend if you get stuck..

Turn off Norton.
Boot into safe mode with networking if you use a router or just safe mode.
Download and install AVG anti-virus - its free.
Make sure it is up to date.
Run a virus scan. Norton may work but Norton may also be the cause of your problems. I have never had much luck with the big bulky anti virus programs.
Update and run the adaware program.
Download, update and run Spybot search and destroy.
Eliminate everything they find.

Reboot and see if there is any improvement. Lots of spyware and virus' cannot be deleted while they are running - hence the safe mode function.

+1 ! definetly

I agree completely and avoid those too. Keep your data secure (i.e. removable drive for example, and a MUST DO anyways), have the ability to "restore" the machine back to its origin, and simply don't use those PIGS at all. IMO, the "cure" is worse than the disease with Norton, et al. Keep your machine "lean & mean" and rebuidable (if it does get compromised), and you'll be happier :).

Assuming the virus/spyware scans as recommended above don't show anything unusual....

When you go into Task Manager (ctrl + alt + del and select task manager), switch to the processes tab. How many processes do you have running? 50 is a good target. Next, sort by CPU by clicking on the column header. See which apps are hogging the CPU cycles. If there are things running there that you don't recognize, Google the Image Name. Lots of times, you can find errant programs this way. You may also see that some "friendly" applications have their launcher helpers running too. Stuff like Quicktime, Real Media and others run these little hog programs that can cause all kinds of issues too.

+1. I fought the "I have a virus" battle for a few months and kept seeing "get rid of Norton" advice. Thinking on it I realized the problems started when Norton updated it's version.
Got rid of Norton for the free AVG and I haven't had any problems since!

Getting Linux to run on a laptop is nontrivial.
Blackviper.com has lists of processes and sample Vista setups that can be useful. Still a matter of trial and error, I'm afraid.
+1 on removing Norton. I just spent on couple of hours on figuring out why my brother couldn't log on to EBay. Norton firewall was blocking it.

Get a second computer for porn, so that you can just reformat it every month. :D:p:D

I no longer run Norton or McAfee on any of our machines. They are both pigs.

AVG.

Yo will need to get the "Norton Removal Tool" from their site.

Hi guys, sorry for the delay with an update-I bit the bullit and reinstalled vista. I have a little external 120gig hard drive so i dropped all my important stuff on there and re installed. made the mistake of not putting my wifes email on the extrnal drive though.......she was going mental for about an hour! (whoops)

anyway it has cured the prob and you will be pleased to hear that ive also junked norton and gone with AVG which does seem to run without so much of a drain on the cpu's resourses. do i need to install any other malware/adware stuff (lavasoft?) or is that only really required if i encounter more probs? i used to have adaware and periodically scan when i had a minute. is this the best thing to do?

one other problem-I had windows office before the reinstall. its not there now but it is in the 'windows.old' folder. I have tried dragging and dropping the 'windowsoffice' folder into my programs folder then opening it up and finding a file called 'WINWORD' and trying to run that but it says 'the operating system is not currently configured to run this application' is there something else i should be doing to get this to work?

thanks in advance

Andy,
Be sure to download Mozilla FireFox and use that as your browser...

You have to reinstall Office. You cannot copy it to another drive and back again. All the files will not be there. Hopefully you have it on a disc.

Formatting is generally a drastic move but what is done is done.

Use Adaware once a week or so. Remember to update.
Run Spybot at the same rate.

Windows Defender is on Vista but I don't know how effective it really is.

Firefox with 'fasterfox' add-on installed set to Turbo.

randy,

i don't have a copy of windows office. it was on the computer when i bought it but there was no backup disk. do i have to go and buy it now?

also, whats firefox all about? is it that much better than ie? what are the benefits? is it faster?

Yep fixed for now, just wait a few months and you will have some other problem... then wipe it clean, and re-install everything, and wow fixed again.

Now imagine if every few months you had to do a full engine rebuild on your Porsche just to keep the thing driving like normal ... amazing what people are willing to put up with when using computers!

Best tip for Windows to make your machine run faster is simply increase the amount of memory you have. Second best tip is to run your windows machine with 3 hard drives instead of one. Keep Windows installed on one drive, your applications installed on another, and all your data on the third.

For those interested in the WHY, here is my best attempt at translating nerd speak into english,

In any of these cases what you are really doing is simply speeding up disk access. Adding memory allows Windows to keep more of the hard disk data cached in memory, and splitting windows/programs/data on three drives allows Windows to do up to three times the hard drive accesses at a given time.

See while hard drives are amazingly fast at reading in a straight line, they can only skip around about 60-100 times per second. Applications like Photoshop take forever to load simply because they need to access perhaps 1000-3000 places on disk to gather all the data to startup. In other words if you have to seek to 2000 places on disk to get your data, and you can only do 100 seeks per second, its going to take 20 seconds regardless of how fast your processor is.

Of course the second time you load your application it will probably load faster because Windows keeps previous reads from the hard drive cached in memory.

Andy,
I like Firefox better than IE. On my machines it loads faster. Lots of folks still use IE with good results. I like the add-ons. Do a search and you will find a site full of them. They set up little icons on you browser page to do a bunch of cool things. Too many to list.

If you want Office back you need the disc. Depending on what you need Office for, try Openoffice.org 2.3. Openoffice is freeware that creates and reads compatible Office Word and Excel files - among other things. Great unless you specifically need MS Office.

+1 on Openoffice.

Uninstall all anti-virus and just be careful on what you open and click on. I haven't used anti-virus since, oh 1996, and I've never had a virus.

Tim,
Great tip about the 3 drives - I never thought about it that way. I have 3 drives in my system right now. Time for some remodeling.

I have 2 Sata drives and 1 ide drive. Which would you put where? The 2 sata drives are brand new Seagate 320's running at 150MB/sec due to an older board and the ide is an older Seagate 80. All three are 7200rpm.

I only have 2 sata connections.

Since no one else said it...

Send the hater back and get a Mac, Unix derived OS with a pretty GUI that quits apps when you tell it to, and never crashes.

If you must run Windoz apps, boot to Windows (Bootcamp) or use Parallels or VMWare Fusion, best of all worlds.

There, I said it (Isn't Jobs just dreamy...) :D

took the risk of torrenting a copy of office12, scanned it for viruses/threats using avg/adawre and installed it. I figured that if it screws things up ill just reinstall again and go buy it. anyway it worked fine, other than the fact that it sort of installs every time.....anyway this will do till i can get a gen office 12 disk. tryed opera to see what another os was like. it seemed fast but so does ie now my system is straight. didnt like the idea of having to learn another os either to be totally honest.

Anyway, Thanks very much everyone for helping me out, its much appreciated

Dont take off AVG
- its a great virus checker and does not clog up cpu cycles like Norton.

It found and killed two trojan horse infections on my machine in the last 2 months - so DONT take it off! :eek: