My PC cannot run more than application

[Baba_goud]

Hi all,
I have a pentium 3 system with configuration 1.00 GHz, 256 MB RAM, 80 GB HDD. I am using Windows XP since a long time and from the past few mons my PC is unable to run more than one or two applications at a time.

The PC becomes too slow for eg when i run the internet explorer and play music on the Real player. The system hangs out and i need to run either of the application.

I have increased my virtual memory to 1154 MB, but it does not help.

Any folks who can help me out.

Thanx in advance
Baba.

 

[wildman6801]

The minimum system requirements for Windows XP is 256 MB of RAM. I would suggest to go to http://www.crucial.com/ and use their memory configure to upgrade the RAM.

256 MB of RAM will not let you run more than one or two newer applications. You can increase the Virutual RAM all you want to but it will not help with such a small amount of RAM. Virtual RAM helps when you don't have a lot of RAM but what it handing the system up is it is swapping stuff in RAM onto your Virtual memory to move stuff in Virtual Memory to RAM. This is can slow down your system to a crawl.

If you are using the new IE 7 it uses close to 100 MB (with only one tab open) of RAM when running and Windows XP is using 128 MB of RAM when it is running so their is 228 MB being used, the new version of Real Media player uses another 64 - 80 MB of RAM. So you computer is swapping RAM with Virtual RAM back and forth causing the slow down.

I would suggest for todays applications to have a minimum of 512 MB of RAM. By adding more your system will also improve on its performance. If you can afford more than go for it. RAM is very cheap today, you can purchase a 1 GB of RAM for less than $100; I have seen it lower than $50, depends on if it is on sale and what kind of RAM your computer needs.

So go to http://www.crutial.com/ use their memory scan tool to see what you need. It will at least tell you the specs of your RAM which you can shop around other places if you choose to do so. I have also found their RAM to be very high quality for a low price.

Merry Christmas

Travis

 

[Aolish]

wildman pretty much nailed it, adding more ram would improve performance. However I'm suspecting having only 256MB of ram isn't the only reason why your system is performing slowly. I have a PC that has 256MB ram also. And I've ran much more then 2 applications at once before decently. If you have anything on the system tray try to close some of those applications as they are eatting up what little ram you have, also check for spyware and malware because those can eat additional ram also. 256MB on XP can be slow.. but not THAT slow.

 

[technik_84]

wildman pretty much nailed it, adding more ram would improve performance. However I'm suspecting having only 256MB of ram isn't the only reason why your system is performing slowly. I have a PC that has 256MB ram also. And I've ran much more then 2 applications at once before decently. If you have anything on the system tray try to close some of those applications as they are eatting up what little ram you have, also check for spyware and malware because those can eat additional ram also. 256MB on XP can be slow.. but not THAT slow.

That's true, you'd have to really maintain your computer on 256MB of RAM. You may want to invest in another 256MB of RAM = 512MB, therefore it would be a lot easier to multi-task with the pc running off of two rams instead of one. Also, schedule tasks to run daily for spyware programs (if you have any). Spybot S&D, ad-aware, and cwshredder are good spyware progs to have.

 

[Fragrant Coit]

press CTRL/ALT/DEL and look at Processes... Is something using a lot of CPU?

You may have an application or Malware thats consuming everything, leaving little or nothing for anything else to run.