computer slowed to a crawl....help

[wannaoc]

All the sudden my wife's computer slowed to a crawl....task manager in XP shows the CPU at only 2 % RAM also low....can't load software or loads real slow, desktop short-cuts don't work... I figure maybe CPU or harddrive going out...any ideas, does this sound right?

[ninthebin]

are you getting much hard drive usage? also run any virus checks - make sure nothing nasty has worked its way in there :santa2:

Dan

[PoX Freak]

Also, it helps to know what is in your wife's computer (motherboard, cpu, memory, power supply, etc.)

[Tyranos]

Defrag and chkdsk! :D Or maybe its high time for a formattin'

I get that sometimes. A few reboots usually gets rid of it. It usually happens for me if XP crashes and reboots or something.

[ssgohan434]

if the system is overclocked, then bring it back to default and see what happens. If apps running normal now, i think ur ram needs some more voltage.

[glock19owner]

A disk cleanup might also help...if her temp files have been building up for a while...then the system will use a lot of ram going back and checking the data and such...you would be surprised how a few hundered MB's+ in the temp folders can slow down a system. I have seen systems with close to a Gig in the temp files alone...and this in turn brought their system to its knees pretty much...

[wannaoc]

Thanks for the help so far. It is XP and it did crash from a power outage so I'll try a couple more reboots. The disk usage seems to be low, it just does nothing when doing things like opening the start menu. I did disk usage, fragment, etc and it seems in good shape, so I don't know what the hell is going on.

[Molybdym]

Originally posted by glock19owner
A disk cleanup might also help...if her temp files have been building up for a while...then the system will use a lot of ram going back and checking the data and such...you would be surprised how a few hundered MB's+ in the temp folders can slow down a system. I have seen systems with close to a Gig in the temp files alone...and this in turn brought their system to its knees pretty much...
Man this is so true. My sister's got no idea of temp files and had not cleaned them out since she got her laptop 3 years ago!!

"Defrag? what's that?" Ouch. If i see another temp file for a jerry garcia picture it will be too soon. I clean out my temps at least once a week.