Solved Awfully slow computer?

[tranxe]

Hi everyone!

I recently formated my Hard drive and reinstalled windows xp instead of 7 because it was very slow. It's not a virus, i have done all the tests. I have done some research and it does look like it has something to do with the hardware rather than the software. There are a couple of problems, the CPU usage is always very high, it looks like i only have about a quarter of my memory ram available to me and file copying is also very slow so it could be HDD also i suppose?
I'll post a picture here, so could you please tell me what could be wrong with my computer and can I actually fix it somehow. Thanks!

Picture (sorry had to take it with a phone)

http://i.imgur.com/sujxahz.jpg

You can see how the cpu usage just pumps up and then drops down. Also my available ram just keeps doing the same thing, at one time i have like 800mb of 1gb available and then it just drops to 200-300 mb. Why is it doing that?

It almost feels like the more I use the computer the faster it gets, which is way weird. I have never had something like this with my previous laptops. My little sister used it for like 2 hours and then I went and took it away from her and now it feels alot faster than it was before. Can someone please explain me what is going on and do I need some new parts or what is this all thing in general.

Thanks!

 

[xunile]

You really want to have at least 2 GB of RAM to run Windows 7, 4 GB would be much better. I would advise against running XP since Microsoft is going to be stopping all support of it in April. I would also check the event viewer to see if you see any disk errors under the system log, that could cause slowness in your PC. Also, how old is this PC?

 

[whs]

It almost feels like the more I use the computer the faster it gets

That is normal - because of Superfetch.

And Xunile is right. If you have only 1GB of RAM, that is WAY too little for Windows 7. Check here what your options are - run the scanner. http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner/

 

[tranxe]

Im pretty sure I don't need microsoft support, and i can't really upgrade to 7 anymore because of the ram issue so i don't really have much more choice. It's a pretty old computer already. Dell 500 and i think its about 5-6 years old but i'm not entirely sure about that.

EDIT: Im aware of the 1 gb ram not being enough for windows 7 and thats why I replaced it with xp. Also isn't superfetch only for windows 7 since now I am running xp. Soory if im in the wrong forums but last time this one had a nice and fast support so thats why i'm here :S

Specs just in case:

Microsoft Windows XP Pro 2002 SP 3
Intel celeron cpu 560 @ 2,13 GhZ
1gb of ram
DirectX 9.0
Dell 500
Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset Family 256mb

 

[xunile]

The problem with Microsoft ending XP support is that they will not be releasing any updates for XP after April, no security patches or fixes. The people who write spyware programs and viruses know this and will most likely be targeting XP more than ever at that point.

 

[tranxe]

but there still will be antivirus programs and since the computer is only being used to surf internet on very few sites that are safe then I don't really see a problem but this really aint the thing to worry about if I can't even use the computer normally

 

[whs]

You are right. That system is probably more comfortable with XP - or Linux (is a lot safer on the internet). Besides the small and slow RAM you also have a slow CPU.

 

[tranxe]

it seems to be the svchost.exe file taking up all the cpu and i did the fix already a month ago or so and havent used computer since. And now it happened again, its not a malware problem but i know that virus can cause it too but it ain't one. I already did the fix and now i'm doing it again. I have no idea why it does it.

 

[whs]

The svchost.exe is just a means to run .dlls. You would have to find out which .dlls run under that particular svchost.exe (there are many running simultaneously). Maybe then you can cure the problem.

Run Process Explorer and hover over the svchost.exe in question. Then you have an idea what services are concerned. You can also right click on the .exe and go to Properties > Services button.

 

[tranxe]

it looks like that the problem was with windows automatic update. I disabled it and right now the computer runs smoothly, I hope it stays like this. Thank you two, I'm gonna mark this thread solved now

 

[whs]

Sounds good