Hello again CTH;
I have a Dell Inspiron 1501 that I bought brand-new in January 2007. It is to the point where the process of "asking my computer to do something" can often cause it to run really slow, freeze, or it will hang and tell me it's "Busy" doing something...but it really isn't, cause I haven't asked it to do anything else.
As evidenced in this thread, I've bought an external hard drive recently to try and free up some disk space on my internal HD...and have consequently had problems with MS Office 03 now. So there's that...
I've actually also visited the
"Slow Computer?" thread...and I followed these steps. However, I'm not convinced that the steps I took (this was probably a month or so ago...) actually took effect. Whenever I open Task Manager, I still see a whole ton of background processes that seem to just suck up a whole bunch of junk...Yeah...
I don't ask this computer to do a whole lot; Browse the Web with occasional Flash or videos (like YouTube), run the Office programs from time to time, and run a music composition program to write music. I don't ask it to do all these things at once, I don't ask it to do PC gaming or WarCraft or whatever...I just want it to be able to surf the web, run Excel, and write music without acting like I am asking it to do 5,000 things at once.
Case in point, while writing this thread, my computer has thrice stopped and hung for about 30 seconds...for no apparent reason. Just had to wait for it to decide to work so I could continue typing! Facebook Chat, also, pretty much freezes my computer for a minute or two anytime someone sends me an IM on it...and sites that are not even Flash or graphics heavy are now taking a while to load, and I am on a Cable connection, so speed isn't an issue...
This computer only came with 512 MB of RAM, and I suspect that's probably a large part of my problem, but 1) I am not sure if I can upgrade it 2) that costs money that I don't really have right now as I am currently between jobs and 3) I don't know if that's the "only" problem.
I really need to know if there's anything I can do right now basically that will allow my computer to run like a halfway decent machine.
As stated before, I'm on XP, SP3, and according to Control Panel, running AMD Turion Mobile 64, 797 Mhz, on 448 (?!) MB of RAM...hmm.
My internet froze twice more while trying to type this and go back and forth between Control Panel and this window, so I am at my wit's end!
Please advise with anything I can do to help this thing perform better. It's getting very, very difficult to use.
PS; I've never, ever been able to complete a Defrag on this thing...because it overheats every time I try to do it, and after 10 minutes or so, it shuts down without completing it. Just a final tidbit.
Thank you!