Resource Hog

[Rello]

I have an AMD 1.7G machine with 224MB of ram, running 98SE. It seems that it has a tough time multitasking - if I am downloading a large file it intermittently pauses me from doing anything else. If I play MP3s while doing nothing else it pauses the song momentarily. When booting system it even pauses the startup .wav half way thru.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[tonykblen]

Hi,

Have you tried checking your system resources in performance tab under Control Panel --> System. With a machine like your, there should be a high percentage free. Also check under the startup group (Start --> Programs --> Startup) to see what is being loaded up. Other things to check for are hardware conflicts such as IRQ or DMA conflicts.

Tony.

 

[Rello]

Thanks for the reply Tony

I have looked at the things you mentioned. 74% free and no conflicts present. Only running Microsoft office under startup.
That is what is so confusing to me. Never experienced this on any machine before.

 

[tonykblen]

Have you checked for a virus of some sort?

Sounds as if something intermittently is taking away resources temporarily. I would suspect that something is pulling CPU time.

Have you applied all the various patches for 98 and checked for new drivers for your peripherals? Might be worth doing that anyway.

If you have Office 2000, open word and go to help--> about and click system info, go to the software environment and check the startup programs and also check running tasks for anything unusual.

Have you looked at the task manager to see what's running or if anything is not responding?

Tony.

 

[WheeDoggy]

~Rello
"I have looked at the things you mentioned. 74% free and no conflicts present. Only running Microsoft office under startup.
That is what is so confusing to me. Never experienced this on any machine before."

You need to check msconfig.
Start-> Run
msconfig
>OK<

See what programs are being loaded that are in the registry and not shown in the startup folder.

With M$ office alone, you are probably loading findfast.exe and I think one other that Office installs that do not need to run and by not loading @ startup should not hinder Office in any way (loading an Office prog may take a little longer but if you are not using it, why give away the resources?)

Other than that, you may need to search for virii or spywares.

Watch for HDD trashing.

 

[HCEOcompguy]

Check to make sure you have your disks using DMA. There may be a setting in your BIOS and another in the Windows Device Manager. Find the hard disk entry (while you are there check the CD entry) and look under settings and check the DMA box.

Make sure you have loaded the motherboard drivers from the disk that came with the motherboard.

Some HDs even have a tool from the OEM that will turn on the disks ability to use DMA, mostly older disks.