Speed My computer Up, Please!?

Question

Hello,
My computer runs fast when I am doing light work (Word, Internet, etc) But when it comes time to work with downloading a 5 min long movie from my DV camcorder and editing it on my computer it slows down to snails pace. Sometimes I have to turn it off because it freezes on me.

I got 640 mb of Memory with 353.36 of virtual memory free. I have a 2.39 GHz cpu and 7gb on my hard drive free out of 20 gb. I know I got no malware/spyware, already scanned and removed the few I had. I was thinking of clocking up my cpu, but I don't know how or if it will help.

Thanks in advance.
with space on the hard drive, i will be getting an external usb hard drive.

Answer 1

Increase your memory.

1 gig minimum two gig great.

Answer 2

Hey man IGNORE most of the previous answers. You didn't say weather or not you're running Windows XP. If you are, you're computer is barely breathing, XP (alone) is going to use up about 512 of that 640 MB. Do you hear you're hard drive constantly churning? (Swap file) Also you're trying to use a 20 GB old slow hard drive that's nearly full to do video editing. Go with an internal hard drive to speed up your computer. You probably have USB 1.0 so an external drive will be slow. If you stay with the 2.40GHZ CPU video editing will always be slow.
If you can get it, I would recommend at least a 3.0GHZ CPU, 1GB of ram, and 100GB hard drive for regular video editing.

Answer 3

Hi
Do what whoblitzell said. to run "msconfig" go to start -- run and type "msconfig (no quotes) Using
crtl - alt - delete to close down unneeded programs can damage you system if you close out the wrong processes. I can only think of a couple offhand (I'm on my mac) Svchost.exe, System (obviously) System idle process, Winlogon.exe and services.exe there's probably a couple more but those are most of the main ones. Under the processes tab look for atmclk.exe and or dmconfig.exe. they are spyware processes. Spoolsae.exe, popcorn72.exe are malicious programs that slow down your PC. If you have any or all get a reputable spyware scanner (none of those popups you get from your taskbar saying you have spyware, those are the spyware itself. I won't recommend any because I don't use them. I use a program that takes an exact "snapshot" of your computer and put my documents on another drive (music,videos, documents etc.) search for programs that "image" your hard drive. If you're good with computers do what I did. Backup everything you want to keep on to a different hard disk (internal or external). Buy (or pirate) a new copy of windows XP and install it on your computer (approx 40 minutes) register it, install all the programs you use, get your settings the way you want them. It took me an hour and a half to install my programs (i have a lot of programs) and a half hour to put in all my custom hacks to the system. (15 minutes regular (control panel) settings 15 Minutes of tweaking. Now use the imaging software you bought (or pirated) to make a backup image of your system. put all the program disks you have in a disk box with a label that says "in image". As you buy new programs and install them put those in a section marked "reinstall after re-imaging". That way you have less to do if you get a virus and don't need to get a subscription to an antivirus program. If you have the the money get a 200GB hard drive, partition it into two partitions, one 20GB and one 180GB Partition, use your original 20GB drive for your System software and applications and store your Movies, music, documents and whatever else on the 180GB partition of the new drive. (the 20GB partition is for your backup images).
you can adjust the size of the partitions to whatever size is best for you. I just gave you an idea of what to do. If you do professional movie editing get a Mac. If you don't have the budget for that Just make sure you have enough hard drive space to store everything you have and will or might have. if your computer is slow after doing all that, the the problem is your computer is old and you need a new one.

Answer 4

Its seems that you have installed heavy software in your computer. But this is not any issue because your problem is not to related this thing. I think your computer's Registries entries has been corrupted that's why you are getting this problem.

Do one thing, Run your Registry Cleaner software and repair all the detected problem. If you have any free Registry cleaner software then

First of all, please Boot your System in SAFE MODE

To do so, press 'F8' key at the time of BOOTING i.e. when the system getting started.

Now run your Free registry Cleaner software and repair all the detected problems.

If you don't have any of regsitry cleaner software then

You can download the RegistryFix from this link:-
software from this link http://hop.clickbank.net/?install/regfix&mode=d.

This software is a Trial version but this trial version will help you to repair the 3 section absolute free. I don't know that sections but this will certainly fix the three section free.

---Please note---- that I am not tell you to purchase this software, I am JUST providing you its trial version which is repairing the 3 section absolutely free. Again this is not the free software.

Answer 5

A few suggestions:

1) Download a virus scanner and run it. A good virus scanner is AVG. http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1

2) Download a spyware/adware remover and run it.

3) Defragment your main hard disk(s) with the Windows utility or another utility

4) Reduce the number of startup items by running 'msconfig'

5) Use CTRL+ALT+DELETE menu to close unused applications to free up system RAM

6) Get a disk cleaner such as Cleanup or Ccleaner to get rid of clutter on your PC

Answer 6

All is ok, except the Virtual Memory part. Increase your virtual memory by going to Control Panel > System > Advanced > Settings> Advanced > Change > Put you virtual memory to minimum of 1 GB and MAX of 2 GB. This should solve some of the problem.

Then Free Up your RAM by terminating processes in the Task Manager ( ctrl+alt+del > Processes ) you dont require running all the time like alg.exe , spoolsv , locator , nvsvc32 etc....

Answer 7

Get rid of programs on the hard drive that you do not use, do a disc cleanup- on th e disc cleanup go over to advanced and delete all but your most recent restore point. that should free up some space. When you are editing close out all tasks and processes that the user is running and then open up the editor. Also you can open up the control panel and click on the system, go over to advance and click on performance settings and either choose "let windows choose whats best for my computer" or "best performance"

Answer 8

video editing takes a lot of processing power just like video encodeing so when you do that your computer will slow down i dont care how much ram you got and how big harddrive is. Unfortuately this is the bad part of encoding. you may try finding a well free program to do this with due to the fact they usually use less resources so they may increase the speed it takes a little

I hope this will help you out sorry i cannot give you an easy way to speed it up

Answer 9

Well, take out that 1 or 2 sticks of 640mb memory and get your self some good gaming 2gbs of memory
preferably 2x 1gb sticks
If you have an Intel 2.39ghz, then sure, go ahead and clock
if its AMD you seem fine, but i bet you don't have an AMD.
Memory seems to be your main problem
but whatever you do, don't use your old stick
it will only slow down your new one
search from RAM on www.newegg.com

Answer 10

Computer providers, and computer supply companies make tons of money by promising to make your computer faster. They insist that if you buy their product, you will be able to perform these tasks faster.

The sad truth is that while some technical improvements will help, the internet is ruled by the laws of the physical world, and if there is too much "traffic" no amount of "product" or user tips can help.

In fact, some internet enemies are online for the purpose of interferring with the use of the internet purely for their personal pleasure in making trouble.

Answer 11

Ok here is your anwer. NO. 1 get a new hard drive. 7 gb is way to small to store games or any movies. if you want to get into gameing the thing that you need to get is a nvidia chip this will make you run better oics video and games as well . you have a powerful pc. but you need a thing called a graphics card