Got 512Mb memory and 60Gig Memory is locked up somewhere, how can I free it??? There is nothing on clipboard

Question

Of the 60gig only 28 is used but the laptop is dead slow and is becoming uninteresting to use at all. How can I access and free it up??? Have heard viruses before...

Answer 1

You need a decent firewall, an anti virus, an anti trojan, an anti adware and an anti spyware.
There are some excellent freeware programs available (free for home use, if you're a business user you have to pay).
Turn off System Restore while you clean up the system by going to Start - programs - accessories - system restore.
Then defragment the hard drive by going to Start - programs - accessories - system tools - disc defragmenter. It'll take a while but just leave it to run.

Then install and run Avast! anti virus, Ewido anti trojan, Ad-Aware SE Personal and Ccleaner.
If they find anything they can't clean out you'll have to try running them in Safe Mode, which takes longer.
To get into safe mode, repeatedly press the F8 key after the bios screen loads but before Windows loads, if you don't manage it first time just restart and try again.
Safe mode looks very different and not all your programs will load but don't worry, its supposed to do that. The screen will run at 800 x 600. The scans will take a bit longer so just leave it to get on with it.


The Windows firewall doesn't stop malware on your pc from dialling out. Either of these firewalls are free for personal use and stop unwanted incoming and outgoing traffic. You choose which programs are allowed to access the internet. They are both fairly easy to use and updated regularly.
http://www.zonelabs.com Zone Alarm firewall
http://www.kerio.com Kerio firewall

Shields Up security site, check your firewall works
https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

http://www.mozilla.com/ Firefox web browser
http://www.opera.com/ Opera web browser
Instal both these web browsers, turn off javascript on one and use that browser for vising unknown websites. They don't support Active X so thats one less way for problems to get on your pc.

Winpatrol is a handy utility that tracks cookies on your pc and stops unwanted changes to your startup folder.
http://www.winpatrol.com

Spywareblaster works with Internet Explorer and Firefox. It won't uninstall spyware that is already on your pc, but it will prevent hijacks and other malicious changes to your browser.
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

http://www.grisoft.com/doc/30863/lng/uk/tpl/tpl01 -Ewido anti trojan

Ad-Aware SE Personal anti adware
http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/

Spybot Search and Destroy anti spyware
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

http://www.avast.com Avast Antivirus

http://www.bitdefender.com -BitDefender can be used as a second, on demand anti virus.

http://www.ccleaner.com Cr*pcleaner Registry cleaner and privacy tool

Microsoft have two free online scanners that look for malware.
http://safety.live.com/site/en-US/default.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.mspx
You can also download Microsofts free Windows Defender from the official Microsoft site, and the Malicious Software Removal Tool.

Remember to update and run all of you anti malware programs at least once a week.

Answer 2

well to be straight up with you although 512 mb may have been good last year and great the year b4 things change and 512 ram rle isnt all that great any more another thing that counts is cache and how much of that memory you have well i got a hp pavilion entertainment notebook its the dv5215 us and its great i got 1048 in ram i got a 1 mb cache (with 512 ram u usualy get 256 kb in cache...not good) so that could explain why your computer is soo slow or it could be your procesor i got a turion 64 procesor that runs at 1.8 GHZ and to be honest it does everything my desktop does and more and not only that but its never slow it never freezes up and the funny thing is my desktop has a 3.6GHZ processor only difference is it only has 512 ram


oh about the hard drive sorry dude but i got a 80 gig and i can only use 42 gigs thats because the operating system takes up around 20 gigs and then the system restore takes up about another 20 hope this explains some stuff

Answer 3

They are having a remember the 60's week on radio York and it's very emotive. Beehive hairdo's, mini skirts and cars, all the old songs and groups, flower power, free love and the introduction of the pill, dinner parties where you ate tinned ravioli, spag. bol.,blackforest gateaux, flambes, cherries jubilee, crepes suzette and washed them down with chianti in the ruffina bottles which then were prized as candle holders, liebfraumilche, black tower, babycham, ponys, baby seals and lambrusco - and we thought we were the bees knees! Very free, easy and happy days - great to have lived through them. Edit: Hi elsie 19, yes i remember how very precious those days were too. We could go off from dawn till dusk with a bag of sandwiches and buns and some pop, sometimes there were around twenty of us, we looked after each other, ran, laughed, climbed trees, built dens and didn't have a care in the world. We didn't have paedophiles then - or i should say they weren't as obvious! and a murder made the headlines for at least a week. I was born in 1951 just after rationing had disolved, my father was a farmer and we really did have the best food available, all fresh and home grown - but seasonal - no tomatoes at christmas in those days! I really do think my generation have been so very, very, lucky with the immense changes we experienced. My kids think its hilarious that we had black and white tv but we only got that in 1957! no tv before that!

Answer 4

Ok you got some main brand laptop which often they put aside 5-10 Gigs for the restore and system tools, which you do not have access to.

However, even then you are missing a good 20 Gbs somewhere and I think you have a partition (EMULATED splitting of a hard drive), thus you might have two hard drives under MY COMPUTER.

If im not quite answering the question yet, what you need to be doing is run an anti virus, back up your data, and reformat and reinstall your WIndows XP etc.

*** Please be kind and rate me :-) ***

Answer 5

Need more specs on your laptop to really help. Having only 512MB of RAM is one thing you can change. The 60G HD should be enough. Have you run a disk defragmentation on it? Dumped your Internet cache? That will free some space but you have over 50% of your hard drive available.

Answer 6

1) If your computer doesn't already have something like it installed, obtain ZONEALARM INTERNET SECURITY SUITE from http://www.zonelabs.com
It has Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, a Cache Cleaner + a host of other tools to help keep your computer running smoothly...... once installed (usually available on 14-day trial to start off with.... run a full Anti-Virus & Anti-Spyware scan + the Cache cleaner.

When the trial has run out, you can often get a discount on purchasing it through either your Internet Provider or through your bank's online banking services.

2) Run Scandisk & Defragmenter (I believe it's called "Checkdisk" in WINDOWS XP) on the hard drive...... even if it tells you it doesn't need doing.

3) Go to http://www.pcpitstop.com and run their excellant online system optimisation tests, which should help point you in the right direction.

Answer 7

probably not your hard drive. if it is just defragment it and that'll fix it right up. if it doesnt, its probably either spyware or adaware (different from viruses). try spybot search and destroy and adaware se(both downloadable from download.com) as they both work very well. if THAT doesnt work try going throuh your applications in task manager, sometimes a program will run in the background that you dont know about and will hog your system resources. otherwise, it could simply be too much stuff. sometimes cheapo crudy hdd's are just that: cheap nd crappy and will bog down with minimal applications (even though they shouldn't)
Hope this helps!

Answer 8

You have one of the following:
1. A virus
2.A Trojan
3. Spyware
4. Need to defrag
5. a program running that your not aware off.

What to do:
1. run a virus program (like AVG)
2 Run a Trojan program (like counterspy)
3. run a spyware program ( like ad-aware)
4 delete history & cookie's
5 Defrag

good luck

Answer 9

Try defragmenting the hard disk.
Go to My computer, rightclick on the hard disk and click properties.
Click the tools tab and then click defragment now.

Also, deleting unused and temporary files may help.

Answer 10

Sounds like you have yourself a remote trojan.
If so, this is a virus, that once on your computer, will litterally take over it, and let some one, the host, us your computer over an internent connection, and do anything he wants with it, most likely use it to launch attacks on other computers.