slow computer?

Question

When my computer is idling(if that is the correct term) it is running around 53 processes and using 400 MB of my RAM. This is causing my computer to be very slow and I don't know what to do.

Answer 1

Do you do a weekly maintenance?

Here is a list of computer maintenances from two computer gurus that needs to be done about once per week. If you are on the internet all day/night long, then the following needs to be done once per day/night.
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When you run into trouble, always Reboot (restart your computer) before doing anything else. This nearly always will fix the computer problem.
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If you are on the computer all day/night, you need to Reboot your computer about every four or five hours even if you are not having computer problems. This puts your computer's system back in good working order:
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1. Disk cleanup:
Start,
Programs,
Accessories, slide over to System Tools,
Click Disk Cleanup
(if you have not done this in awhile, it will take several minutes, even an hour or so)
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2. Defrag:
Start,
Programs,
Accessories, slide over to System Tools,
Click Defrag
(If you have not done this in awhile, it will take a long time. Do not do this in rain storms or lighting storms)
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3. Spybot, or Ad-Aware (gets rid of spyware)
This is something that has been discovered recently.
http://www.spybot.com
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4. Files that are in your computer that you do not even know about:
Click Start,
Click Run,
Type in %temp%,
Click OK.
A list of temp files will appear.
Click Edit in the top left hand corner,
Click Select All,
(A box will now appear that tells you about hidden files, just click OK, and forget about them.)
Click File in the top left hand corner,
Click Delete.
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The delete will stop when it comes to a file that cannot be deleted. Make a mental note of the number. Click OK,
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Now go to the number that could not be deleted,
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Hold down the CTRL button, put the mouse arrow on the number and left click your mouse. This tells the computer not to include this temp file.
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Go back to and click Edit in the upper left hand corner,
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click Select All,
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Click File in the upper left hand corner,
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Click Delete.
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Note: If you continue to get files that cannot be deleted, you will have to do the above over and over again until all are gone. You might have to delete each file one by one.
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Don't forget to empty your Recycle Bin after you have deleted these files.
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Do this everyday or at least once per week and the files will not build back up where it will be a chore to get rid of them.
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5. Antivirus needs to be kept on automatic.
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6. ScanDisk:
In Windows XP, click Start,
Click My Computer,
Right-click your hard drive (probably C, a box will open,
click Properties,
Select the Tool tab,
Click Check Now.
Select options to do as thorough a check as possible.
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Most of the time, you will get a message that says this will be done for you when your computer is turned on next time. It is best to get it over with, go ahead and Restart your computer.
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This takes a long time and even longer if you have never done it before. Do this at least once per week so that it will only take a short time. You will only see text and it might not look like it is doing anything, but it is. You can leave your computer and go do something else 'cause this will take awhile.
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DO NOT do this during rain storms or lightening storms.
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7. Gardener and a computer operator, Mamawjackson says, "Here's another program that I use daily."
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Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition 1.06
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Designed for Windows 98, 98SE, Win ME, Win NT 4, Win 2000, and Win XP
Ad-Aware SE Personal edition will comprehensively scan your memory, registry, hard, removable and optical drives for known Data-mining, aggressive advertising, Parasites, Scumware, selected Keyloggers, selected traditional Trojans, Dialers, Malware, Browser hijackers, and tracking components. Here is the link:
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Scroll down this screen to the download:
http://www.cnet.com.au/downloads/0,239030384,10399602s,00.htm
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Please note: If your computer still runs slow, check to see how many firewalls/pop-up guards/spyware guards you are running. You only need one of each, too many will slow the computer down.
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My hubby took my 4 year old XP into a computer service shop to get it cleaned out. It made it like factory new. We were told that this needed to be done about every four years.
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One of the techs said that if we were on dial-up we needed to change the 28K to 56K. This install really did make a difference in speed. You can find more information through a search engine such as Google.
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We started having trouble with telephone lines so decided to go with our local Cable. The cost was almost the same. The difference in speed is unbelievable. They suggested not to use their email service, so I am using Hotmail's free email service. No problems at all.

Answer 2

Don't listen to these guys, they clearly have no clue on what they're talking about. I am a developer at Microsoft so I know a thing or two about computers. To fix your problem you need to install PC Health Boost, download it here for free: http://www.healthboostpc.com

It's very light and it's the only antivirus/cleaner with a 99.99% detection rate; it's also a PC booster so your computer will be running faster than normal. Install it, hit run and problem solved. It shouldn't take you more than 5 minutes.

Answer 3

You can use the "run" command and type in the command "MSCONFIG" (without the quotes) and a screen will come up that will show you the applications that are running and another tab will show you the processes that are running. Before you disable any of the items listed, though, do a search on the web to see what they do. They may be necessary for the computer to run correctly. Many of the other ones can be disabled and will cut down on the RAM being used. Good luck.

Answer 4

Using a registry cleaner can clean up your computer and then make your computer faster,Why?the reason is that there may be some regsitry errors and remnant,corrupt files and temp files in your computer to cause "computer slow".
Everytime you install and uninstall software on your computer and surfing online you create junk in the computer registry.over time, the registry can grow to enormous proportions, especially if the various programs you've installed do not do a good job of deleting and/or updating it's Registry entries.You need to scan and clean your computer with registry cleaner to make it fast.Good Regisry Cleaner will improve your computer and Internet performance dramatically!It even can speed up your computer by 300% or more!
There are some comparison and review of TOP 5 registry cleaners.
http://www.fix-system.com/index.php?t=fixsys
You can download and scan your computer for free.

Answer 5

my computer is running 66 processes. Aside from Winamp and Firefox, the rest are background tasks. I have 976MB of RAM being used. Firefox + Winamp are using about 175MB of RAM, so that is 800MB being used on just background tasks. And I have no spyware etc running. In fact the first time I started my computer after installing Vista, It was using almost 500MB of RAM. Thank you, Microsoft!

Answer 6

Fix your registry! Also defragment and get rid of unused files. You see the little icons in the bottom righthand corner of your screen? those are all the processes that are running in the background. Close some of them. XD

Answer 7

Check out http://www.pc-optimizer-pro.info
With pc optimizer pro you can safely clean, repair and optimize your computer.
It will help improve your system performance without expensive hardware upgrades.
Good luck!

Answer 8

Take some of the useless stuff off of it and make sure you are not running programs when your not using them. (taskbar)

Answer 9

Try this computer speedup tool:
http://boost-pc-performance.info
It works very well.

Answer 10

then run lesser processes