Several Computer Problems -- Help?

Ron,

If you have 1 Gig of RAM, and half of that is free then you are in good shape. You will only really start having performance problems when Windows needs to keep switching between the page file (HD simulated RAM) and the actual RAM.

I can't really follow what Cobra is saying either, so you aren't the only one.
 
MY CPU STARTED SMOKING! The chips in these things produce arsine when overloaded by "electrical" energy. I'm going to put this thing out of here before it kills me!
 
I have a handful of things to try. It might take a few days to work on some stuff. I'll try to let you guys know if anything worked.

Any more suggestions would be welcome.

Any suggestions on improving my chips clock speed? Or maybe a great piece of software and/or website that can help?


Ren...I really do need to run defrag, so thanks for the advice/reminder. Since it takes longer than a "lunch hour," I've been procrastinating and keep putting it off. Also, I have two 120 gig internal hard drives partitioned, along with an external 80 gig drive, so have have eight "hard drives" ranging in size from 20 to 80 gigs. I wouldn't be so foolish to do them all at the same time, so that becomes quite a laborious task.

Erik...Thanks for your help and for affirming that you, too, can't understand Cobra. For a moment there, I thought I was insane.
 
Cobra said:
MY CPU STARTED SMOKING! The chips in these things produce arsine when overloaded by "electrical" energy. I'm going to put this thing out of here before it kills me!
Click to expand...


Arsine is not used in silicon-base CMOS chips such as CPUs. It's used in gallium-based GaAs chips not generally found in PCs. Furthermore, even if there is a GaAs chip in your PC, the amount of arsonic it contains is inconsequential; they're not called "micro"chips for no reason.
 
you normally have 500 megs of ram "used" ? that sounds like a lot for a machine just surfing the web.

how many programs do you run at startup? what programs do you have running in the background?

when is the last time you rebooted?
 
Maybe it's automotive radios and televisions that produce arsine gas. (it's not arsenic, either, something a lot faster than that). Last Word. You're welcome.
 
Hey Martensite,

I'm not 100% how to check my RAM usage, but if it is in Windows Task Manager, here's some potentially relevent info at the second I was typing (it kept chaning):
  • Physical Memory --
    Total: 1048048
    Available: 322728
    System Cache: 509596
  • Processes --
    80
  • CPU Usage --
    100%
  • Commit Charge --
    665M / 2463M
I don't know what else would be relevant/helpful.

As these numbers were gathered, items open on my desktop were Windows Media Player (but not playing), Windows Task Manager, one IE window, and Microsoft ActiveSync. I know there's a ton of things running in the background.

Regarding programs run at startup: I'm not sure how to give you this info accurately. I opened MSCONFIG and looked under the "start up" tab and counted 44 items that were checked.
 
Ron Andersen said:
Hey Martensite,

I'm not 100% how to check my RAM usage, but if it is in Windows Task Manager, here's some potentially relevent info at the second I was typing (it kept chaning):
  • Physical Memory --
    Total: 1048048
    Available: 322728
    System Cache: 509596
  • Processes --
    80
  • CPU Usage --
    100%
  • Commit Charge --
    665M / 2463M
I don't know what else would be relevant/helpful.

As these numbers were gathered, items open on my desktop were Windows Media Player (but not playing), Windows Task Manager, one IE window, and Microsoft ActiveSync. I know there's a ton of things running in the background.

Regarding programs run at startup: I'm not sure how to give you this info accurately. I opened MSCONFIG and looked under the "start up" tab and counted 44 items that were checked.
Click to expand...

You might want to clear everything out of the start menu except for your antivirus and firewall software. 80 processes is more than I have ever seen!
I noticed a vast improvement in performance once I optimized my startup list.
Norton is a big hog of a program, but it only adds a few. When My system is running at idle, there are between 25 and 27 processes and the CPU usage stays below 5% Many of the programs I run take alot of resources, so I try to optimize my available juice. You might want to eventually dump Norton in favor of a more efficient program.
 
Far from being a computer expert here but have you tried the task scheduler
and just have it rund defrag/scandisk at 5 in the morning or whenever it is
more convient?

And my main computer picked up a trojan horse that has not been named
as of yet. I got the "blue screen o'death" and trojan horse detected message
and a hard drive wipe is now in order. you could still see the Icons, the thing
would still run, but nothing I had nor the computer repair shop had can get rid
of it.
 
Ron Andersen said:
Any suggestions on improving my chips clock speed? Or maybe a great piece of software and/or website that can help?
Click to expand...

If you want to improve the clock speed you overclock, i.e. run the chip beyond the manufacturer's specs. If you have something like a Dell, HP, etc you won't be able to. If you built the machine or someone built it for you, you may be able to do this. My CPU is a Pentium 4 2.4GHz running at 3.0GHz and all is well. You can change the BIOS settings to achieve this but you'd better know what you're doing.


Anyway there is one simple performance tweak that I strongly recommend. Go to Control Panel and use Classic View (you can switch it on the left hand side). Double-click System. Click the Advanced tab. Under Performance, click the Settings button. Select Adjust for best performance, hit apply. It will take a few moments. Then ok your way out of there.

What you've done is disabled all of the useless eye candy. Trust me, you won't miss it and it will speed up your system.
 
Hey Ryan,

I did build my own system. It is an AMD Athlon XP 2100+ running at 1.7 GHz (it was advertised at something like 2.8). My system board is an MSI K7N2 nForce2.

My first try with adjusting clock speed was a year ago when I built my system. I'm going on vague, one year old memories, but I did some basic adjustments in the BIOS, but it freaked every time I was above 1.7 GHz. I always thought it had more potential than that, but because of my limited computer experience, I lost patience and stopped trying. There were adjustments dealing with temperature, voltage, and other stuff. All that didn't make sense.
 
Ron,

To bump up the clock speed in BIOS you would need to adjust things like the core voltage, multiplier, and the FSB (front side bus) speed. The way that you get the actual speed of the CPU is multiplying the FSB and multiplier. In some extreme cases you might need to tinker with the core coltage to get stable results, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Depending on what options your BIOS give your best bet would be to try slowly raising the FSB of the chip and see how high you can get without having issues. The problem with this though is that it will also affect how your RAM works, and if you have cheaper generic RAM it might not be able to keep up with the CPU speed. If your RAM is already rated to run faster than your current FSB speed you should be ok.

You can also check into special overclocking programs that are specific to your motherboard. Generally these would come on the CD with all the drivers.
 
Fixing the IE font issue:

  1. Open IE, go to View, Text Size, select the text size you want
  2. Click on the File Menu, Press the CTRL key, click Close
  3. Reopen IE, wholla...the text size you selected should now be default

Multitasking problems:

Your system performance shows that your CPU usage is at 100%:

Ron Andersen said:
  • Physical Memory --
    Total: 1048048
    Available: 322728
    System Cache: 509596
  • Processes --
    80
  • CPU Usage --
    100%
  • Commit Charge --
    665M / 2463M
Click to expand...

This could be the issue causing you to not be able to perform multi-processes simultaneously. Even though you have available memory, your system is overclocked. I'd do what Ren suggests (Scandisk/Defrag) first, if that doesn't fix the problem try Start>Run and input sfc /scannow which should repair damaged Windows system files.

Even though you have performed AV scans and think you are clean, some viruses can compromise your AV software and give you a false-positive "clean" result. You can do a free online NAV scan at www.sarc.com by clicking on the "Check for Security Risks" link (right column, halfway down the page). The advantage to this scan is that you will be 100% certain that you are virus free.

IF YOU FIND A VIRUS, go back to www.sarc.com and search for removal instructions. The #1 n00b error is to just delete virus-infected files; which doesn't fix a thing (you either delete critical Windows files, further screwing up your system; or you reboot and the virus comes back). AV software is designed to recognize viruses (and prevent them) but not designed to remove them. If you ever find a virus, you need to record what it is and go to the AV manufacturer's page for removal instructions.

Page Cannot Be displayed error:

Try inputting your ISPs DNS addresses into your configurations. Sometimes "server assigned" DNS will not function as reliably as compared to specifying your DNS. As others mentioned, it could also be the result of a full Temp Internet Files dir, however that wouldn't explain why it's happening in multiple browser applications. The only other possibility is that your system performance is affecting data transfer as well. This could be an indicator of a virus as well.

Printing in IE probs:

Just a suggestion to see if there is any difference, but try printing in "Landscape" format instead of "Portrait". You can do this by clicking on File>Page Setup and modifying "Orientation". You can make this setting change permanent by doing the File> CTRL+Close.

Your printer is a system installed device (i.e. you don't have to install your printer in every program you wish to print from, instead you install it globally on Windows) and shouldn't differ between 1 application and the next. A possibility is corrupt IE/Windows files, which the sfc /scannow command may fix.
 
Deadhead,

Wow...I knew that coming to a "knife" site would net me outstanding computer help!

I'm not a computer dummy, knowing more about computers than most everyone I know (including everyone in my workplaces over the years, being the "go-to" person for computer help), but I'm nowhere near even an "assistant" to the IT Assistant Manager. ;)

Some of what you said I already knew, but didn't fully know how to correctly execute (not "literally" execute my computer; though at times .................. well, we all occasionally have those feelings). You've made them clear and with easy to perform steps. You ever think about writing computer help books? :thumbup:

You said that my computer might be "overclocked." According to the chip that I have, it should be "under clocked." If needed I gave basic hardware and settings of my chip/board above. Are we on the same page or are these different things?

Thank you and I'll give everyone an update as/when I get stuff done.

If there are more helpful hints...I'll take them.
 
Ron, can you email the hijack log to me or even post it here?

With your CPU Usage at 100%, it indicates that some processes are completely hogging your computer and are creating your problems.

Have you run spybot and/or adaware?

Another program to install is Microsoft Antispyware
 
Ron,

I missed that the CPU usage was spiked at 100%. Is it always like that, or was that just because you happened to be doing something when you took those results? If it is always like that we will need to find out what is using the processor cycles, and kill that process as it is likely either something infected or some other software glitch. Under normal circumstances your CPU usage should be almost nothing.

Running a virus scan form outside of your computer is always a good idea just incase a virus has infected the AV software. I have seent his happen a few times. You can run the AV scan as much as you like, and it will always report back a clean scan. Use an outside scanner and you get many infected files.
 
Just another thought off the top of my head...maybe increasing the size of your Virtual Memory may help. You can adjust that by Right-Clicking My Computer, left clicking on Properties, going to the Advanced Tab, and click the Settings button in the Performance area. In the Performance Options Dialog box, click on the Advanced Tab and select Change.

Your Virtual Memory dialog box will show the size of the paging file for each disk on the computer and the total paging size for all drives combined. The default is "System Managed Size", you could try temporarily increasing it x2 to see if there is any improvement.

I see my mistake...I used the term overclock to represent your maxed out system performance. Sorry about the confusion!

When I am not a raving knife-nut on Bladeforums; I moonlight as an ISP helpdesk supervisor. ISP support is my forte, but I have some general system support knowledge as well. I've been doing our company's support email for years, so writing directions in steps comes as second nature.
 
Ron,
One more thing I noticed, are you running Zone Alarm and the Norton firewall? That could be the cause of at least some of your internet browsing problems. You really should only have one firewall running on a PC at a time.
 
Ron,

I had EXACTLY the same problem a few months ago, just after I upgraded my windoze XP to SP2. Any time IE was the front window, it ate 100% CPU and took forever to load web pages. System virus free as far as I know, microsoft antispyware running (I highly recommend it BTW). I downloaded Mozilla Firefox, it solved the problem. I made it import the links saved by IE and I'm using it since.
On the other hand, at some moment when Windows Update downloaded some new patches, the IE problem dissapeared. I got so used to Firefox than never switched back.
Please tell me what process eats CPU when you experience the problem (iexplore or something else?), you can see that using the task monitor.
 
Look from the task manager what is the process taking the CPU resources while you are working. There are some strange interactions lately, like when one is using an USB stick some virus scanners go crazy, the same if one has some resources over the LAN.

TLM
 
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