Posted: 4/8/2008 8:34:46 AM EDT
I'm on a laptop running Vista home with 1 gig of RAM and while it isn't the fastest machine ever, it ran at a decent speed. That is up until 2 days ago when my RAM just crapped out on me. Several programs froze up on me, I rebooted the computer, saw that with just firefox and the little CPU & RAM meter on the side running my RAM is at about 80% capacity  Updated versions of both Norton Anti Virus and AVG have found nothing, I ran disk cleanup and also deragged. What is happening to my machine? is this equipment failure from over heating maybe? I'm a student and cannot afford this thing going tits up on me. 
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Not familiar with Vistas quirks, but it sounds like you've got a process or processes that are eating up your available RAM. Look in the Task Manager (right click in the task bar > Task Manager), click the Processes Tab, and look for high cpu utilization and/or high memory usage. Most likely culprit: Services that are running in the background. |
did that and nothing really stuck out. Firefox and task manager were using more cpu than anything and the amounts they were using were quite small. All the unfamiliar processes running, I looked up and they are legit. 
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Have you looked at your ram usage using these methods before you had the problem? On most modern operating systems they use as much ram as they can for buffers, releasing it as needed for applications so 80% usage may not be unusual unless you have checked before. Firefox can really eat the ram as well, it seems to still have some memory leaks in v2 1G is probably not enough for Vista. Buy as much as the laptop can handle or switch to XP. If it seems like apps are crashing for random reasons, give MemTest86 a try. It will check all of your ram thoroughly. |
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for vista you need a minimum of 1 gig. Try putting some more in. And if you can dump any unwanted apps. anything thats a trial, that should free up space. also check out this site; http://www.komando.com/tips/index.aspx?id=4127 she knows her stuff and tries all the programs, tools or whatever on her own system. (did that sound dirty?)  Anyways, there links to free stuff and Q&A the above is about comparing and troubleshooting laptops. |
This is really good advice - Norton has been a pile of unadulterated crap since Windows95. Get rid of it completely if you can, there is nothing it has that can't be done with better programs. |
It used to run at about 40% capactity and the increase has been very recent. It looks like alot of the HP programs where really bogging the system down along and now I can operate it at about 60% safely so long as I keep an eye on the meter and don't run to much. Gonna look into MemTest86 along with upgrading the RAM. Upgrading was always on my "to do list", but looks like its taking priority now. |