When I'm running iTunes and the internet, sometimes the computer gets bogged down or slows. My Dell is about 5 years old. What could I do to relieve this problem without buying a whole new machine? Is this a RAM issue?

XP is a huge memory hog. ME (mistake edition) has bad memory usage problems. It sounds like you are paging really bad on the hard drive. How much ram and what OS are you running? How much free space on the hard drive and what size? When was the last time you cleared all caches and temp files and ran a defrag?

All of these things will drag your machine to a crawl.

Run the task manager and watch.

The performance monitor is better, because you get a log, but some close attention to the task manager should highlight gross issues.

If the condition is somewhat repeatable, keep the task manager off to a screen corner somewhere. Watch your RAM. On the performance tab, there is physical memory. Look at the total, then look at the commit change catagory. When your system boots, the commit change should be fairly low, some 150 - 200Mb, depending on all the crap your machine chooses to load. Note your available RAM.

Right there, you might see an issue. Should the avaliable ram drop below 150 Mbytes, you could run into trouble doing iTunes, playing music, and a browser, depending on the page content, size of in memory cache, etc... This amount is not really enough to run a lot of things well.

Run your stuff, watching the commit change. If it spikes, and that's keyed to a slowdown, you've a RAM issue. (highly likely anyway)

Again, watch the available ram, also watch your commit change. If you keep opening things, you will eventually see the available RAM hit a low point, and commit change rise. This is swapping happening. It's a major slowdown. This is what you are watching for, or spikes.

If that does not happen, then you've got something hogging CPU.

Switch to the process tab.

Now, look at the CPU column and click on it until the biggest CPU hogs are listed at the top.

When your computer is essentially doing nothing, the System Idle Process will be listed at the top with 90 some CPU free.

This is a good thing.

Now, go do your stuff. On a slowdown, look at what processes are hogging the CPU.

Coupla things could be happening:

Your media player might have lots of trippy graphics going on. Those eat a lot of CPU. Same media player could just be flaky on some files and not others. That will show up as CPU time consumed.

Your browser might be having to render a lot of crap. Depending on the pages you select, god knows what might end up running in Java, Flash, et al...

Use the process tab to get an idea of what consumes what.

If it's some cryptic thing, google it. Might be a web browser plug in consuming a lot of your system, buggy driver that is fixed on either an upgrade or downgrade, corrupted application, or potentially browser plug in.

If you identify something, and you don't really care about it. Get rid of it, then repeat the above.

Some general things you can do right now:

After boot, close down most all of the little goodies that end up running. Look at your RAM consumption, remove big offenders from your startup folder, or do a registry search for "run once" and remove them from there.

Be careful with that. My advice is to rename the executable a run once entry points to. Call it somecrap.exe.old That way, should it be a necessary thing, you've still got the registry key to edit back later!

Also...if you have XP do a registry save to external media as well as setting a new recovery point in system restore should you need to recover.

One thing I did not ask....I assume your AV is up to date on definitions and you run some kind of spyware removal utility on a regular basis. Spyware can literally kill a PC and if you have a virus you could be the one that just spammed me! (kidding but your PC could be hi-jacked and emailing spam to thousands of people!)

Spybot and Ad-Aware are both great free utilities!

Totally forgot the AV ware. It's a complete killer.

(don't run any --that's why I forget)

Dudes, you're talking over my head here. There are no viruses or any other garbage going on. I'm a basic computer user: internet, music, and word documents. It's simply a matter of too many programs runing at once slowing me down. I notice this most when I have iTunes on listening to music while surfing the web. When I click or type, it pauses a bit. I don't believe I have XP, how do you find out?

Edit:

When your machine boots, it will say "Windows XP". If it does not say that, it's something else.

Windows ME (scary) Win98 or Win2k.

Make sure that box has 1/2 GB RAM, or more. Should be plenty for that kind of thing.

Right click on "My Computer" and goto properties. It should tell you there the OS and how much physical memory you have.

Also....if you have access to a 8-year old they can be very helpful!
(Only Kidding Man)

I'm guessing you don't have enough RAM. For what you are doing, a good realistic minimum is probably 512MB of RAM. It's probably XP if the Dell is really 5 years old, but it could be ME or even Windows 2000, which would be fine (ME no - it's gawd-awful). As already suggested, right-click on My Computer and select "properties" to find out how much RAM you have. (Sometimes there's a pause while Windows displays the amount of RAM after it pops up the little window of system properties - wait a second.)

Adding RAM to a desktop machine is not really hard but is daunting to many non-computer people. It's simply a matter of sticking the RAM into a thin socket and snapping it in securely (it only goes in one way). The trick is getting the right kind to work in your machine and then also having room to add more. One neat little utility I use to check out the RAM in a computer is called CPU-Z:

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

Download it and run it if you want to see how many RAM DIMMs or RIMMs are installed in your computer and how many open sockets you might have to add more. If you happen to have RDRAM (Rambus RAM), you are unlucky because it's kind of expensive to upgrade vs. SDRAM or DDR, which is easy to find and cheap to get used Via Craigslist.

You can also go to http://www.crucial.com and just pick your machine type to figure out exactly what kind of RAM you need to get for this thing (Crucial may not be the cheapest place to buy it however).

Anyway, if you have an empty DIMM socket (SDRAM or DDR type of RAM), you're in luck - easy to add more RAM. If not, you'll have to remove a smaller RAM DIMM and replace it with a larger one to increase how much RAM you have.

If you have RDRAM (RIMMs), you must add RAM in pairs; you don't have to do that with SDRAM/DDR, you can just add one.

Andrew

"When I'm running iTunes and the internet, "

There's your problem..iTunes is a HOG!

Itunes is one of the main reasons I chose to get a "ZUNE"! I have used it before and did not like it. Zune software, IMHO, is far better than Itunes. I have also purchased the PRO version of Winamp and have started using it instead and like that as well. Neat thing about Winamp is the Beta remote program that allows you to stream your music anywhere from the internet. You can even share playlists with other people and allow them to stream your music.

Check task manager for scvhost being at 100%.

Alrighty then! I'll check tonight to see what exactly I have. I know it's not XP or ME. Windows 98 or 2000 sounds about right...

Okay, here's how lame I am:

Dell Dimension 4600
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.40GHz
Processor Speed: 2.34 GHz
Memory (RAM) 256 MB
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Operating System Version: 5.1.2600

I'm up to date on virus and spyware stuff, so I know that's not the issue, so it sounds like my RAM is a tad weak? I would like to add a little muscle to my machine without getting rid of it, because otherwise, I'm very happy with the computer. Thoughts? Thanks for replying!!

Buy 1/2 GB ram for that machine.

Add it to what is there, removing some, if you must.

End result will be either 1/2 GB + 128M or 256M

Plenty for your purposes.

To clarify, 1/2 GB = 512MB. For an odd reason (binary number system), a "kilobyte" of RAM is not 1000 bytes, it's 1024 bytes, which makes the math weird when you calculate RAM. Anyway, 512MB is a good minimum.

According to Crucial.com, you have DDR PC3200 RAM which is good. Fry's has it on sale all the time for really cheap, but you can also look for deals at www.boddit.com (which combines many other deal sites). Just make sure you get desktop and not laptop (SO-DIMM) RAM. I'd even consider getting a 1 GB stick of RAM if you plan on keeping this computer a while longer. Your 2.4GHZ P4 CPU is plenty fast enough to keep it around for a while longer.

Andrew

Sweet. I'm not opposed to going to 1GB of RAM since there is no reason to change computers for awhile, and I like fast response and tend to run iTunes when I'm doing other stuff on the computer. Providing I paid someone to come take care of this, plus cost of parts, what am I looking at ballbpark? I don't want to get bent over by someone who knows I'm "not in the know"...

Ok....not wanting to get to techy but that machine, from having nothing but Dell at work, must be upgraded in sets. If you want 1gb then you need a matched set of 512mb. I would recommend something like:
http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=E61EC373A5CA7304
Take these two chips and put them were the old ones are....pretty easy there are little levers to release the old ones and when you push in the new ones you will see and ear the locks tabs click in place. If you get the DDR400 yoiu will be better off than the DDR333 as the 400 is faster memory. If you get the DDR333 you can then leave the old ones in and you would then put the new ones in the two unused slots. This would give you 1.256gb of ram. If you buy 400 and mix with the existing 333 the 400 will only operate at the slower speed of whats there. It can operate faster by itself.

TIP.....Leave the machine plugged in and poewered down when changing them. Only touch the edges and not the wafers on the chips. While replacing them always make sure you are touching metal inside the box. By leaving it plugged the box is properly grounded and by touching the metal framework you ground yourself as well and reduce the risk of electrostatic energy from your body to damage the chip.