Thread: Yet another slow computer thread

I realize this is probably the umpteenth slow computer thread, but I searched and read various previous posts but I think every situation is diffrent. My computer started running slow a few months back and got some great advice from this section from some very knowledgable people. But as of late, about three weeks or so, my computer is so bogged down it rivals a slow dial up connection, and losing in the race. Everything is slow on it. I have used and still use Super anti spyware which usually catches about 60 "advance tracking cookies" in the file system. I run this once or twice a week with the same results. I also use Malwarebytes that comes up clean each time. My system runs an automatic defrag once a week.

I have a Dell PC (start flaming at me now Mac people). that I have had for about three years. I use Micro PC-illin virus protection that comes out clean each run.

When I have more than one window open, you can start to see the speed drastically slow down, even though with just one window open it is slow. Watching videos or live streams is not even an option. If there is a video that I want to see, I have to open it and let it sit for a while so I can watch it without buffering endlessly. It really hurt last night because I couldn't watch the live stream of the game last night. I downloaded an album from iTunes the other day and it took nearly an hour to DL. Those are just a few examples of what is going on.

I run Vista (strike 2 Mac people, I know) and I think I am on IE 7. Not to long after the slowing down started, we had some elecrical problems at the house and have had a power loss 3 times while the computer was on, which made it cosiderably worse. Here is what a couple people have told me so far. Take the back off and hit it with the canned air cleaner to remove any dust (haven't tried yet). Remove pictures from computer, I have about 5 to 6 thousand (haven't tried that yet either). Unplug all cables from the modem and router and let sit for about half an hour. Tried that but no diffrence. I have had my modem from Verizon for nearly eleven years, could modem go bad and slow everything down?

I hope I didn't provide too much info, but just am anxious to get back to "normal".

How much ram does your PC have? You may need more.
Upgrading the video card might help as well. What kind of video card to you have in there now? I would upgrade to a dedicated video card that has it's own ram and processor if you don't have that already. It will really help with your computers performance IMO.

I'm a Mac fan, but I've heard great things about Windows 7. Maybe you should do a clean install of that? and also maybe upgrade the ram

yeah the vid card could be the some of the prob. especially if the vids you are trying to watch are high def and your card is under powered. more ram is always a good thing. how much space is left on you hard drive. maybe move some of those pics off. a reinstall of the OS would most definitly work, especially if your pc is that old.
Windows7 is a great upgrade but not sure your hard ware would be able to keep up.

Well thanks for the helpful comments so far. Here is what I've come up with so far. When I look up my video card, it says it is an ATI Radeon HD 2400 pro. Reading the Microsoft site, I don't know if it is a card that can be easily removed or if it's installed in the motherboard. I also read that if that's the case, some computers have ports where a video card can be put, like I said, I haven't gotten that far into that part yet. Needless to say, I checked the settings on it and it says "Total available graphics memory" is 1405 MB.

As far as the RAM goes. Accorrding to the System tab in Control panel it shows my computer has 3 GB. Now I have to be honest and say that I've never looked at this page. But when I had XP, I could swear that they used to show a pie chart that showed what your computer had at first and what you had available. I'm no computer expert but I would imagine that I started with more then 3 GB.

One correction. I did check the properties of my pictures folder and it showed over 20,000 files. Does files mean pictures? If that's the case, I would imagine that takes a lot of space. One thing I'm going to try tomorrow is dump all of my pictures onto an external hard drive and check the status of the computer to see if anything changes.

My first thought is maybe a heat issue. I really doubt it's the video card going bad, maybe it's just getting too hot.

It looks to be a pretty solid card for what you use it for. 3 gigs of RAM is plenty but you also may have a bad stick. Maybe try taking a stick of ram out and boot it up to see if that makes a difference.


I believe XP can only tell that your PC has up to 2 gigs of ram. Anything more still works fine, but xp can't tell you have it. I'm running Win 7 and love it, if you have a copy do yourself a favor and give it a fresh install.

Originally Posted by gokingsgo

My first thought is maybe a heat issue. I really doubt it's the video card going bad, maybe it's just getting too hot.

It looks to be a pretty solid card for what you use it for. 3 gigs of RAM is plenty but you also may have a bad stick. Maybe try taking a stick of ram out and boot it up to see if that makes a difference.


I believe XP can only tell that your PC has up to 2 gigs of ram. Anything more still works fine, but xp can't tell you have it. I'm running Win 7 and love it, if you have a copy do yourself a favor and give it a fresh install.

Thanks for the info, forgive my ignorance but when you say bad stick, what are you refering to?

As far as the slowness, this will happen over time with Windows. However, it really should not affect the downloads of video and an iTunes album.

To me, it sounds like a majority of the problems rest somewhere between the Network Card and the Internet. If you have had your Verizon router for 11 years, it may be worth it to give them a call and see if you can get it replaced. Yes, they do go bad and can slow things down. They are pieces of electrical equipment.

One other thing I would do would be replace the network card in the computer with a new one.

Then, I would start looking at thing like the hard drives, memory, and video card. Before I would make any recommendations like that, I would like to know the model of the Dell, so I can look at the specs to see what type of memory you have, etc.

I figured I had nothing to lose and it was suggested here, I called verizon tech support, which if you've had the pleasure of doing, is quite the treat. They directed me to the verizon speed test site. My upload speed was .732 mbs(not sure if the letters are correct, lost my scratch paper). My download speed though was .168. They did a check on my line and found that for the distance I am from the "station", my plan is too fast and the distance can't accomidate it. I geuss my plan is 1.5 to 3 MB. They changed my plan to .768 mbps and that is supposed to take affect on Monday. I geuss it's addition by subtraction. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed and see what happens.