I have 512 MB total physical memory and my sys info is showing me to have 181 MB of available physical memory left. I have 2 GB of total virtual memory with 1.96 GB of available left. page file space is 1.20 GB.My computer seems really slow and I have done all of the virus screenings with microsoft and webroot and its clean. I have disk cleaned up and defragged and still seems to hang up at times and especially if you click oncer again on a "hung up" page. It will giveyou the hourglass effect and will not respond. Any other suggestions to do? I have XP home edition sp3 and have all the updates for windows explorer 8. Thanks!1 person needs an answerI do too

looks like your virtual memory amounts are overstated / oversized and there is an imbalance between your physically memory and virtually memory. is your virtual memory set to automatic? "texancobra52" wrote in message news:362dc8f7-19d5-4a7b-84ed-e54ef0ffb8ae...I have 512 MB total physical memory and my sys info is showing me to have 181 MB of available physical memory left. I have 2 GB of total virtual memory with 1.96 GB of available left. page file space is 1.20 GB.My computer seems really slow and I have done all of the virus screenings with microsoft and webroot and its clean. I have disk cleaned up and defragged and still seems to hang up at times and especially if you click oncer again on a "hung up" page. It will giveyou the hourglass effect and will not respond. Any other suggestions to do? I have XP home edition sp3 and have all the updates for windows explorer 8. Thanks!db`...>-)))> `...>-)))> share the nirvana mann

It sounds like you have plenty of RAM. But if you want to double-check, skip to #4 below.Make and model of PC? XP Home or Pro or MCE? What SP level are you at? Have you installed the most up-to-date XP security patches? What security programs (e.g., antivirus, other antimalware, firewall, etc.) do you run? Are they up-to-date?Here are the usual causes of sluggishness:1. Malicious software (malware). You need to rule this out first! This page has excellent information:http://web.archive.org/web/20080610163247/http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware2. Certain programs that are designed to combat malware (e.g., Norton and McAfee). Ironically, they can slow things down because they simply use way too many resources. Sometime they cause conflicts with other programs. And their default mode is to scan your entire hard drive each time you boot up. Fortunately, there are other antimalware programs available that use far fewer resources (e.g., NOD32, Avast, and Avira).3. Too many of certain types of programs always running in the background -- with or without your knowledge. (Then again, many programs that run in the background have trivial consequences.)To determine every program and process you are currently running, use the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Processes tab. You should be able to sort by CPU usage or Memory usage to get a good ideas which ones are the resource/memory hogs. You should write down the names of all the processes for future detective work (or take a snapshot and print it out).Use these sites to determine what these programs are and to learn how to configure them not to always run at startup:http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php#THE_PROGRAMShttp://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htmSometimes it is recommended to use msconfig to configure the programs to not run at startup. A better, more thorough program is Autoruns:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspxBut before you do this, you should use the preference settings of the program in question. Otherwise, for some programs, they will return to the startup list anyway!If you do wish to use msconfig, it may be accessed this way:Start | Run | type "msconfig" (without the quotation marks) | Enter (or OK)4. Not enough RAM, which causes the PC to overly rely on the pagefile. A quick way to determine if this is happening is to open Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then note the three values under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit, and Peak.The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory you used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value of Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM. In case you want to explore this further, you may run Page File Monitor for Windows XP:http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm5. You might also want to check that your hard drive's access mode didn't change from DMA to PIO:http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/is-your-hard-disk-cddvd-drives-too-slow-while-copying/andhttp://winhlp.com/node/10

I have 512 MB total physical memory and my sys info is showing me to have 181 MB of available physical memory left. I have 2 GB of total virtual memory with 1.96 GB of available left. page file space is 1.20 GB.My computer seems really slow and I have done all of the virus screenings with microsoft and webroot and its clean. I have disk cleaned up and defragged and still seems to hang up at times and especially if you click oncer again on a "hung up" page. It will giveyou the hourglass effect and will not respond. Any other suggestions to do? I have XP home edition sp3 and have all the updates for windows explorer 8. Thanks!While 512mb of installed ram exceeds the minimum system requirements for running Windows Xp, it has been my experience that it is best to have 1gb or better. Be advised that Xp will only recognize 3.0gb - 3.25gb no matter how much you actually have installed.I would agree with DataBaseBen that there appears to be an imbalance between the fixed ram and the virtual ram. If it were me I would either scale the virtual memory back to 1.5gb or preferably set it to system managed. Depending on the size of your hard drive you could create a small 2.0gb partition and designate it specifically and solely for paging file. Doing this will not offer tremendous advantages but, does offer some in the performance area.On a final thought, if you can purchase (even a used) pci graphics card it would add even more to the performance.I don't vote for myself I'm not here for the points. If this post helps you, vote. Visit my forum @ http://repairbotsonline.com/