slow computer

[simon_w84]

Can anyone help me,

i am currently having major problems with my computer because its running so slow.

I have a: HP Pavillion
AMD Athlon Xp 1800+
2x 256 P2100 DDR memory
Geforce4 mx 420 Graphics Card
200GB of hardrive space.
and running XP Home Edition.

When i boot my machine i have about 350mb off memory free, if i do anything in windows explorer or try to process a couple of programs at the same time, my memory drops down to under 50 MB and i get virtual memory error and my system dies, if i optimize the memory it is fine for awhile but then does the same again later on. When i look at task manager my System Idle Processes are reading 95 of my CPU when i'm not doing anything

Do i need an upgrade or something, i dont mind spending money if i have to, but don't know if there is anything i can buy to fix this??


HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Iceman]

buy another 256mb stick of ram

should sort out the problem

 

[dave holbon]

Are you sure that you have 200Gb of hard drive space available? This seems a bit large to me. 512Mb ram should not allow XP Home to become stressed even with a smallish drive (20Gb).

VME’s are usually caused by drive problems, are you using NTFS?

When you first install XP using large amounts of CPU time is normal (during idle time) if you have the disk indexing service enabled and for disk transaction timings, this will case after about four days or twenty hours use.

What are you using to establish you memory profile is to arrive at the conclusion that you have only 50Mb of memory available and what exactly are the virtual memory errors you have encountered (the actual message or memory dump)?

The system you have does not need upgrading just sorting.