Vista ram always at 80% in task manager

[Heeter]

Hi all,

I am trying to speed up a vista laptop for a friend. He has a Toshiba with 1gig ram and dual centrino cpu.

Anyways, I have managed to delete a whole bunch of crapware starting up with the laptop (Sometimes it take twenty minutes for it to settle down and become somewhat managable on bootup).

I have ran spyware applications, and run a virus scan as well, all clean.

The startup is getting a little better, but I check the task manager and the memory is still pinned at 80% or above continuously, the cpu is always hovering around 30%.

I have disabled the sidebar, defender, a whole bunch of toshiba crapware, and stopped avg from running a virus scan on boot up.

Aero is still enabled. I have no idea what to stop in the services manager.

Does this mean it is time for a memory upgrade? Or two gigs won't make a difference, and vista is just gonna suck up more ram with more processes?

Thanks

Heeter

 

[Dark Atheist]

vista is caching the ram, its using the linux and unix trick, although i would suggest getting at least another GB of ram, turning off aero would help, using windows basic (old grey theme) would also help as this would not require the use of the DWM (desktop window manager - think) serivce

 

[Heeter]

Hey, Thanks Carpo.

I see that DWM.exe in the processes as well. Quite a hog of resources for this laptop.

Just a small thought, I wonder why Toshiba would even consider putting vista onto such a weak setup. Oh well.

Heeter

 

[lancer]

because it saves them $20 per laptop in memory... derrr...

another service to turn off would be indexing unless he searches a lot, this will speed things up.

UAC is another i turn off... but perhaps this isn't recommended.

Turning aero off will speed things up a lot also.

One thing that may speed up the machine is turning on advanced sata support for hard drives, right click on whatever drives are installed, and i think its either under tools or policies.... anyway its there somewhere and allows caching. sorry from memory.

Installing another stick of ram will really help and considering you could buy a stick for like $20-$30 why not...

Once you've done all your trick i would delete the prefetch cache, this will slow the machine down for a few days until it relearns all you do on the machine but it will get rid of crap that has previously been prefetched and that are no longer needed. defender really takes up no resources you should reinstall or turn it back on.

there are also so many services you could turn off... see the below post, its up to you what you use and dont.

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=513758

 

[fitz]

I would recommend against clearing the prefetch cache as it has no value.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ryanmy/archive/2005/05/25/421882.aspx

The idea that clearing this out is a good thing just plain false.

edit:

Once you've done all your trick i would delete the prefetch cache, this will slow the machine down for a few days until it relearns all you do on the machine but it will get rid of crap that has previously been prefetched and that are no longer needed.

By your admission, you admit that is SLOWS down the machine.. as for getting rid of teh crap? Windows will do that automatically anyway.

edit2:
Heeter, if possible, I would honestly recommend starting with a clean install without the added OEM apps and going from there.

 

[Heeter]

Heeter, if possible, I would honestly recommend starting with a clean install without the added OEM apps and going from there.

Sounds like a plan,

Thanks,


Heeter

 

[Dark Atheist]

also turn off windows search - this is a pain that slows things down, even though (atm) i have a quad core and 8gb of ram i still turn off services i dont need

 

[Heeter]

also turn off windows search

How do I do that, Carpo?



Thanks

Heeter

 

[Sazar]

How do I do that, Carpo?

Thanks

Heeter

If he is talking about the indexing feature, I would leave that on if you use desktop search or are prone to looking for files, inclusive of emails in Outlook (which will also be indexed). The overhead hit is actually quite minimal after the initial indexing (which itself is a background process).

Turning it off is unlikely to yield a snappier system although some of your resource levels may show to be lower utilized than before.

Key thing to note with Vista. Just because your system shows resources being utilized does NOT mean the system will be slow. This is just how Vista operates. We are too used to trying to free up resources under XP honestly

Vista remains snappy and performs well even when resource usage seems high because it uses the resources very differently than XP did.

 

[Dark Atheist]

on low spec pcs it has been shown that turning off indexing and windows search does improve performance, as it is not updating every little change you make on the system, what you could do is goto control panel - admin tools - services and set them to manual, and turn them off - if this does help and you dont search a lot (i dont as i keep all things i require in one folder), if this doesnt help or you see no difference enable them again

 

[LeeJend]

I have a low end Toshiba laptop. There weare three things required to speed it up.
1) Install at least 1.5 GB RAM, preferably 2 GB.
2) Replace VISTA with XP or Linux.
3) Keep a bare bones install / minimize the programs that load at start up.

With a Dual Core CPU the laptop does not sound low end. If that is the case then 1 & 3 are the most critical. If he is running the VISTA 3D desktop turn it Off. It takes major graphics horsepower and laptops are notoriously low on graphics speed.

If it is a low end the laptops do not have the hardware to support VISTA. Because of this MS and computer manufacturers have multiple lawsuits pending over "VISTA Compatible" branding.

 

[Heeter]

That is exactly what I was questioning in my previous post. How can Toshiba get away with putting vista into this laptop?

Anyways, I convinced my friend to do 2 things:

1- We are removing the toshiba version of vista out and reinstalling vista.
2- His is picking up more ram today.

Heeter

 

[lancer]

I would recommend against clearing the prefetch cache as it has no value.
http://blogs.msdn.com/ryanmy/archive/2005/05/25/421882.aspx

The idea that clearing this out is a good thing just plain false.

edit:

By your admission, you admit that is SLOWS down the machine.. as for getting rid of teh crap? Windows will do that automatically anyway.

edit2:
Heeter, if possible, I would honestly recommend starting with a clean install without the added OEM apps and going from there.

i disagree, but whatever.

 

[LordOfLA]

vista does a much better job of managing the prefetch cache than XP. You should never interfere with vista prefetch unless you want to slow your PC down for a few weeks.