What anti-virus do you use?

[Ghozer 112]

I dont know what the issue is/was, when it was installed it just went crazy, and various programs didn't work under it, I had bsod's and all sorts.. uninstalled it and it was fine...

[dmh79 10]

Not on my machine or indeed my sister's machine.

Generally Sandboxie should operate with no performance loss, but as every single PC is different there can never be a guarantee that as with any new program that you install that there won't be conflicts.

 

As for your PC 4GB should be able to handle a number of programs at once.

 

Have you used Windows Task Manager to analyse CPU and which applications and processes are running.

 

Sounds to me like something on your PC is causing your PC to run slowly either a program conflict or even malware of some kind.

If you haven't done so already analsye your CPU usage and see just which program or process is eating up your CPU, this will at least give you a clue as to where the problem may lie.

 

I've checked processes and the main ones running are:

csrss.exe (I don't know what this is )- 9208k

explorer.exe - 3932k

firefox.exe - 119,336k

 

One thing I have just noticed is that under the 'performance' tab of Task Manager, in the physical memory box, it says I have 766mb of total memory, 277mb cached. I know there is actually 4gb of memory in there because I bought it from Crucial and installed it myself! Also in the Control Panel its showing that I have 4gb installed.

It slows down all the time. If I have more than a couple of tabs open on firefox with media monkey running in the background it'll usually give me at least 1 "not responding" message. If I try to stream HD video from Youtube that'll always slow it to a halt too. I know its not my connection as its usually at a steady 8-9mb. If windows decides it needs to update then I can forget about doing anything for at least half an hour.

If you or anyone else knows how I can fix this then I'd be well chuffed! :-D

My processor is Intel Pentium Dual CPU E2120 2GHz if thats any help!

[alchresearch 214]

I use ESET's NOD32. Not free, but worth every penny.

[L00b 441]

I very recently changed from AVGFree to MS Security Essentials, after reading a recent similar thread on here. Got to say, MSSE seems better (but then again, I very recently changed my desktop PC and from WinXP to Win7, so it could simply be a matter of better integration ). Definitely much less of a resource hog.

 

I also use CCleaner after every browsing session, and a MalwareBytes DB update/full scan every two days or so.

 

Yet to give sandboxie a go, I'll do that sometime in April.

[sheila88 10]

ive always used avg

[dmh79 10]

That sounds like the problem tbh - that it is only using some of your RAM, is the computer constantly accessing the hard drive by any chance?

 

What OS is it?

 

Its Vista Home Premium.

I've just checked the resource monitor and it does seem that my PC is accessing the HDD quite a lot, considering all I'm running at the moment is Firefox and the resource monitor.

It says 76% of physical memory is in use!! It also says the RAM is averaging about 8 "hard faults/second". I'm not really too sure what that means but it can't be good.

So how do I make my PC use all the RAM? Or at least 3gb which is the most Vista can use as far as I'm aware.

[steev 10]

It also says the RAM is averaging about 8 "hard faults/second".

 

Download the Ultimate boot CD (Google UBCD), it includes something called Memtest that'll check your RAM for faults.

 

So how do I make my PC use all the RAM? Or at least 3gb which is the most Vista can use as far as I'm aware.

 

32-bit operating systems have a 4GB limit, including all memory that's on everything in there. Depending on what graphics you have in there plus other bits it'll see 3-3.5GB, only way to change this is to go for 64-bit.

[medusa 16]

I'm on nod32, with Clamwin and AVG held in reserve in case I need them. Clamwin found a Trojan missed by nod32 a couple of weeks ago, which I suspected I had because I'd opened an email from a friend which then turned out to have been sent by a very well disguised bot, so I scanned everything until I found it.

 

I've also got Sandboxie, Spyware Terminator, Ad-Aware, Ccleaner, Malwarebytes and a few other things hanging about, set up for regular scans and used when needed.

 

I don't use AVG for regular scans because I use a laptop which is turned off when I'm not using it (because of where it's used) and AVG significantly slows the machine down for an hour whilst doing a scan- nod32 doesn't slow it down.

 

I tried Avast recently, but for some reason it really disagreed with Spyware Terminator and no matter how many times I reinstalled, both found the other every couple of hours and threw a wobbly after reporting each other as a threat, which was a complete pain in the backside after a while.

[dmh79 10]

Download the Ultimate boot CD (Google UBCD), it includes something called Memtest that'll check your RAM for faults.

 

 

 

32-bit operating systems have a 4GB limit, including all memory that's on everything in there. Depending on what graphics you have in there plus other bits it'll see 3-3.5GB, only way to change this is to go for 64-bit.

 

The problem is that when I check the RAM being used in Task Manager it says I only have 766mb of physical memory.

But when I check in Control Panel>system & maintenance it says I have 4gb of RAM installed. So I need to know how to make my PC use it!

For graphics I've got NVIDIA GeForce 7050 / NVIDIA nForce 620i. I think this is just on board graphics card so its not that great, but I only ever use it for web browsing, music and videos, so it should be fine.

[Kingmaker2 10]

I'm on nod32, with Clamwin and AVG held in reserve in case I need them. Clamwin found a Trojan missed by nod32 a couple of weeks ago, which I suspected I had because I'd opened an email from a friend which then turned out to have been sent by a very well disguised bot, so I scanned everything until I found it.

 

Medusa If you have Sandboxie installed then how come you just didn't open the e-mail in a sandbox?

 

You can open any e-mail client, e-mail or seperate attachment in a sandbox with Sandboxie.

All you need do is right click on the specific icon e.g outlook etc and then run sandboxed.....that way you wouldn't have become infected.

 

For all those not yet familar with the benefits of Sandboxie, isn't just capable of keeping you safe whilst surfing, it can also keep you safe from e-mail viruses and new program malware (You can run the new program in a sandbox) You can also run messenger in a sandbox and also open up video or Jpegs in a sandbox, in fact Sandboxie will allow you to open or run most things in a sandbox.

 

http://www.sandboxie.com/

[medusa 16]

Medusa If you have Sandboxie installed then how come you just didn't open the e-mail in a sandbox?

 

You can open any e-mail client, e-mail or seperate attachment in a sandbox with Sandboxie.

All you need do is right click on the specific icon e.g outlook etc and then run sandboxed.....that way you wouldn't have become infected.

 

For all those not yet familar with the benefits of Sandboxie, isn't just capable of keeping you safe whilst surfing, it can also keep you safe from e-mail viruses and new program malware (You can run the new program in a sandbox) You can also run messenger in a sandbox and also open up video or Jpegs in a sandbox, in fact Sandboxie will allow you to open or run most things in a sandbox.

 

http://www.sandboxie.com/

 

It's a simple case of being in a rush and not starting Sandboxie up- I had my browser open without the sand box because I was installing something and flicked round a few sites whilst it was happening, one of which was my email box. Silly mistake.

[steev 10]

The problem is that when I check the RAM being used in Task Manager it says I only have 766mb of physical memory.

But when I check in Control Panel>system & maintenance it says I have 4gb of RAM installed. So I need to know how to make my PC use it!

 

But you also say...

 

...the RAM is averaging about 8 "hard faults/second". I'm not really too sure what that means but it can't be good.

 

It can't be good, in fact it's bad, & would suggest there's a fault with at least one stick of memory.

 

Windows should be using, or at least seeing, most of the 4GB you have, but if there are dodgy sticks then part of it may be reporting just the memory that's good. If you've got errors reported like the above then run Memtest on it before you go trawling Windows trying to correct something that may not even be the root cause of the problem.