Help! slow start up and processing

Hi all, I am not a computer savvy guy and I have an issue. I run Vista home basic on a emachine that has pentium processor and2GB ram. It is slow to start up and bogs down. I have checked start up items, defraged, run norton, defender and white canyon to check for viruses. It still runs slow, in task manger I show 70 processes running and using 80-90% of physical memory. This is without any programs open. Is there anything I could do to eliminate the number of processes being run that aren't necessary or any way to use less memory? In other words any advice you can provide before I trash the computer and go back to using smoke signals and two cans with string to communicate with the outside world........

My bad i was at work when I wrote it and thought that the ram wasn't right. It is 2GB ram but still just cycling sooooo slow....

 

512 RAM is WAY too little for Vista. You won't get even decent performance until you have 1GB of RAM, and 2GB is even better.

 

Hi thanks again, yeah i was at work when i wrote it up and it didn't seem right. It is 2GB ram but the problem is the same even if I was wrong with the amount of memory........... I was thinking of using some of the info from the vistatweaks forum to disable some of the services they state are not really necessary to have running for the kind of usage we use it for. Mainly my wife and I use it for email, social networking and reading the news from the states. My kids will play some very basic games on it, elementary school age games and we store pictures.....that is about it........any advice is appreciated......

 

I have 1.5 gigs of ram and my start up and takes for ever just to get to the pass word screen. like 5min slow. i checked start uo and nothing in there i also looked to se what was running right after i did get to the desk top and same stuff my older pc has and it dont bogg and has only 512 with vista?????

 

I hope you have solved the problem by now. If not, for one please check your system's
efficiency index. Go to the control panel > system & config. > system, click on the link next
to the index number. In the new window you'll have a link - how to improve efficiency.
You can also download and run Vista Service Optimizer (freeware) and/or visit this page:
http://www.winvistaclub.com/t1.html
The bottom line however is, that your system's performance depends on your particular
configuration and all the programs you have installed, so it's hard to determine what would
the solution.

 

My pc is an intel pentium 4, 1gb ram , nvidia gforce 6200 gt 512mb.

my windows vista start up is very quick i have a 160 gb harddrive that is filled to the brim and that has slowed it down a little bit but other than that its the same

maybe you could partition your hard-drive and install windows xp on the partition and have it duel boot and see how xp handles on your computer it will be quicker than vista i found that for me but i just thought i should upgrade

 

hi spike1107,

you better format your PC & then check.
or else reason might be due to RAM malfunctioning or Processor getting heat too much.

 

If you speak german, this might help you : http://www.techfacts.de/forum/windows-vista/381-sehr-langsam.html
If not, have you considered buying a SSD hardrive ? Those can be accessed alot faster than conventional hard drives, if you put your windows partition on that harddrive, the computer should be able to boot faster. Also a bit more RAM can't hurt of course