Computer is very slow, hanging for minutes at a time, solutions?

[Bajan]

MS Windows XP Home Edition 2002 Service Pack 2 on Sony VAIO Pentium R 1.7
Ghz, 512 MB RAM - running Skype, Outlook, Dragon Nat Speaking etc.
Shows using 350 MB RAM. So slow I can type 30 words before any show up on
screen etc. I have defragmented etc - "experts" have tried to fix, nothing
working. Any ideas, system is working but on what? I have Norton & have
checked with Spy Bot and used Reg Scrub.

 

[scfosdick]

Are you having the same problem when you try typing in a much smaller
application like notepad? If it is, then it would be my guess that there is
some other application running in the background that is keeping it from
displaying what you've typed in Word.

Try "Alt-Cntl-Delete" to open the task manager. Select the second tab called
Processes. You will likely have several listed and my need to scroll down.
Watch the column that says CPU. Most of the processes will display 00,
meaning they are not using any of our cpu time, but there might be one of two
that are displaying a number. Anything with a number especially if it's a big
number, will actually be running (even if you don't realize it or want it.).
At this point, you can select the one that's hogging all the cpu time and end
it. However, better would be to then find it and remove it from your
computer, becuase if it's running and you didn't request it, chances are that
just stopping it from task master will not prevent it from starting again on
its own.

I hope this helps.

 

[Bajan]

Thanks. No it does not appear to be a problem for Notebook, I checked the
Processes and under CPU it shows System Idle Process 99 and nothing else.
Under Mem it shows System Idle Process as only 16K, SVCHost 30Mb,Explorer
21Mb,Skype 19Mb,Rtvscan 19Mb & a few others. Does 99 mean 99%? Someone
suggested I need to add RAM, another expert said not so. Any other thoughts
of what to do next - it's hanging for 3 minutes at a time - I'm going nuts!

 

[Bajan]

One more thing - can I delete System Idle Process, probably not?