[Ben]

I'm having a few issues with my computer. I think MS having to fix problems with flaws in explorer caused a lot of them over the past week or so (which should be sorted now, I've downloaded enough bloody updates).

The main problems have been when playing music/video, I get stuttering. It's as though my rams busy, but I've got 3 gig and usually (as far as I know) there's nothing else running and I'll still get problems. As a case in point, I was listening to some music before and opened photoshop, I know photoshop is a bit resource heavy when it boots, but its never affected music or video playback before

I defragged the other day, ran my anti-virus, and am currently scanning with ad-aware 200570 files in and its found nothing. I dont think it's my codecs because my browser has played up a bit too, again as though my computer's busy (this might have been when windows was constantly downloading updates)

Anyone have any ideas?

[Hendo]

I get a really bad fraterate when watching flash videos (youtube, gametrailers and all that) but that's about it.
I had the same thing on my PC, I'm guessing it's to do with enough RAM on my problem, if you've got 3 gig that sounds plenty to me.

[JimboXiii]

you could try downloading and running ccleaner (just google it, its free) that'll get rid of any unwanted stuff on your system.

[Ben]

I'll give it a try. Failing that I think I'm going to look into reinstalling windows (via software means), I've never done it before so I need to look into how to do a few things. Like will it keep all my documents, can I stop certain things from being deleted (my music and games for example). Browser settings I can resort, pain as it'll be, same with any saved passwords and various other programs such as the podcast stuff and nero

I did however manage to stop my documents folder from opening up every time I boot windows. No idea what caused it, and it wasn't a massive problem, but it's been doing it for about a year for seemingly no reason

[Ben]

I think that fixed it Jim, nice one I also deleted a load of videos (The Wire) as opening my video folder took a fucking age while it scanned everything. Just opened photoshop and skype whilst listening to some music, and it all worked fine

[JimboXiii]

no worries. It is my job after all.

[Ben]

It's not fixed, but it does appear to be better. Last night though I was doing nothing other than listening to music, the computer had only been on for a couple of hours, and it started skipping again

[Cyberpunk]

It could be something running in the background eating up the clock cycles Ben. Most pc's are semi-comatose when running music or video's, and that's when your background scanning programs, and the like, decide to kick in. You can turn off auto-scan on antivirus, for example, and long as you manually scan every week or two. Windows will download and install any updates when your pc is quiet.

Another idea is to bring up a run-box (Windows key + R) and type in 'msconfig'. Click on the 'Startup' tab, and see what starts with your pc. There's always stuff you can disable, such as Adobe auto-updater, itunes helper, and the like. If you're not sure about a program in this section, you can safely disable it, because if it throws your pc out of whack when you restart, just re-enable it.

[Ben]

yeah, msconfig is my fixall solution whenever anything goes wrong with my computer

I think it is something to do with being idle, like you say either an update (although nothing seemed to download the other night) or avast doing something. It's just odd that it's never been an issue until recently. I should just stop being lazy and get on Dells forums/email them about it

[Ben]

I hate computers. I fixed the problem I was having using some windows repairer thing that I cant remember the name of (I think it might have been windows tool kit or something like that?). It turned out that my sound problems were from windows putting itself in hibernate mode, then not waking up properly and causing a memory leak of some sort.

The other night windows explorer and Opera crashed, so i updated Opera and everything fell apart. I fixed that and everything was running smooth, then avast updated to a whole new version, restarting my computer without asking, making it run horrifically slow. I couldnt fix it by any simple means so did a system restore, which fucked up avast, so much so I cant even uninstal it, and making my computer run slow. I think I've got it back up to some sort of speed, but I was just trying to listen to the radio online and it was distorting (seems to be playing music ok now)

If I'd wont the lottery last night I think this would be in the bin and I'd be buying a new one. Until that started playing up then that would be in the bin, and so on.

[JimboXiii]

there is a simple solution to your PC problems

Spoiler

get a mac

[Ben]

Hey Jim, I just bought a mac for more than twice the price of my pc and now I cant run any of my programs or open .rar files. It looks nice, but it's less powerful than my current pc and has a stupid mouse, how do I fix this?

In all honesty everyone I know in the real world who's had a mac has had problems with it. My mates kept crashing, my brothers the picture kept moving across the screen and was "unfixable", and my sisters slowed to a crawl within 6 months (thought that was something macs didnt do?). Computers are shit regardless of which side of the war you're on

[JimboXiii]

oh its on now...

I can only go on personal experience, but i've never had a problem with my mac (well, nothing major anyway), its 5 years old and runs quicker that my winows laptop that is less than 12 months old. I recently upgraded it to osx 10.5 and put a gig of RAM in it, the only problem is it doesn't like our new sky router, but I'm blaming that on skys shit router / internet connection.

As you say people have different experiences from different machines, all of the windows machines i've owned (three in total) have all had massive problems with them. My very first win 95 PC never worked properly and cost nearly £2000, the second one was built by a friend when i went to uni, was the size of a house and was nothing but hassle from day one.

The last one is the HP laptop i bought last year, at first it was great, but now it has slowed to a crawl and takes 5 mins to boot up. I've stripped everything off bar essential programs and its no better. My last hope for it is formatting and upgrading to windows 7, then it might work properly.

[spatular]

its just luck of the draw imo, my dell pc running xp is a fair few years old now and it's rediculously reliable, it did start slowing down a little bit recently but i think it had a little spyware which was removed, also switched virus s/w to microsoft! (might be worth trying ben? if you can uninstall avast anyway, google microsoft security essentials) and put another 1gb in it, runs better than when it was new now. but i've had a laptop running vista for just over a year and it bsod's quite often

[Sly Reflex]

Here we go. Something to wind the mac users up.

Spoiler

I actually like macs, I was going to get one some time back, but the prices were extortionate for what they were.

[Cyberpunk]

JimboXiii, on 13 February 2010 - 12:04 PM, said:

oh its on now...

I can only go on personal experience, but i've never had a problem with my mac (well, nothing major anyway), its 5 years old and runs quicker that my winows laptop that is less than 12 months old. I recently upgraded it to osx 10.5 and put a gig of RAM in it, the only problem is it doesn't like our new sky router, but I'm blaming that on skys shit router / internet connection.

I'm gonna jump in now. And of course, I'm gonna go on the Windows side of the fence. All I can say is that I've had just about every problem that it is possible to get with a windows pc, and I still wouldn't go with a Mac. A lot of people give Microsoft flack about Windows, but when you think of every different kind of pc you can build, with all the different parts you can put into it, and 9 times out of 10, Windows will still work, it's an incredible achievment. You've got hundereds of different motherboards, supporting several different cpu's. Loads of graphic cards, etc.

BTW JimboXiii, I've got Sky Broadband, having switched from Virgin Media because of their incredibly large prices, and I've had no problems at all. The Wi-Fi is great, and I've got a constant 16mbps download rate.

[Ben]

I had to give up on fixing my computer and do a factory settings restore. I fixed the original problem in this thread, but then I think I must have corrupted some memory or sumfink. It took all day yesterday making it able to share stuff with my old computer, even then I could only share music and some documents. Because (I think) of the memory problems on my newer computer it took about 12 hours to copy all my music over, copying it back is going to take maybe 2.

My computer's stupidly fast now, shame that I'm going to fill it up again by this time next week

[Sly Reflex]

Do yourslef a favour and try to keep it something like. Since reinstating mine to factory settings I have been wary about what I put on it and stuff. It's still running pretty much how I want it to, I'm hoping it never reverts back to being shit.

[Ben]

I think i might have spoke too soon. It could just be because windows is downloading 69 updates (only 254mg in total tho), but it's bottlenecking again. Nothing should have physically broke, i havent done anything to it, though I might open it all up and make sure its clean and securely fitted (ram aside i know nothing). We'll see what happens when windows has got itself up to date, which might well take a week at this rate

[Sly Reflex]

It is odd how it downloads the updates. lets call them A, B, C and so on. It will try and install A and fail. It will fail because it needs update F to plug into. But for some reason it will scare monger you into thinking that your computer is borked, even though all that is wrong is that MS are too lazy to put a priority function into their updates so that you can get up and running faster than you can now with their chaos theory way of spamming your connection with updates and seeing what sticks. Hopefully there is nothing wrong with your computers insides, it is just MS arse about face way of updating that is causing your PC to be all shit and stuff.