BleepingComputer.com: Running High VM and Mem Us... causing system hang ups

Ok I am having problems with my Virtual Memory and my Memory Usage running high and causes my preformance of my computer to freeze, hang... run slowly. In turn I see my Page file usage history run also high. Then my browser (I have tried them all... opera, firefox, chrome, sea monkey and IE) to become unresponsive and have to end process and watch my cpu drop from 100% to under 5% in a blink of an eye. Then I restart. This happens at least 5 times a day. This has been an ongoing problem for me for months now.

I have done everything to clean up my PC.
-disk cleanup (daily)
-Disk defrag (weekly)
-error checking
-virus scan
-spyware
-adware
-cache
-cookies
-browsing history

Very frustraghting to deal with and I hope you can help me fix this.

My computer is:
compaq presario SR2020NX
XP Media Center Edition
SP3
AMD Athlon 64 Processor
512mb memory
2.20GHz, 448 MB of RAM
Using only 16.7GB of my 140 GB hard drive.

That system supports a maximum of 2GB of RAM, while you have 512MB installed.

A system that has few programs running...can exist and run well on 512MB of RAM and use XP. As the user begins to install more programs, which use up more system resources...the initial installed RAM may prove to be inadequate for efficient use of the system.

So the first thing I would suggest is...uninstall any programs which you don't really use.

The next thing I suggest...take a look at the programs you actually do use...and eliminate those which are not truly necessary...because you don't have the resources to support such. My favorite candidates for elimination include programs like MS Office, iTunes, Adobe anything, Real Player, Symantec anything, etc.

Looking at the software which originally came on that system, http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/documen...product=3245048, I would have uninstalled most of those applications as soon as I booted my system initially.

Lastly...check your virtual memory settings for XP.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5006028_check-virtual-memory.html

Ensure that there are no maximum/minimum amounts and that XP is managing your virtual memory.

As an alternative to the suggestions above...you could always increase the RAM installed in the system.

Louis

Hamluis or Louis which ever you prefer Thank you

I deleted quite a few things and so far so good.

But later this evening I started up my PC and now I have some type of questionable malware or Trojan that my anti virus picked up... So that is my next task.

Thanks again