Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II

I already have Dropbox, and it's filling up fast. That's why I asked. :(

And I can't upload the ones I actually like (which are the ones with music) to youtube without setting off the damn copyright alarms or risk having my account deleted.
 
Dropbox has promotional offers that will more than double your space... invite your friends, etc.
 
I've heard that small amounts of hard drive space can slow down a computer. How accurate is this? I know that it does have some effect, but just how noticeable is it?
I have a laptop that is starting to get pretty slow. It has a 453 GB hard drive with only 23 GB of free space left, is lack of drive space the most likely cause of the slowness? It takes a while for programs to start (I once opened after effects and it didn't open until the next morning lol, normally programs like photoshop take about 5 minutes to open).Finally, I've been having to turn the graphics down on games lately, however strangely enough, games seem to be the least affected (new games like bf3 and Skyrim). However load times have been getting longer and longer and it will freeze from time to time (does not appear to be affected by graphics settings). Even stranger, other programs that are much less resource intensive than videogames will also sometimes freeze for a second or two (generally Google Chrome, however that is just because I use it more than any other program. Word has also done so). Is the kind of slowness my computer is facing something that a full hard drive could be the cause of, or is it probably something else? Thanks
PS: if it is most likely something else, any ideas of what to check first? thanks
 
Seems like your RAM is being overloaded so it's resorting to a page file, which is now on the innermost and slowest part of the drive. The read/write speeds are best on the outer layers, which are the first to be used (as i understand it). Therefore the page file is taking longer to be accessed.

Of course I could just be blowing smoke here, these are just my semi-educated guesses.
 
cardgame said:
Seems like your RAM is being overloaded so it's resorting to a page file, which is now on the innermost and slowest part of the drive. The read/write speeds are best on the outer layers, which are the first to be used (as i understand it). Therefore the page file is taking longer to be accessed.

Of course I could just be blowing smoke here, these are just my semi-educated guesses.
Click to expand...
So, should I add more ram or fix the harddrive problem? (or both)
 
The overall specs of your machine may be helpful to know.
 
cardgame said:
The overall specs of your machine may be helpful to know.
Click to expand...

Toshiba Satellite A660
4 gb ram
41.8 GB free of 453 GB hard drive (cleared out a bunch of junk this morning)
windows 7x64 home premium
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q740 @ 1.73 GHz, 1734 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logic...
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB
Total Physical Memory (RAM) 3.93 GB
Available Physical Memory 1.28 GB (this changes based on when I run MSINFO32, I've seen it as low as 0.05 GB before). This was done when my computer was working perfectly
Total Virtual Memory 8.91 GB
Available Virtual Memory 5.07 GB
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 2735 MB

Is there any stats that I am missing?
 
Speaking of swap files, when I get my second drive, is it better to put a swap file on the system drive? Or does it really matter?
 
So that means 2 swap files? Why would you do this?
 
aimeeandbeatles said:
So that means 2 swap files? Why would you do this?
Click to expand...

Pretty much because you can, but if you have lots of RAM and a 64bit OS, then the swap files rarely get accessed anyways.
 
Narnia said:
I've heard that small amounts of hard drive space can slow down a computer. How accurate is this? I know that it does have some effect, but just how noticeable is it?
I have a laptop that is starting to get pretty slow. It has a 453 GB hard drive with only 23 GB of free space left, is lack of drive space the most likely cause of the slowness? It takes a while for programs to start (I once opened after effects and it didn't open until the next morning lol, normally programs like photoshop take about 5 minutes to open).Finally, I've been having to turn the graphics down on games lately, however strangely enough, games seem to be the least affected (new games like bf3 and Skyrim). However load times have been getting longer and longer and it will freeze from time to time (does not appear to be affected by graphics settings). Even stranger, other programs that are much less resource intensive than videogames will also sometimes freeze for a second or two (generally Google Chrome, however that is just because I use it more than any other program. Word has also done so). Is the kind of slowness my computer is facing something that a full hard drive could be the cause of, or is it probably something else? Thanks
PS: if it is most likely something else, any ideas of what to check first? thanks
Click to expand...

Low hard disk space should generally have a fairly low effect on performance. Certainly not so much that it should take 5 minutes for the average somewhat-intensive program to start, and overnight for some programs. I'd check to see if you have adequate memory first, by leaving Task Manager up and seeing what the maximum memory usage is (I don't remember exactly where to check for this on Windows 7 - it's been rearranged since XP). If you're using significantly more than the 4 GB you have, then that can significantly slow down the computer, and you probably should add some more.

If you aren't... sounds unusual. I could see conflicting anti-virus/firewall software causing something like that - sometimes different AV/firewall products dont' cooperate with each other and drag down performance (though I couldn't tell you for any particular two products).
 
Narnia said:
I've heard that small amounts of hard drive space can slow down a computer. How accurate is this? I know that it does have some effect, but just how noticeable is it?
I have a laptop that is starting to get pretty slow. It has a 453 GB hard drive with only 23 GB of free space left, is lack of drive space the most likely cause of the slowness? It takes a while for programs to start (I once opened after effects and it didn't open until the next morning lol, normally programs like photoshop take about 5 minutes to open).Finally, I've been having to turn the graphics down on games lately, however strangely enough, games seem to be the least affected (new games like bf3 and Skyrim). However load times have been getting longer and longer and it will freeze from time to time (does not appear to be affected by graphics settings). Even stranger, other programs that are much less resource intensive than videogames will also sometimes freeze for a second or two (generally Google Chrome, however that is just because I use it more than any other program. Word has also done so). Is the kind of slowness my computer is facing something that a full hard drive could be the cause of, or is it probably something else? Thanks
PS: if it is most likely something else, any ideas of what to check first? thanks
Click to expand...

Oh, and it may also be a virus. My older computer acted like this once, I wiped the hardrive, scanned all the files I was reloading, and it worked like a charm. Food for thought.
 
Narnia said:
I've heard that small amounts of hard drive space can slow down a computer. How accurate is this? I know that it does have some effect, but just how noticeable is it?
I have a laptop that is starting to get pretty slow. It has a 453 GB hard drive with only 23 GB of free space left, is lack of drive space the most likely cause of the slowness? It takes a while for programs to start (I once opened after effects and it didn't open until the next morning lol, normally programs like photoshop take about 5 minutes to open).Finally, I've been having to turn the graphics down on games lately, however strangely enough, games seem to be the least affected (new games like bf3 and Skyrim). However load times have been getting longer and longer and it will freeze from time to time (does not appear to be affected by graphics settings). Even stranger, other programs that are much less resource intensive than videogames will also sometimes freeze for a second or two (generally Google Chrome, however that is just because I use it more than any other program. Word has also done so). Is the kind of slowness my computer is facing something that a full hard drive could be the cause of, or is it probably something else? Thanks
PS: if it is most likely something else, any ideas of what to check first? thanks
Click to expand...
Sometimes it helps to clean out the dust that has accumulated inside the computer. :)
 
Is there a way to delete all email attachments in outlook 2007? I would prefer to not delete the emails, just the attachments. Thanks
(I'm trying to free up hard drive space so I need to actually delete the files, not just the entries in outlook)
 
I'm running Windows 7 64 bit, and I can no longer update windows automatically or manually. I'm worried I have a virus. I'm using AMD free anti-virus. A recent scan picked up a few things, but I took them out. I still can't update and get this error message:

"WindowsUpdate_8007370A" "WindowsUpdate_dt000"

I did a google search on that, but couldn't really find anything useful. Just generic stuff. Do I have a virus? Is it possible to reinstall or repair windows without wiping my hard drive (which I really don't want to do)?
 
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