slow explorer

what percent of your hd is used? what kind of internet conn are you using? what is running in the background?

I assume you use Internet Explorer.

You might help things by going to Tools/ Options and tell it delete files and delete cookies. This is emptying the temporary internet files and cache and not removing anything you need. When these get choked full, it really slows IE. To prevent this happening in the future, you can set IE to perform this automatically each time you close IE. You will find this choice at Tools/Options/Advanced. I hope this helps. ______________________________ Keep the whole world singing . . . . DanG (remove the sevens) snipped-for-privacy@7cox.net

I have 2 GB free on my HD , I'm using Comcast cable and Macafee AV is in the background. Engineman

You may have more running in the background then you know. Go to Start...Run..... type in msconfig...press enter. Go to the StartUp tab. This is what starts when you power your machine up. Look for anything strange. Spyware etc.

If you only have 2 GB free, you need to unload at least 3 GB before XP's Disk Defragmenter can run - and, you'll find that to be your first best action.

1. Use "Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Cleanup" to get rid of temporary files.
2. Offload to CD/DVD sufficient extraneous files to provide a minimum of 5 GB of unused space on your HD.
3. Reboot into "Safe Mode".
4. Use Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmenter" to defragment and compact the files.
5. Reboot to "Normal Mode".
6. Reload, if you absolutely must, the files offloaded in step 2.

By using "Safe Mode" for the defrag the process will go noticiably faster.

Check for root kit viruses as well. Nasty little buggers, and most virus checkers can't find them. I used UN-Hack Me to find one I had.

" snipped-for-privacy@aol.com" wrote:

jk

Your disk is full, clean off 25%. Let this be a lesson...be ready to reinstall OS and all at a moment's notice. It's not "IF" you are going to have problems, it's "WHEN" It's just not worth the time to un-diddle a hard drive, and NEVER fill it more than 75%.

He said that adaware and friends came up clean, so I don't think that's it. I'd be interested in seeing if he's just out of RAM - a paging/swapping system will get slow, all of the sudden, when it has to write to disk instead of solid state memory.

How about this - go into Task manager, click on the "Performance" tab. Which are you out of, CPU, or Memory?

Dave Hinz

Yes, really sad. All these problems have been solved 30 years ago in the minicomputer world, but MicroSoft can't do anything the right way. I've been running my main Linux system at 94-96% full for a year or more. I have NEVER defragmented the drive. It DOES slow it down, by about 5% or so, over an unfragmented drive, but that is not enough to bother about.

As for viruses, I've never seen one. I have been successfully hacked twice. One time the hacker was just using my machine to scan open ports, and I just cancelled his processes, found the security hole and closed it. The other time it was malicious, and took some work to fix. But, I unhacked that system, and it is still running. Oh, I really didn't even have to reboot to undo the hacking! I have NEVER, EVER, had to reload Linux. My server machine gets several blasts from hacking scripts every day. When I notice more than 1000 login attempts from a single IP address, I send a "please stop this hacker" message to their ISP, if they are in the developed world.

My Linux systems usually stay up 75 - 150 days at a time, and most shutdowns are due to power failures.

Jon

I've got a few Linux boxes doing their thing but Solidworks won't easily run on them so, embrace the chaos!