[EYJAYJAY]

I'm no good with computer but i do take care of mine pretty well. it's been about 3 yrs since i first bought it (yes i do disk cleanup, defrag, spyware check...etc)
but now it's been slowing down tremendously whenever i try to do soemthing after closing a game program. say, after i play a game, i close the game and open up explorer.. it'll take like 3-5 secs to open up and even longer to actually load up the website. everything has been going slower and the only program i have running would be msn messenger.

some of my friends said i should reformat since i havent done it once, some say it's the ram that's wearing out and i need to get new ram (can ram really 'wear out'?) some say that i should just get a new comp (but im kinda tight on budget right now)

so what's the problem here and what should i do? (about 75% of disk space is taken up)

and if i reformat, i would have to reinstall windows dont i?



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[awdark]

You can always use more ram. Well 2gb is probably the most anyone would ever need.

Formatting will clear your hard drive and wipe everything out. You will want to backup the files you want to keep and work with that. The biggest advantage is formatting gives you a wonderfully clean slate to work with. And I average one format per year to keep things clean and working. Typically I format when I screw something up though >_<;;

[dolcedor.]

When you close a program, some of it is still left in memory (ie. in the RAM). I'm not sure how to explain it, but there are like fragments of the program that does not get cleared from memory even after you close the program. To completely free up memory, you'd have to restart your computer. So the amount of resources your game uses up might have something to do with the fact that you aren't left with much memory after you close it. How much RAM do you have? This theory is moot if you have a considerable amount of RAM, more RAM than is required by the game. If you don't have a lot of RAM, though, you could get a new RAM stick. I don't think you'll need more than 1 GB of RAM. Also, formatting your hard drive is a good idea. It'll definitely, definitely, definitely speed up your computer. And yes, you'll have to reinstall your OS.

[EYJAYJAY]

yeah i only have 512 ram so that's part of the reason. i was thinking i probably need both. ive never reformatted before. so can anyone tell me what to do after i move the stuff i need onto portable harddrive? thx for replying

[hanpil]

Get more RAM first and then reformat.

[CK92842]

3yrs huh, hard drive could be going bad. After use hardware does wear down quite a bit mainly hard drives but what I would do is backup whatever data you need to a disc and then reformat that drive. You'll start off with a clean slate and common day to day apps shouldn't take long to open but if it does then I doubt memory will help. Consider upgrading your HD.

[asianpanthers]

sometimes not all problems are taken care of by only anti-spyware programs

i'd suggest downloading "CCleaner" which is just at ccleaner.com or you can just google it if you like

a lot of problems that are on your computer can be from the registry because viruses can embed themselves there.

keep in mind, this is not a specific antivirus program, but it will remove anything that it assumes shouldn't be there--it's a pretty handy program

(i'd say this before doing anything--i dont reformat because...i dont have to. i've never reformatted and my computer is still really fast--it will almost always be a virus if your computer is running significantly slower; hardware depreciates, but not that rapidly in three years)

[HT2791]

you know
it's not a bad idea to reformat once a year
so i would do the reformat first

[Jamila]

I had a similar prob with my laptop,,turned out the motherboard was dying..lol
it's completely dead now.. T-T So I just bought another computer,,(motherboards cost around $500 plus installation)
hopefully your prob is nothing major, always back up your files just in case..(never know what might happen)
it could be a good idea to reformat, but make sure you have the disc to set windows up again

[marrymehyori]

you know
it's not a bad idea to reformat once a year
so i would do the reformat first

Well actually, yes, yes that is a bad idea. Reformatting should really never be necessary if you take care to use anti-virus, ad-aware, spybot, have a router, and the like. I pretty much never reformat hard drives ever, and from the description of the original post, I don't think a reformat would be noticeably helpful.

One thing that might be helpful is taking old files that aren't used any more, writing them to CD or other back-up media, and deleting them off of the hard drive. Also uninstalling software that is never used anymore. Some OS's don't perform well when there are a lot of "small" files lying around on the disk. Merely reducing the number of files on disk may achieve noticeable performance improvement. A full defrag after doing that would be in order.

[hyunsyng]

Seeing how it's taking so long to open up programs, I would say that it's more of a problem with your harddrive than your RAM. Personally, I've never heard of RAM "wearing out," whereas, harddrives do that all the time. After three years, I'm sure your harddrive has built up a huge chunk of bad sectors and whatnot. Try running a disk check THEN try defragmenting again. But also keep in mind that 512 MB of RAM is hardly enough. I would say you should have a minimum of 1 GB for things to run smoothly.