I'm having puter trouble

[lacey]

get rid of all the photos you don't want or need and clean out your temp folder as well.

I had a friend who had thousands of emails.  he liked to keep everything.  it took me about 2 hours just deleting the emails, not to mention photos and temp files.  Just be careful what you are deleting, or you will be even more unhappy AJ.

I have been using AVG free for about 9years now and never had an issue.  not good to have more than 1 anti-virus program on your puta, or it may cause more problems.

If all else fails, re-install your OS and start off fresh.

[Fulvio]

Why should deleting files make any difference at all? That's like cleaning out the garage to make your car go faster. As long as you have adequate swap space, it doesn't matter if you have 100Mb or 20Tb of excess free space left. Or is this yet another of those inferior OS fails? In which case, get a REAL operating system and forget the frustrations.

As for backups, a file server with lots of storage, preferrably RAID 5, is the way to go. You can even get routers that do that job nowadays, or tiny NAS boxes that are basically just networked drives.

[robbiegal]

deleting files has always made a difference for me

I don't know all the lingo
but I know it has worked

[Unicorn]

Windows based PCs often slow considerably when there are a large number of files in any particular directory. Creating a good sub directory structure and having not too many files in each will help general peformance.
Same rule applies to memory sticks if you put too many files in the root directory it will fail before it is full.

[ausjack]

Thanks heaps for the advice team, seem a bit better so I'll clean up a bit more before spending anything on it :hi:

[lacey]

Why should deleting files make any difference at all? That's like cleaning out the garage to make your car go faster. As long as you have adequate swap space, it doesn't matter if you have 100Mb or 20Tb of excess free space left. Or is this yet another of those inferior OS fails? In which case, get a REAL operating system and forget the frustrations.

As for backups, a file server with lots of storage, preferrably RAID 5, is the way to go. You can even get routers that do that job nowadays, or tiny NAS boxes that are basically just networked drives.

Because as we were taught in TAFE, the more you have, the harder and longer it takes for your PC to find what it's been told to look for.  
We had a great teacher, who didn't just talk but also demonstrated how things worked.

I don't think cleaning out your garage would make your car go faster, as it's 2 different things but,  cleaning out your garage would allow for more stuff to be stored. :-)  and the same goes for PCs.

Giving your car a once or twice yearly service will keep it in good running order :-)  and the same goes for PCs

[Fulvio]

...the more you have, the harder and longer it takes for your PC to find what it's been told to look for.

Computers have different types of memory spaces, which operate at different speeds. The fastest is inside what we'll call the CPU (which is in reality a lot more than just the CPU nowadays), and operates at very high speed. Then you have your working space, RAM, which is substantially slower. And finally you have external storage, which is extremely slow.

Because RAM is limited and very expensive, there is a process called paging, where blocks of memory are swapped out to the slower, cheaper storage when not required. This is a very slow process, so a predictive algorithm is used to try and preload the bits you're likely to need next. If the amount of free space on the external storage is low, it gets harder and harder (and slower) to write blocks of memory out to it. There is a major bottleneck called "thrashing" where pages are being continuously swapped in and out because of low free space. Think of it like getting up from the desk to go to the filing cabinet to get each and every piece of paper you need to work on, one at a time.

As far as files on the same external media are concerned, the major concern is fragmentation. When a file is written, it is in contiguous blocks, and the directory entry comprises ideally a single entry. As files are deleted and rewritten, gaps appear, and are filled in by subsequent files. If the files are larger than the gaps, they are split into non-contiguous segments, each of which requires an additional directory entry. This makes retrieval much slower of course, but the degradation will only be noticed by I/O intensive processes which are already very slow, such as page swapping. Storage space which is not being accessed can be free or used, it will not make any difference whatsoever. Except as it affects paging of course.

Not all operating systems are equally efficient in how they manage memory and storage. OSX, for example, doesn't even have a de-fragmentation utility, because the OS is continually optimising storage on the fly, and it is unnecessary. Windows, on the other hand, needs defragmentation regularly to keep it running. On all systems, it is a very good idea to split storage by use. Whether by having multiple drives or partitions, swap space, system files (OS and applications) and data should be on separate volumes. Ideally, swap and system should be high speed media, such as SSD's, rather than rotating disks.

This is a very simplified summary, because this is, after all, a coin forum, not a computer science class. But at least I didn't bring in the "little green man" one of my lecturers always used to describe complexities he didn't want to address.

So in order to cure a slow system, in order of benefit:

1. Use an efficient OS, preferrably Unix-based (Linux, OSX, etc)
2. Buy as much RAM as you can afford, and upgrade when you can
3. Install an SSD and use it for system and swap space
4. Defragment regularly (on OS's that require it)

[ausjack]

:blink:

:scratch_one-s_head: I have a computer :laugh2: