Serious Problem, Seriously.

[Arthur Morris]

For the past week, when typing in a box like this, only on my laptop, I often but not always (it was happening two minutes ago when I was typing a comment, but now everything is fine), experience time lag typing--I type the letters but the computer cannot keep up. It is mega annoying and has kept me from participating at my usual at home levels. I went to NSN and typred gibberish and blazed away. I have lots of room on my two hard drives.

Never any such problems on the office machine, and a totally new problem....

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Have you tried to restart the computer and/or a different browser?

[Dave Phillips]

some laptops are notorious for this.....but I have read that it likely happens
when processor is at peak usage.....RAM may be full and not dumping.
When online, a browsers cache buildup and rewrites can interfere.

just some thoughts

[Allen Stowe]

I will make an assumption your running Windows XP or Windows Vista...

You asked so here we go with a little looking under the hood....

When this happens, Right Click on your Taskbar and select the Task Manager. This will reveal several panels of which you can look at the Performance tab to show you how busy the system is in bar charts. Is it red or green zone bars? Red is bad as you would expect and generally indicates that something is running amuck.

Other tab of interest for forensics is the Processes tab where if you click CPU column twice it will sort the processes currently on the system by the busiest hopefully identifying a culprit causing the red indicated above. System Idle will be very frequently be showing +90% which is normal. Anything else that high (when you know your not doing anything) is most likely your problem causing the slowdown. Virus scanner? Photoshop? Internet Explorer? You can end any of these processes by clicking them and hitting the End Task in the bottom right corner. Be careful and do not "kill" any processes you can't pronounce or are not familiar by name. Be safe & reboot instead.

Anyways, if this is all too much to handle... Do as Axel & Dave indicate above... Shutting down or restart is the best course of action for a Windows system! :)

Allen...

[Grady Weed]

As stated above, the system can degrade over time, especially if you just use sleep mode instead of shutting all the way down when not in use. Restart is the best option Art. Welcome to Uncle Bill's.

[Brian Wong]

Hi Artie!

Are you on the road? I find sometimes that a poor or weak wifi connection to the internet can seriously impact the performance of my laptop. It could be that the processor is using up lots of cycles just in trying to connect and reconnect wirelessly to a bad signal.

Are you able to try connecting directly (with an ethernet cable) and are you still having the same results? If so, then the problem seems to be pointing more at the laptop/setup.

Along the same thread of trying to reduce the stress the laptop ... try to close down as many applications as possible, including PS (which takes up lots of resources) before going online.

Hope that helps, and enjoy your trip. What are you using?

[Arthur Morris]

First off, re-booting seems to solve the problem, or at least it did on the test that I just ran. Closing all other applications did NOT help. Secondly, the problem never existed until the past few weeks despite the facts that I ofen kept six windows (inlcuding CS3) open and left the computer on for days without re-booting. In general, the computer seems overall slower, slower even to open from the log-on screen.... And slower Photoshop tasking.

Thanks all for your suggestions above.

Allen,

re:

I will make an assumption your running Windows XP or Windows Vista...

That is correct sir. I am honored to have sparked your first post. :)

You asked so here we go with a little looking under the hood....

When this happens, Right Click on your Taskbar and select the Task Manager.

I do that and I do not see Task Manager; are you referring to the Taskbar in IE or somewhere else? (I really am a computer dummy....)

Shutting down or restart is the best course of action for a Windows system! :)

Again, that did the trick this morning.

Allen...

[Arthur Morris]

I guess that the next question is, "Is there any routine maintainence that should be done as a computer begins to slow down with age? (like me....)

There seems to be lots of room on the hard drives: 69.5 gb free of 186 on C and 108 free of 186 on F.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

When I used Windows I had this problem all the time. Even after closing PS and other programs, the performance was sluggish. I made it a habit to shut down the computer overnight. It is not the hard drive space available but it seems to be a memory issue. Either getting more memory if the computer has a slot left or occasional rebooting should suffice.

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Axel. I think that I am already maxxed out on memory. If only Breezebrowser worked on MACs....

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Thanks Axel. I think that I am already maxxed out on memory. If only Breezebrowser worked on MACs....

The cool thing about Macs is that you can run Windows on it if needed and use Breezebrowser that way. I used Windows computers for many years before switching and I am very happy I did go to Mac, even my laptop does not slow down when many programs are open. Getting used to the different operating system took very little time.

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks again. Do you use Breezebrowswer on your MAC? I have heard lots of bad stuff about doing so.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Thanks again. Do you use Breezebrowswer on your MAC? I have heard lots of bad stuff about doing so.

No, I'm used to ACR, maybe Fabs or Al have tried it.

[Julie Kenward]

Arthur, have you run a disc defragment lately? That will sometimes get things going again. Kind of a "clean and straighten the house" kind of thing. Let me know if you need more info.

[Alfred Forns]

No we haven't !!! I use LR and Fabs ACR !!

[Nancy A Elwood]

Hi Artie. When I am helping people with their computers the first thing I do is download a program called CrapCleaner, http://www.ccleaner.com/, install it a let it run. It will clean out all your old internet files, temp files, etc. And on most folks machine there are tons of junk that can slow things down. The best thing is that it is free and it has never down any harm to my computer in all the number of years I have used it. The other thing is to look into buying a good registry cleaner program. I use registry mechanic, http://www.pctools.com/. I use these programs once a week and it seems to keep my machines running very well over time. Hope that helps.

[Dave Phillips]

the CCleaner's(referenced by Nancy) registry cleaner within the same program
works pretty good also and creates a .reg undo file

[Dan Brown]

Hi Artie. I use CCleaner also. The first time I ran it, it cleaned several Gig of garbage files out! You can set it to run at startup or shutdown automatically if you want. I thought that "disk cleanup" was enough and I had used it regularly but CCleaner seems to do a much more thourough job.

[Cal Walters]

Artie, First sounds like you have a MAC not a PC. If so, the first thing I always do it a repair of the permissions. On a Mac it is the first thing to check. It is in the Utilities folder in the Apps.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Artie. When I am helping people with their computers the first thing I do is download a program called CrapCleaner, http://www.ccleaner.com/, install it a let it run. It will clean out all your old internet files, temp files, etc. And on most folks machine there are tons of junk that can slow things down. The best thing is that it is free and it has never down any harm to my computer in all the number of years I have used it. The other thing is to look into buying a good registry cleaner program. I use registry mechanic, http://www.pctools.com/. I use these programs once a week and it seems to keep my machines running very well over time. Hope that helps.

Thanks all above for their help. The slow typing problem is long gone. I finally got to run Crap Cleaner and that seemed to help some more. The machine is still not running as fast as it did when I first got it. I have 81 gb free on my 186 gb C drive and 85 gb free on my 186gb F drive. Both are 7200 rpm drives.

Is there anyone out there using Breezebroswer on a MAC? I am using a PC.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

When I used Windows computers and they got too slow, I did a clean install of the operating system. It takes quite a while to reinstall everything and adjust settings, though. Let's see if someone uses BreezeBrowser on a Mac. I don't see why it wouldn't work using BootCamp.

[Nancy A Elwood]

Artie I would try a good registry cleaner as mentioned above, ie registry mechanic. CCleaner gets rid of one kind of junk, but the registry cleaner gets rid of the other kind. But, if that does not help than Axel is right a reformat and reinstall will do wonders. I have a 4 year old laptop that I did that with a year ago and boy it was like getting a new machine. If you do that then just do an image, using like Norton Ghost, after you have all the programs loaded and such, then if that happens again all you have to do is load the fresh cleaned image.

[Arthur Morris]

First off, a big-time belated thanks to Nancy. Once I ran the free registry clearer, the slow-typing problems disappeared.