Kara,
Excellent advice from TImber. I just read up on Virtual Memory in my huge reference manual. However, I am in the middle of a loooonnnng download of a huge file on my dialup connection, and being here is slowing things down even more.
I'll be back in touch in a couple of hours.
Doing a defrag wouldn't hurt either.
I went into Virtual Memory a few days ago and clicked on No Page file, just in case the page file had been corrupted. After I rebooted, Windows wouldn't let me into my Control Panel because they said I had no virtual memory in my page file! Catch 22. However, I rebooted again and got into System, restored the page file to System requirements rather than custom, and that's where it is now. I had the page file set at 750 and 1350 previously -- where it was originally set -- and I decided to see what the System would demand.
I had read that increasing the page file would slow up my computer, but now you are suggesting that I increase it substantially. Why would I suddenly have to do that? I have no more apps running than usual.
I pulled up your links from the last note, Timber. (ElderGeeks...LOL) Thanks.
I checked out what my settings were and they were initial of 768 and maximum of 1536, with 1534 recommended.
I believe I have figured it out. When I got this new system a year or so ago, I had 512 RAM. I just recently purchased another 512.
The 768 is exactly 1.5 times 512. 1.5 times 1024 is exactly the recommended 1534.
I did not have enough knowledge about virtual memory to realize that I had to go beyond putting the additional memory into the machine.
I have changed mine to have both values set at 1534.
I gave up and called a techie. He was puzzled for a while but I had noticed that AOL was using a massive amount of memory even when the app wasn't up and running. He decided to uninstalled AOL and all of its bits and pieces and then install No. 8 version, rather than No. 9 that had been running with all of its security settings and alerts and add-ons.
He figured that, because I left Windows up while I was in Ireland for a month, AOL had kept installing updates and pretty soon the whole installation was larger than life. AOL is huge anyway, like an additional operating system laid over top of Windows, so he suggested that we shrink AOL by going back to AOL 8.
It worked. My page file usage has dropped to normal. I now have AdAware, SpyBot, and CCleaner running, as well as my Norton AV.
Thanks BDV and timber for your help, and sumac for supporting my noodling through it.
Oh ... A-O-Hell, huh? That sure explains a lot. In fact, it just about explains it all. Had you mentioned AOL earlier and I just missed it?
Now, while this of course is just my own opinion, one of the very best things you can do for your computer is avoid AOL alltogether. Cancelling their service is an adventure, and digging their software's tentacles out of your system is no picnic, but the end result is well worth the effort.
In fact there are directions on how to do that on another thread here...
AOL and its associated entertaiments have been the focus of many discussions here - many.
That's pretty funny. My daughter was just telling me that she tried to cancel out of AOL about five years ago and gave up. She could never get the threads disentangled from her computer, and she's a geek.
I thought I mentioned AOL. Maybe I didn't. So what do other people do for e-mail, personal files and folders, etc.? Do any of you use G-mail? I have a Yahoo addy but my AOL address has been my identity for six or seven years. Changing that would be major.
How many email addresses have I had since you have known me? It is not a major deal to change the address and notify people. Some ISPs will actually automatically send emails of notification out to whatever people on your address list that you designate. The fact that your address book doesn't belong to you, but to AOL, is a minor annoyance.
Tons of alternatives, too many to mention, and from there you can go to your interface of choice. I use Yahoo and gmail from Google.
Can start with local ISPs, including that provided by your residential telephone carrier, and consider the well-regarded biggies such as Earthlink, Sprint, MSN.
Since the two of you are on a high-speed connection, that will be a key consideration.r
And the AOL tentacles were precisely why I purchased that simple registry cleaner this weekend. It took forever to scan (three hours), but came up with tons of AOL stuff that all of the other cleaners had missed, or not thought important enough to mention. And it defragged the registry after all of the entries were deleted. For $10.
