Windoez Ex Pee Question (Slowing down issue)

[DMKA]

Well see, sometimes it does it at random, but usually it's right after I close or while I'm using some program I've been using for awhile (awhile=five minutes), everything will get REALLY slow...is that normal? I don't know much about Windows XP...I was always more of a 98/ME master, niether of which ever did anything like this, and which I ran on my acient slow pathetic machines...yet I go out and buy a new shiny awesome system and it does this...ugh!

But like I said, I don't know if it's normal or not (because XP doesn't run in a DOS shell and is different in some other ways), and I've only been using six months now as opposed to the five or so years I used 98/ME, so I don't know nearly as much about it. Any help would be appreciated (and I know it's kind of a vague problem, but I've talked to someone else who has the same issue), because it's driving me crazy now.

[crono_logical]

Is it temporary or until you reboot? And how much RAM do you have? It doesn't sound normal to me

[DMKA]

Rebooting doesn't even seem to change it...it just seems to come and go. I have 512MB of RAM.

[Leviathan]

I would look at upgrading your ram. Also when is the last time you've run any system maintenance? I was having the same problem and a simple defrag helped considerably.

[crono_logical]

512 MB should be fine for XP unless you run bloat like Norton or McAfee in the background, or run lots of heavyweight apps/games. How much commit charge does task manager say you're using? Are there any processes in the list eating lots of memory, or even processes you don't know what they are?