Would more Ram help with this?

[PyRo]

I have windows media player playing, 2 copies of aim, 16 instant messager windows, yahoo messenger with 1 window, and 4 Internet explorers along with some other things running in the backround. My computer runs kina slow especially switching between programs, I have 256 ram now, do you think another stick of 256 or a 512 stick would solve this? Or is it more of a speed of the computer itself thing?
When its doing this it also can take up to 25 seconts to load I explore which is just not right.

P4 2.5Ghz, 2 40gb 7200rpm hard drives, one is just for mass storage of rarley used programs, saved files, mp3's and movies, the primary one only has about 8gb used. GeForce 4 64mb somthing (not that that makes any differance with this), not sure what type of MB Dell uses, and a sound blaster audigy, and i'm pretty sure its not hot in that case.

[Restola]

only 256mb of ram? you living in 1998 :D

Upgrade to a gig. Its not expensive. Check out crucial.com. They even have a compatibility thing for all the main brands of PC so you can get the right ram.

Also uninstall programs you dont use, run adware, and defrag your HD.

Oh yeah and congrats on a post longer than 5 words.

[PyRo]

If you really look hard I have many posts longer than five words :)
Do I really need a gig of ram? I think CS is probably the most demanding game I play, I want half life 2 when it comes out but I will probably need a video card before I can do that.
I run ad-aware about once every two days, and once a week I go through and clear out all old programs or send them over to the 2nd hard drive. I use defrag about once a month although it never seems to really make a differance.
Ill check out that sight though, thanks :)
Not expensive? A stick of 512 is $86, maybie Ill just get one and see what the differance is with 768MB.

Back in 98 I had 32MB of Ram :)

[e mag]

768 should be alright, but 256 is definatly not enough if you do that much stuff and presumably have winXP.

[xmetal2001]

I'd say upgrade to atleast 512mb, more if you want to be more futureproof.

256 is definately not enough for you.

[personman]

xmetal: Champagne, california on the brain :D
My computer has 512 mb of ram and has like have the stuff yours does!
I would say yeah, atleast another 256 would help you :)

[xadamx]

i have 768 DDR ram and have about taht much stuff open and theres no slow down at all. should be fine a gig is nice but a little over kill

[Jaasper]

Personally I'd add at least another 256mb and then d/l a copy of trillian and ditch AIM/Yahoo.. Trillian will do AIM/ICQ/IRC/MSN/YAHOO all in one program, use less memory so it frees up some.

[Tron]

Save your money and fix your computer first. If you were doing anything intensive then ya some more ram would help but listening to music and typing will work with 256MB WinXP or not.

[PyRo]

Well I stopped running yahoo. What i'm really trying to figure out here now is why can it take up to 25 seconts for I explore or any other program to load even if nothing else is open :-/
Maybie ill run defrag again, but I don't think thats it.

[Jaasper]

Look in your task manager and see what is taking up CPU time or memory. You can sort it by size. (CTRL-ALT-DEL)

Also check and see what you memory usage is. Same screen differnt tab. Sounds like you computer is swapping memory to your HD, if thats the case. more memory will solve the problem. You might just have too much stuff loaded into memory.

[PyRo]

Actually adding up all the memory usage (i'm not going to actually do it) but it comes close to the 256 if its not at it. But the odd thing is if I have nothing but my operating system running and I try to open something why should it take so long. I watch the CPU usage and memory and its not all used up. Could I have a bad hard drive or somthing?

[Tron]

Dump your internet cache, set it up to open with a blank page, run ad-aware, spy bot, chkdsk, defrag, maybe a registry cleaner like easy cleaner and regclean. Make sure you have all the updates from MS. Also check to see what your computer starts up with. Make sure to turn off everything you don't need. Same thing with system services.

[PyRo]

I cleared all that stuff that internet explorer collects, I check my startup for junk that works its way in there quite often, I run adaware on a regular basis, I will try spybot, ive used all the system utilities, scandisk, defragment etc, this computer won't take MS updates for some reason, the software is legal but if I download and install an update I cannot get the thing to boot for the life of me and need to reformat everything. Maybie ill try the regclean.

[Tron]

The fact you can't update would be the first thing I look into. If you can't figure it out get it checked with your warranty. And you are a pw I posted this not 2mins ago. :p

[PyRo]

Took me five minutes to reply, only took you 4 that makes you more of a PW. I don't want to try updateing right now since i'm at school and don't have the disk to reformat if I don't. I guess ill take it back up with me this weekend, back up anything important onto the 2nd disk and give the updates a shot one more time.