Incredibly slow performance

I think I had this problem before, ages ago. Anyway,

this whole week my PC has been misbehaving.
Speed is ok-ish. No real application errors or anything, but the PC is "whirring" a lot.
Lots of distracting sound. Constantly.
I run regular AVG checks. Also have Advanced System Care, which checks stuff out.
(incidently, I only download stuff from zdnet; as I think its safer from there)
I do regular registry fixes as well.

One thing I noticed is the Free memory seems to be incredibly low.
Sometimes getting to less than 10MB. That cant be right?

the attached image is with MT4, Opera, Google running only.

how can I check that only appropriate services are running? (ie, are there any hijacked apps running?)
how can I ascertain that it isnt a physical error with disk? (can memory chips fail?)

Basically, help!

EDIT: is it the lack of free memory thats causing the whirring from the PC? It sounds as if its working hard, but there is no real load demand on it.

here's mine with 2 ie browsers, messenger and mt4 running, appears the free ram is similar state as yours but i don't get the whirring? well at least i don't hear any issues like that. how full is your hard drive?

Not sure if this will help or not but have you got Windows SP3? I have been repeatedly told that this pack is a PC killer and that one shouldn't download it.

Perhaps you are looking too much at your what's on your PC and not enough of what's IN your PC? The noises you describe sound like dust is stuck.

Try buying some canned air and blowing the dust from your inside your PC case. Make sure to clean the CPU fan, RAM area, all the case fans, etc - obviously when the computer is off!!!

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/44717

^That is what I use.

Could also be your PSU fan is starting to die.

Could also be your PSU fan is starting to die.

Forgot to say, the whirring is either your fans, which would be caused by a rise in temperature in the PC due to extra processing happening, or due to too much dust as HawkTrader says, or the whirring could be your hard drives.

You should have temperature monitors which some software somewhere will display for you - CPU temp, mobo temp, harddrive temp, even fan speed.

What motherboard do you have? did you get a cd for it? might have windows software on it to show temp.

And don't worry about taking your PC's cover off. Just make sure you touch your hand to the metal earthed casing of the PC housing to discharge yourself of static - which could otherwise damage the circuitry.

(1) Download Malwarebytes, update it and scan the PC

(2) Click Start, then Run, type msconfig and go to Startup tab.
Check each and every process that is loaded upon startup here:

http://www.tasklist.org/

Uncheck all not needed tasks. Be very careful, it is your sole responsibility to do this correctly. If you cannot do it, seek help from a professional.

thanks for suggestions so far.
will dyson it tomorrow before power up. will also get the malware thingy.
can't see any temp guide on there.

trendie said:

thanks for suggestions so far.
will dyson it tomorrow before power up. will also get the malware thingy.
can't see any temp guide on there.

Click to expand...

Vacuum cleaners are not a good idea because they can build up static charge - which can have nasty effects on electronic bits and pieces. Much better to get a can of compressed air as suggested by another poster. Computer components stores usually sell this stuff.

risked the dyson!
initial observations; no more whirring, and all systems apparently ok. wont be certain until I have a full week with normal loads.

will get compressed gas and regularly remove dust from now on. every 3 months?

thanks.

What did you end up using, Trendie?

Cleaning your PC every 3 months is probably a little overkill, I'd say every 6 months. One other suggestion if you haven't sorted it already though, you could changed the thermal paste on your CPU? Download something like SpeedFan (http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php) and see what temperatures your proccessor is running at. It shouldn't really be above 45c (although depends on what CPU model you have, what time of the year, how warm your room is, etc...).

If you want I can try to explain how to do that as I just did it recently for the first time myself.

PM me or write here, whatever you prefer.

all ok so far. I tend to have my PC on for about 16hrs a day. Not a peep out of it today.
it seems the dysoning of the innards did the trick.
will make a note to buy some compressed gas for its next blast in 6months.

thanks again to all who offered up solutions, esp Hawktrader.
my AVG, Advanced Care and Spybot seem sufficient, since it wasn't a malware issue.