RAM, Video Card or hard disk?

[Healthwarning]

Hope this is in the right forum. I built my computer recently on the cheap from a kit. Its an Athlon XP 1800 with 256DDR and onboard 32 bit graphics and sound. My problem is whenever I have more than a couple of applications or web pages open I get what I can only describe as a 'deck of cards' effect (you know when you move a box around the page and it leaves a trail?), and sometimes when I try to switch between pages it appears to move to the page but the contents of the last window remains. Am I making myself clear? LOL.
My question is; do I need more RAM or video RAM, OR is it because my hard drive is smallish (6 gigs with about 400mb free)? I really dont want to fork out too much money. Incidentally, it is networked through the ADSL USB port to another computer.

[Budfred]

That is an awfully small hard drive for a new computer, but I doubt that is the problem. It sounds like a software problem, probably running too much background... I didn't see what version of Windoze you are running, but most of them require some tweaking to run best... You can check out the tweaks at Black Viper... (http://www.blkviper.com/index.html)

When you post back provide more details about your software and OS so forth...

[Healthwarning]

Hi, thanks for the speedy reply. I am running XP home. The hard drive is small because it was what I had in my 'toy box'. Also has an old 24x CD drive and a floppy without a face!
Not sure what you mean about 'too much background'? I dont have messengers or Kazaa or anything extra running. That's more in my son's department, and the reason we have 2 puters lol. I was hoping that by upgrading I would to be able to do more than 2 or 3 things at the same time as I am sorting out a new business. I could have used my old 233 otherwise.
Had a look at the link you suggested, but wasn't sure what I should be turning off or disabling or whatever. I'm not used to fiddling with the software stuff:confused: Do I really have to do all that? I was hoping I could just get another stick of RAM or whatever and my problem would go away <----basically lazy.

[Healthwarning]

PS. I usually have a couple of web pages and maybe and office application. I'm running Office 2000.

[Budfred]

Well 256Mb of RAM is considered to be the minimum for WinXP, so it certainly wouldn't hurt to add another 256Mb...

On Black Viper I just use the setup he recommends as the Safe option. The thing about WinXP is that it comes with a whole bunch of stuff that you don't need enabled by default and it usually runs a lot better if you disable most of it. If you haven't already installed the Updates for WinXP, I would do that first and then do the tweaks. Also, do you run a set of security programs: antivirus, firewall and regular spyware scanning?? Even if you aren't using garbage collectors like Kazaa, you are still at risk anytime you go online and these are essential programs. Your slowdown could be due to an invader... I just cleaned a virus off of a friend's system last weekend and she does only the minimal web use....

[mjc]

If you don't want to trim the fat of XP then the least you should do is add 512MB! :eek:

XP is a porkopolis........enough lard to fry up about 2 tons of fries.

Plus there are a few services that should be disabled for security reasons.

If you haven't been running an AV, firewall etc, then I would suggest posting a HijackThis (http://www.mjc1.com/mirror/hjt) log to make sure you haven't picked up any nasties.

[akif]

Healthwarning,
A window when dragged if leaves a trail, i think it is because the Hardware acceleration is set too low.
Besides, why don't u use Win98. i think it will run better.

[Rick]

You may find the culprit is the On Board Video
It may say it’s 32 bit video
BUT what is the video memory ?


I have seen this same effect when running only 2 programs at one time on a older slow video card or when using on board video that uses Shared memory

If your system board has the AGP slot open .
I’d suggest installing a new video card

[Paul Komski]

6Gig HDD should be plenty for XP - I regularly tripleboot W98, WME and WXP on an old 6Gig drive like this and the three OSes all work just fine; (with 1Gig DDR RAM however!). But ... on the other hand ... you have used up an awful lot of that disk's available space.

So the small amount of RAM (for XP) coupled with the small amount of available disk space makes one just wonder about the Virtual Memory Settings and how much the page file is being utilised.

So agree, add the 512MB of RAM as mjc advised. You could then also turn-off System Restore (or at least set it to a small percentage) and create a "smallish" fixed size PageFile, both of which should improve the available disk space.

If Windows is managing the virtual memory, do try and maximise the availabilty of your HDD space by keeping your cache, temp files and recycle bins regularly empty; this will allow for a bigger page file so that pages are swapped in and out of memory more easily.