FIRST WORD lance ulanoff
Diary of a Slow PC During the many times I’m called upon to provide tech support, there’s often a moment when my eyes are squeezed shut, my hands are pressed hard against my skull, and I’m muttering under my breath. It’s at such times that I’m this close to giving up. I had one of these moments recently, dealing with a system issue I had probably helped create. Let me rewind. Roughly four years ago, I bought my mother-in-law a new Dell PC. While this may seem like an extravagant gift, I must admit that the whole thing cost less than $500, including the display. These days, that’s not much of a bargain, but back then, netbooks and sub-$300 Eee PCs were pretty much nonexistent. Even so, I made some mistakes with that purchase—ones I would not make again. Take a look at the system’s specs and you can see where I went wrong: Dell Dimension 2400, 2.4GHz Celeron CPU, 128MB of RAM, Intel Extreme Graphics Controller Integrated (82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV/) 32MB VRAM, Microsoft Windows XP. Got it? Right. Even running Windows XP, this machine did not have enough memory or graphics power. In my defense, my mother-in-law did little more than use Microsoft Word and Excel, browse the Web, and access her America Online account. Within a month, I got a call from “Mom.” “The PC seems slow,” she complained. Sometime later, I was out for a visit, checked the system, and agreed: This thing was a dog. I spent some time clearing her Internet cache and defragging the hard drive. That seemed to help, somewhat. However, with those specs, this PC was never going to be even respectably fast. A couple of years later, I convinced my mother-in-law to buy additional RAM. Since she lives hours away, someone else installed the RAM. But it was still a dog. My in-laws explained that the PC had gotten to the point where it could take a minute or more
between actions. This was unacceptable. And so, on a recent visit, I began my 4hour-plus troubleshooting odyssey. Windows’ Automatic Updates recommended an upgrade to IE7 and Service Pack 3. I ran these updates and retested the browser. With one tab open, things were okay. When I opened the second, the system started to slow down a bit. When I tried a third, I was back where I started. Soon I had a system message that virtual memory was running low and I needed to close some processes. Man, this thing was in bad shape. Since resources and processes seemed to be the issue, I began to look at
system specs. The CPU seemed right, but the RAM made me question my sometimes faulty memory. It said 128MB of RAM. I asked my mother-in-law about the memory upgrade she purchased. She said it was in there, but she couldn’t recall how much was added. At the time, neither could I. It was time to take radical action. I powered the system down and unplugged every single cable from it. After vacuuming out unbelievable amounts of dust and dog hair from the back vents and an intake chamber on the front, I took a look at the motherboard and the two memory SIMM chips. It looked as if nei-
My failure to buy the right PC, a bad memory install, and looking for problems in all the wrong places had cost all of us countless wasted hours. things that always ran and were resident at start-up. I uninstalled a bunch of unused AOL utilities and with those eradicated, I did another reboot. The results were the same. Looking for other possible causes, I noticed in the Task Manager that McAfee security software was eating up copious amounts of resources. So I uninstalled McAfee and went with Norton Internet Security 2009 instead. NIS 2009 installed on my home PCs like a dream, but things went a little less smoothly with Mom’s. Initially, the installation killed the Internet connection. I performed an uninstall and then a reinstall and the Internet miraculously returned. I wish I could tell you why. My first reboot after the successful NIS 2009 install took forever, but eventually, I was back online. With a few browser tabs open, however, the system was no better than it had been before. I even got the “virtual resources low” message. I think it was at this point that the head pressing and muttering began. I decided to check the
ther one of them was fully seated. I used my thumbs to press one in—snap!—and then the other—snap! I put the PC back together, rebooted, and immediately the system found 384MB of memory. After this browsing was fast, easy, effortless. This was a zippy PC. In the end, my failure to buy the right PC in the first place, a bad memory install, and looking for problems in all the wrong places had cost all of us countless wasted hours. The lessons here are to buy the right PC with the right specs; don’t always assume your PC’s problem is with Windows, malware, or apps; and always seat memory properly (then make sure the system recognizes it). Now, whenever I call my mother-inlaw, I ask how the PC’s doing. Her reply: “It’s wonderful.” Follow me on Twitter! Catch the chief’s comments on the latest tech developments at twitter.com/LanceUlanoff. MARCH 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION
