[Lunatique]

My workstation at work is hanging all the time while I'm doing thing. It'll freeze for 3 to 5 seconds at a time, and it makes drawing/painting a big pain in the ass. What could be causing that? I don't run anything but Photoshop or Painter, ACDSee, and I have dual P3 733 Mhz, 392 mb RAM, and running Win 2000, with latest patches. I have Norton System Works and have optimized all settings too.

[Nino N]

Does it hang when your running photoshop or all the time? Check scratchdisks if so.
Something could be running in the background thats taking up your resources. Check your CPU load% when its idling.-- if its not at 0% then you found your problem
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The cure for religion is common sense.

[B0b]

ad aware - dl it and run.. smells of spyware to me..

[-tai-]

Or perhaps the ram... not sure really.

[ceenda]

Try using a diagnostic tool like Sandra: http://www.3bsoftware.com/downloads/

The standard version is pretty complete and imo it's great. I found out a whole ton of stuff about my PC, like my USB drivers weren't properly optimized and after downloading drivers from the manafacturer the performance was much better.

[DJorgensen]

Just a quick question. How do you have 392 Mb of RAM?
You must have some reall unmatched sizes of sticks in there (which could be a problem on its own)

Also with the system resources, Norton always hogs a lot, and Win2K is kinda annoying too.

Lastly, I would wonder about the hard drive. How big is it and what is its speed. Perhaps you have an older slower hard drive that is almost full, and when this happens, allocating virtual memory takes much longer (since the computer has less to work with). Also try defragging the hard drive. In fact I believe I've heard (quite a long time ago) that a hard drive that is over 80% full can make a computer up to 20 or 30% slower.

Hope this helps,
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[B0b]

392 =

3x128, 1x8

1x256, 1x128, 1x8


ditch the 8..

[Lunatique]

The workstation was just recently reformatted and installed--so everything should be minty fresh as far as I know. I'll try Sandra and see what happens.

[lalPOOO]

You seem to have solved the problem, and you're not a n00b when it comes to computers, but....
When it stops to "think" does it make any noises? Specifically harddrive noises?
I remember when my 20gig drive failed on me it was acting a lot like that, with the frequent pauses. If the harddrive is making strange noises, you'll probably want to backup your data (wait, don't you already have everything backed up ) Cause that drive is about to take a long walk off a short plank.

(if you already know the above, please feel free to lather me with insults)

[Lunatique]

I have no idea what I did, but it stopped hanging. I'll never truly understand the mysterious ways the computer works, no matter how many years I use them for over 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, or how many of them I take apart and put together. . ..

[Impaler]

Gypsy magic and nerd scrapings.
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QED, sort of.

[Smurf]

Perhaps power mangement is turning somthing off like your harddrive? That is a problem with some PC's.
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Meep -It pwnz you.