Hey there peoples!

I'm wondering if anyone has any tips they might like to share with me regarding optimizing your computer...

The reason I ask is that I am currently using CS on my computer and I find that when I go to use some features that I have quite a lag time... If I try to apply a texture it takes a long time to open up that window for me.... etc.

I have a decent computer with two hard drives and a gig of ram. What's the problem? any ideas? I have the scratch disk on my program set to the opposite hard drive. Occasionally if I have lots of windows open, I will get a little pop up message saying that XP is increasing my virtual memory size. It says the settings are too low. I have gone in and changed them but still get that message.

I guess I'm wondering if any of you have experience with this or know more about computers and would have some advice????

Thanks,
Mary Fran
(mired down in computer muck)

With a Gig of RAM I am very surprised that you're having virtual memory isses! Virtual memory is when your computer uses the hard drives as a temporary place to store things that should be going into RAM but there's not enough space for them. How many windows do you have open and what type of programs are they? I'm pondering where the memory hog is on your computer. LOL

When you start having these issues you might want to pop open the Windows Task Manager (CRTL+ALT+DELETE) and click on the Processes tab. You can sort the processes by the Memory Usage and see what apps are hogging the memory for you.

Sorry I don't have a silver bullet for you.

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Stacy
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avatar photo by Marja Flick-Buijs downloaded at sxc.hu

Stacy! Thanks so much for replying... it's driving me bananers!

When that message rears it's ugly head I usually have CS, email, internet explorer, msn messenger, and a couple of folders of elements open. I do have a habit of dragging the stuff from the folders into CS instead of opening them from CS. Would that cause me problems?

I also have that annoying pop up to download Service pak 2 from microsoft. I click to download and nothing happens. I think it's running in the background as it slows the whole operation down but when I put my cursor over it... nothing. No percent of download. Nothing.

Could that be hindering me?

So grateful for any advice...
Mary Fran

First of all...I am in NO WAY a computer expert. I'm just on it waaaaay to much. I don't know anything about programming, or any of the behind the scenes stuff. So just be warned that when tweaking your computer, you should keep track of what you change in case you need to change it back.

Having said that, I found a really great website for PCs. The link I'm going to send you is to a thread that is about tweaking XP in for faster and better performance. Again, TWEAK AT YOUR OWN RISK. Most of the long time members at the site seem really knowledgable and professional...but you just never know.

Cyber Tech Help

Hope this helps!

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Jen in N. TX
My Blog

i find sometimes that explorer the browser that my computer uses slows things down...you could try using a different browser...i know of several that do that...

Thanks so much everyone for taking the time to answer my question! What a great bunch ya'll are!

Mary Fran,

If XP is wanting to go out and get service pack 2, I'd just set aside some time to do that before you start scrapping. Check out http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/en/default.asp it will help you find what updates you might need. Personally I'd get SP2 just to get XP to stop complaining.

If really doesn't sound like you're too many programs. I often am running everything you mentioned along with a second IM and music and I don't see a performance hit using PSE. I'd run checks for spyware and viruses/trojan horses just to make sure that neither of these things are sucking up your memory.

The next time things get slow in PS just check the Memory usage and see what has grabbed the largest amount of memory.

Good luck!

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Stacy
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avatar photo by Marja Flick-Buijs downloaded at sxc.hu

You might have a virus or malware on your machine, try looking for a program called AdAware (I think?) to make sure someone else's programs aren't running on your computer! Monitoring memory is a great way to check on that too.

Also see if there is a preference in PSCS for how much memory the app can use, maybe you can set it higher.

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