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Smart / Technical People - Help! What's wrong with my laptop?

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J.D.
Posts: 21362 - Karma: 5,141
Anyone here know enough about computers to tell me what's wrong with mine? A couple of days ago it started freezing and unfreezing every once in a while. As I type this is is doing it again. I'll post this quickly because it takes forever to type. Basically, the physical memory being used suddenly jumps from around 500mb to 1.7-2gb (I have 2 gigs of ram), despite me not doing anything different or running any new apps. The task manager's performance tab looks like this.

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That's 3 freezes there. Normally, there's just one at a time but sometimes more. If it's just one freeze there's just one of those lumps, which can be shorter or longer, like so.

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It seems to happen more frequently when I'm playing a DVD.

Any ideas?
Aug 16 2009 12:53AM
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caucasian_chad
Posts: 4078 - Karma: 3,625
Those pics don't really help, go to the processes tab and try to figure out which process is using all that memory (just watch to try and see which one randomly spikes for no reason in the Memory column), its probably a virus.  If nothing seems to be using the memory, click the show processes from all users button and see if its there then.
Aug 16 2009 1:05AM
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Arabian.
Posts: 9632 - Karma: 54
^ find your processes. Also, update any drivers you may be neglecting and clean out your harddrive (defrag, empty recovery, all that.)
Aug 16 2009 1:09AM
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J.D.
Posts: 21362 - Karma: 5,141
Tried that, and the "show processes from all users" box is selected. Nothing ever  jumps more than a couple mb here and there. Firefox uses the most ram and it's never THAT high, ie right now it's about 80mb. So whatever it is, it's not showing up there.
Aug 16 2009 1:10AM
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Hack.The.Pow.
Posts: 1294 - Karma: 25
so its using all that memory without showing in the applications? weird.
Aug 16 2009 1:28AM
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caucasian_chad
Posts: 4078 - Karma: 3,625
hmmm I'd say virus but Its hard to tell when you can't figure out what process it is.
Aug 16 2009 1:33AM
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MrYeates
Posts: 1710 - Karma: 91
get me a picture of all your process running and ill help sort you out
Aug 16 2009 1:53AM
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J.D.
Posts: 21362 - Karma: 5,141
Rad. Thanks. Here they are. Task manager is on the right, process explorer is on the left. I needed 2 screenshots. But I don't see what there is causing the problem.


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Aug 16 2009 2:08AM
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Arabian.
Posts: 9632 - Karma: 54
Your System Idle Process is running smoothly, so it wouldn't be a behind the scenes malfunction, and I see nothing out of the ordinary. I think you need to keep taskmanager up so that when your computer freezes, you can see what processes are working during the freeze.
Aug 16 2009 2:17AM
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J.D.
Posts: 21362 - Karma: 5,141
I am, it's always up, but nothing in the processes log ever jumps up. Firefox is always on top as far as hogging memory, and like I say it's never taking up all that much. Right now, oddly, it's not doing the freezing thing, but my CPU usage reads as 90-95%... though that might just be because I'm running a scan on spybot search & destroy. Which so far hasn't found anything.

This is just infuriating. I posted this on another board and one guy there thought my memory was fried, but another said probably not since that would more likely lead to blue screen crashes. I can't figure out what's wrong.
Aug 16 2009 2:34AM
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MrYeates
Posts: 1710 - Karma: 91
exactly
that will show us whats up
Aug 16 2009 2:35AM
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lineskier10
Posts: 11339 - Karma: 796
too much child porn?
Aug 16 2009 3:09AM
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MrYeates
Posts: 1710 - Karma: 91
some of those virus protectors just bog down your computer alot.... i think i saw that you had 2 going?
Aug 16 2009 5:08AM
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00_Koda
Posts: 922 - Karma: 269
that seems to be the case
Aug 16 2009 5:29AM
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dan.b
Posts: 866 - Karma: 10
go download hijackthis and use a web analyser of the log file.

here's one : www.exelib.com/hijack

they will tell you what to delete and what to keep. You can also try to run smithfraudfix. another good program.
Aug 16 2009 8:08AM
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