I am sick of having to deal with my computer slowing down and freezing when I'm processing a video to a Windows Movie Maker format on Roxio Easy VHS to DVD after recording or while saving a video on Windows Movie Maker. I opened several tabs about 10 or 15 minutes ago regarding the wildfires here, but had close the approximately 20 tabs because they were causing my browser to freeze because a video is currently being processed. It took me a good 10 or 15 minutes to close them because Mozilla kept freezing. How do I make it so processing or saving a video doesn't affect my computer speed? Although it shouldn't be happening to begin with.
Specs plz? Also sometimes too many tabs in Firefox is a bad thing. I used to use Firefox, and at times even keeping three tabs open would drain my RAM. It wold crash things a lot.
Well first things first, you might want to consider deleting some files, lol. But anyway, you do only have 2GBs of RAM; upgrading it would help, but because you have a 32-bit computer, you could really only go practically up to 3GB. Still, a GB is a GB. 2.80GHz should be adequate, you could upgrade your processor if you really wanted, but that's more money and more difficult. RAM deals with multi-tasking, so your computer may have trouble rendering the video in WMM when you have four other programs open; hence, the rendering process runs better when Movie Maker is the only program you have open.
I've actually being dealing with approximately that amount of space for several months now (I can't even remember the last time the bar was blue, lol). It's because I have a lot of show videos and video game soundtracks, and, also, I don't always delete screenshots I take immediately or clean out old avatars and profile pictures. I can only record around an hour and 20 minutes for my walkthroughs / let's plays right now on Roxio Easy VHS to DVD before starting to run out a space. In fact, sometimes I can't even process a recording at full quality (9800 data rate) and have to lower it a bit. Anyway, since the slowness / semi-freezing only happens when I'm processing a video on Roxio or saving a video on Windows Movie Maker, I guess it's not too big of a deal. The biggest thing right now, actually, is getting this stupid CPU fan that's rattling replaced. However, I guess I still don't get why it slows down in the first place.
Well it slows down in the first place because it's just clogged up really. For one thing, don't have 20 bloody tabs open at once, doesn't help matters. There must be something you can delete from your 230GB's of hard drive to free up some space, your computer is feeling heavy and needs a jog. Buy an external hard drive for your recordings and stuff, it'll free up a lot of space on your computer and really probably help. Like Mist says, running only on 32-bit with a max really of 3GB's RAM you're not going to be able to get a huuuge buff to your pc, but cleaning it up a bit and not having so many tabs open whilst you're rendering your videos or whatever will probably help a little bit.
My mom's actually got one of those. If I recall correctly, it can hold up to 1,000 GB. I've got my files backed up on there, too. With her and my files combined, it's only about a quarter filled.
Ask her for that then, or better yet buy your own and have it solely for your recording business, you'll be able to store alot of video files and such on that and free up your computer space.
Ok, then just buy an External HD, and move ALL of whats on your computer to it basically. It'll most likely always be connected, so you can access it if needed, your computer will get some breathing space and not be clogged up and you'll probably see a slight improvement in your computers performance. Hell if everything you've done is on an external HD already you might just want to reformat your computer, start it fresh again.
Like I said, though, when a video isn't being processed or being saved, my computer runs at top-notch speed. When I turn it on in the morning, it only takes about a minute or two to load everything. In other words, it's not a major issue. Also, even if I wanted to reformat, I couldn't, because of my e-mail and password dilemma with MSN.
Hard drive space isn't solely about storage, either. Windows employs something called a page file, which takes up storage space, to speed up commonly used processes. For example, I go to the store to buy fruit snacks a lot. The process for this is 1. find my wallet, 2. get in my car, 3. drive to the store, 4. buy fruit snacks, 5. go back home. Instead of having to think out the process each and every time, I have a memory of what I usually do, and just refer to that whenever I need to go out. Your page file is that memory, and limiting your hard drive space can limit the page file, thus limiting your speed. So while hard drive space certainly isn't as important as RAM or CPU speed, it's a component. Vivi is right in that an external hard drive could help; in addition, you may want to try something like CCleaner, which can clean unnecessary files from your hard drive as well as your registry.
I guess I should clarify some stuff, haha! My mom bought an external hard drive called HITACHI a long time ago that we share. It can hold up to, I believe, 1,000 GB of files. About once a month or sooner, I delete the contents / files of my folder on the external hard drive in order to avoid conflicts and re-copy all of my updated files onto it. Everything that's on the external hard drive now is everything that's on my computer, with the exception of files that have been added, updated, or changed since the last backup. I just keep them on my computer because I don't feel like going through the hassle of bringing the external hard drive in here every time I want to see something and plugging it into my computer and everything. My mom likes to keep it disconnected from her computer when not in use to protect it from any potential viruses. We haven't had any problems with viruses for the longest time, but she just likes to play it safe. I think the last time we dealt with a virus was back when we just had that one computer, the Dell, and we got a Trojan that we couldn't get rid of.
Crimson Azoth and Misty are right, keeping your hard drive almost full isn' t recommended when you use memory-hungry programs. However even once it' s cleaned up don' t expect the slowdowns to stop. Here' s something I was told in IT lessons (which was ten years ago so it may be obsolete by now *shrugs*) : Windows says he' s multi-task, but he really isn' t. It would imply that it can process A and B at the same time, but what they mean when they say that Windows is multi-task is that it can do a little bit of A, then jump forth to B, then get back to A etc ... Of course the result is that Windows needs more time to process A and B "at the same time" (lol) than separately. Video processing programs are very demanding, it' s no surprise they slow your computer down. Press Ctrl + Alt + Del when they are running and click on the performances tab, it should show you how much of your RAM and processing power is being used. Also, still in the Ctrl + Alt + Del tab, you can click on Process and see a list of all the programs that are running. If there' s your user name next to a process it means that process isn' t windows-related, you can right click on any of those process and terminate them to free up some RAM (for instance do you really need Divx Auto Update to be running right now ?). You can also right-clik on the Windows Movie Maker process and change its priority. Remember the A+B explanation ? The priority of a process is the proportion of time Windows will spend on it before it jumps back to another process : if you get the priority down it will prevent your computer from slowing down but processing the video will take more time, if you get the priority up your computer will slow down even more but it will process the video faster. In other words maybe you should get Windows Movie Maker' s priority down when you need to use the computer at the same time, and get its priority up before you leave or go to sleep.
1 - Delete unused files. (And remember to empty the recycle bin) 2 - Download CCleaner and scan your computer, this alone helps most of the time. 3 - Switch to the 'Windows 7 Basic' theme. This can be done by right clicking your desktop, Selecting Personalize, and then scrolling down until you see 'Basic and High Contrast Themes (6) 4 - Defrangment your hard drive. Open the start menu, search 'Disk Defragmenter' open the program, select the C: Drive and click 'Defragment Disk' (Will take a LONG time to complete' 5 - Close unused processes. This can be done by right clicking the taskbar and selecting 'Start task manager'. Click the processes tab, if you see anything there that you are not using or don't need (iTunes for example) click it and then slect 'end process'. Don't close anything if you don't know what it is, as it could be something windows needs to run. (You will have to do this step every time you power off and back on your computer) After all this your computer should run like a beast no matter what the specs are.
