Okay so all my games have had issues lately...

[OakusPokus]

Okay, I've run into this problem when I wanted to play my Fallout 3 GOTY Edition. Originally when I used to have Fallout 3 GOTY on my computer it seemed to be working at a very much decent speed, I was looking at 45+ FPS on High. Now after having the computer for about 4-5 months it has decided that It is going to slow everything down. And by everything I mean everything (even YouTube videos on anything about 360p has decided that it is going to give me 15fps) The problem becomes even more of an issue when I can't play Morrowind or Oblivion, both of which as we all know aren't exactly the most beautiful games in the world and yet they are crippled by my crappy excuse of an computer.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS HAS DECIDED TO HAPPEN ON ALMOST ALL MY GAMES

Now I have a couple of speculation as to how this has happened and it is as follows. Either:

A: I'm using far too much of my computers storage and thus it is slowing it down to scaringly small rates
B: Having over 20+ games on my computer has crippled it

I'll give some small details which may or may not help you out in trying to aid me.

Q: How much memory are you actually using on your computers HDD
A: 51.1gbs out of the 232gbs it has on it.

Q: Specs?:
A: Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 5450
Processor(s): Intel Pentium D CPU 3.20GHz
Ram: 4GB
OS: Windows XP

Any help would be great!

Edited April 4, 2013 by OakusPokus

[samadchaz]

should be in H/W section but ok

1)try CCleaner(free)

or glary utilities(only if you are looking for serious things that actually work)

2)Auslogics Disk Defrag, free one , try defrag and optimize

also upload a pic of your system drive properties(right-click)

3)again upload a pic of Start->run->msconfig->startup tab

[OakusPokus]

(Eh sorry, was just in a bit of a rush to see If I can get this solved)

I'm defragging right now, as for those pictures.
(I believe this is what you wanted)


http://gyazo.com/7f6369d41c96c9c066836e573556a8ea
http://gyazo.com/957c5466a753a8603a12041499a5c9b8
http://gyazo.com/1056591d679b893b6370fa22a094d9ed
http://gyazo.com/21b9ffe4d3f5919a0a221f90b754b0e1

Edited April 4, 2013 by OakusPokus

[Vagrant0]

Better question is how much of that 232gb is free? Are your games on the same drive as your operating system and all tempfiles/pagefile?

 

How old is the hard drive?

 

How many hours a day during that time did you have the computer on and typically how much of that time was it actively writing/reading data?

 

 

Generally speaking, physical drives tend to end up having lower performance once they cross that mark of being 60% full, and see another performance drop past 80% full. Having games and other programs on the same drive as your OS and temp files can lead to lower performance since the same drive is being used to read both game data as well as any new data fetched by your system while you're playing. Physical drives can also start to wear out from 3-5 years of usage depending on manufacturer and overall usage.

 

You may also want to delete those images since it shows your windows registration key.

 

For the most part, your best bet lies in 3 options...

 

1). Delete games you no longer play to free up space (temporary solution).

2). Look into external hard-drives to free up space by moving unnecessary files off your hard drive unless you're using them (alternative to deleting things since you can transfer the larger data files out of a game folder when you aren't playing that game, but don't have to redownload everything should you decide to later... At the downside of having to wait an hour or two every time you move things around).

3). Buy a new hard drive, install it in your computer (or have Geeksquad do it) and use that drive for your games instead of the system drive. You can get a 500gb drive pretty cheaply these days. Just need to know what connections are available inside your computer.

[OakusPokus]

(Thank you! I completely forgot that, that was even on there, the image is gone, although I've probably already got someone who has wrote it down :L)

 

As far as I know the HDD is about a year old, the whole PC was refurbished and put on sale so I'm presuming they bought a new one. Everything I have on my computer is stored on the single HDD this is probably not the most useful thing in the world however I will buy either a portable HDD soon or just one I need to install. Either way thanks for the advice. I have deleted quite a lot of files but I feel more could be done so I will look into that after I have finished defragging my computer.

 

As for computer usage I pretty much use it all day, so I would say for the most part about 9-14 hours daily, I tend to leave my computer on stand-by whilst I'm sleeping so I can quickly resume what I was doing before I went to sleep, however I'll start to completely power off my computer when I go to sleep.

[Vagrant0]

As for computer usage I pretty much use it all day, so I would say for the most part about 9-14 hours daily, I tend to leave my computer on stand-by whilst I'm sleeping so I can quickly resume what I was doing before I went to sleep, however I'll start to completely power off my computer when I go to sleep.

 

Actually, leaving it in standby or sleep mode is probably better in the long run. It's not too much of an issue since you have the computer running for long periods of time when using it, but frequent starting and stopping can actually wear down a drive faster than keeping it at idle.

 

For an external drive, your best bet might be an enclosure that has a USB cable that you can attach to your computer instead of a portable drive. It might be slightly more expensive up-front, but it will make you a little more aware of how hard drives connect up and probably give you more freedom regarding the actual drive that stores information.

[samadchaz]

you have so many startup items which causing problem in background and performance

[bben46]

The things I see constantly slowing down computers

Malware - not just viruses, but advertising trackers that constantly call home to record what you are doing on your computer - if you have several, they will bog you down. Use some software that cleans this crap - Glary and ccleaner can do this.

Tool bars - these are usually another form of tracking disguised as something marginally useful - get rid of ALL of them - just disabling doesn't stop some of them from calling home - these are often installed with FREE GAMES!!! type sites.

Auto update checking files loaded every time you start the computer - Java, Adobe, HP and others - the more of these you have the slower your start up will be - turn them off.

Auto defrag programs - often start up and slow things down whenever the HD gets a certain percent full.

Win XP auto indexing - shut it down while playing games this is only needed to speed up searching the HD.

HD more than two thirds full - Take out the trash

Background processes - IM, VOIP. browser and any other program running in the background will each be taking small amounts of processor time - it adds up.

Services - again each service is using a small amount of your precious processor time - disable as many as you can.