Re: Everything about Cris's Apple Problems... Just checking in on Cris's PC issues. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this. I'm suspecting that he has some processes running that are very memory intensive, or have serious leaks. How much RAM does your system have Cris? Also do you have hard disc indexing active?
Holy crap!!! Well, my disk error chck or whatever that is just got finnished. This is running so much better already but it took nearly 3 hours to do. John, I ran the task manager and it seems like I am only running at 2% to 4% cpu usage. The second program (after IE) using up a lot of ram juice is called teatimer.exe. avergaing 54000+K. Tea timer? Tea? Tea Bag? Sounds like all those sexy Palin photoshopped pics on my hard drive are haunting me. What is curious is that program number 3 after IE and teatimer is also IE. Can that be? Is that simply because I have multiple wndows open? Physical memory is at about 42%. I used a couple adware and antivirus programs like spybot before I ran the chkdsk and nothing was found. Should I proceed to defrag now?
What did I tell you last time about viewing adult material on your machine? Teatimer is a process associated with spybot, which is why you are just noticing it now. That and spybot S&D are sapping your memory, hence the 42% usage. I prefer to use malware bytes to scan for the bad stuff as it has served me well in the past. I haven't used S&D in years. Malware Bytes finds the extra stuff that S&D misses.
Should I eliminate S&D from my laptop? Here is the issue at hand now. I just download iTunes again after uninstalling it yesterday. When I downloaded it again, it had all my old setting and it is still slow as crap. I will explain. I am very anal-retentive when it comes to my iPod. I need to have all my songs in order with the proper album cover and year of the album and all that stuff. It is running so slow that it is annoying that I have to wait for 4 to 5 seconds for the window to open when I right click on a song for "get more info". Ugh...
You don't have to delete spybot right now. Close all the programs that are currently running right now. Open up task manager, click on processes and make sure that spybot and tea timer are no longer running. If they are, on each one, right click and end the process. That should free up some memory right there. You can also sort the items in the list to see if the other processes taking up a lot of memory.
I would do this: Used Spybot (or some other program) in advanced mode to check your start up processes. These are the processes that open whenever you shut down. Many times unneeded processes open for programs that you may never use. You would be surprised. Delete or disable the processes for programs you don't use. In fact, I shut down all processes EXCEPT those that are part of the OS. Be sure to shut down your PC regularly or at least once every two days. Every time you open an application its like being at the library and taking a book off the shelf and leaving it open. The more apps you open, the more open books you leave laying around the library. If you don't shut down -- the computer equivalent of restacking the books in the library -- you eventually have a HUGE mess which the librarian (your processor) needs to work to clean up; hence why your PC slows down. As far as iTunes, it sounds like your anal-retentiveness is causing your problem. You have too many songs, too many album covers and too much information on your iPod and for iTunes to handle for the PC you have. My guess is you have a HUGE library of songs with all this crap which is slowing down your PC. Even if you pulled the artwork and data from iTunes eventually you have tasked your computer with more than it can handle...that, and you are being impatient. Think of it this way, Cris: You are asking your iTunes to play like Goetze when it is really Lucas Barrios. Sure they both play football, but one plays it fast and pretty, the other, well, slow. Defrag: In addition to shutting down every few days, I would set my defrag and file cleanup to run at some time every day that when I am not using the computer. Scheduler can do that for you. I do mine when I go running. When I get back all is done. Network Storage: So, if you are tired of you PC running like Holger Badstuber after a fast striker on a 1v1, then you might want to consider moving your song data from your laptop [snicker] to a NAS or network attached storage drive. Iomega makes several that products that are fairly cheap and are great for storage hogs like you. The Home Media Cloud Edition (2TB model) runs about $169 bucks and up and is a great entry-level NAS solution. I have a higher-end 6TB model and basically rack EVERYTHING to that. The cloud option allows me to access my data form anywhere. There is also a direct-connect method which is easy to set up....even for you. One word of caution on the storage: Due to the natural disasters in Thailand this year (where 80% of the world's hard drives are manufactured), the cost and supply of hard drives is low. If you find a good deal, BUY IT!!! Don't wait for the cost to come down. A rule of thumb I use is roughly $80/TB depending on where you live. I would not pay much more than that, maybe $90/TB. If you are a song hog I would go with 2TB to start, as you will likely eat 1TB up pretty darn fast. Ok, I gotta go help other customers who are calling, but you get the idea.
CNET says this. Sounds a lot like what we are telling you to do, but also sounds like it recommends things that might not be in the best interest of the user...like shutting down anti-virus software to make your PC run faster. The old "condom" versus "feel" argument. Sure it feels better, but you may end up dead.
Re: iPod Mgmt... A friend of mine, also a coworker, tried that several months back and was very pleased. He's very much the music nut that Cris is and prefers to have everything organized and in place. Very simple interface, which is easy to navigate.
I got this for the iPod situation; www.digidna.net ...but I am still not able to defrag. Today, the laptop spent all day trying to defrag and it never went over 7%.
Cris, Try ending as many processes as possible and disconnecting from the internet. Sometimes if you PC is running programs that are writing to the HDD while it defrags, it can hang like that.
Your disk is serverly fragmented then. The best thing to do is this: Back up your drive now. Do a full back up on to another external disk. It might take all day but better do that than lose your data. Do a full copy, not a ghost copy or anything like that. Don't back up programs, just your data. Should go faster. After you back up, use Spybot or some other software to shutdown the unneeded processes at start up. Leave only those core processes for the OS open, nothing else. Then reboot. When you reboot, open Spybot to confirm what processes are open. Shut down any processes that are not part of the OS. Run disc clean up and delete the stuff that you need to. Run Defrag. This may take a while if severely defragged. Also, you may need to do this several times, as in maybe up to 20 times to get it taken care of. Each time you redo it you need to follow these steps to ensure your CPU is dedicated to running clean up and defrag. There is a chance your disc is just hosed. You see, hard discs are like CDs in a way. Data is written to the disc every time you use your laptop. The OS puts the data anywhere and then reorganizes it later. going back to our library analogy, the OS takes any "new books" (new data) and simply puts it on any shelf it wants whether it is fiction or non-fiction. Then later it will re-categorize the book in the right shelf and aisle. However, that reorganization only occurs when you defrag and clean up. If you do not do that often, the OS will simply leave a ton of books lying around and move them as needed. In the "library" that means books get moved from desk to desk and shelf to shelf. Eventually the desks/shelves become unusable. This means that your disc space may have blocks that get written and rewritten over and over. This leads to bad "sectors" of your disc that are no longer usable or even badly fragmented files or sectors. In essence, it appears you do not regularly (defined as once a week or less) clean up your disc and now you are trying to clean out the crap. To put it visually, your disc looks like this... ...when it should look like this...
To add to Loewenboy's comments. How old is your laptop? Do you take care to ensure that it is well ventilated while in use? Heat kills HDDs fast.
It's about a year an a half and when the issues happened the fan went into serious overdrive. I may need to take it in to have the insides cleaned. By the way, anyone watch "Community"? It had the evil German team and one of the guys had the 2010 jersey. Lots of stereotypes and loads of fun!!!
Community rocks!!! the german dudes got their ass kicked lol i loved when they kicked the ball and left it .. ps: didnt know there was a NSR for bvb .. thanks for the invite cris
I love that episode! Rachel was in stitches when the guy in the 2010 trikot said: "I wish there was a term for how much I am enjoying your misery." Her all time favorite word is schadenfreude.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTfNPJ8KNmU"]Mormons vs Epic Black Guy.avi - YouTube[/ame] This is GREAT!!!!! Those poor kids got PWNED!!!!
Loved it....until the last 15 seconds. Then he undid 6 mins of decent discussion. But still... http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/104253/joseph-smith-part-1