# Program Not Responding



## Southpaw (Jan 2, 2003)

I am getting this message a lot and my computer is really slow. It's Windows XP system.

I have done a few things to try to speed computer up

Emptied recycle bin
Deleted cookies
Ran virus scan
Changed virtual memory file size from 384 to 1000
Ran Spy Bot

What else can I do?

thanks!


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## beorning (Apr 14, 2006)

Does it happen with certain programs? or with multiple ones?

If I were in your shoes, I would make sure that all my drivers, windows and my antivirus/spyware programs were up to date. I'd also run hijack this (there's a link in the maintenance thread to download it) and either post the logfile here for someone to look at or run it through this website: http://www.hijackthis.de/ 
to see if anything odd is going on. 

It could be any number of issues causing the problem, from buggy software to failing hardware, to attempting to perform actions that take a long time and cause the software you are using to not respond in a timely fashion to windows.


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## Karen (Apr 17, 2002)

First you need to do everything listed under the monthly maintenance thread in the sticky at the top of the forum. There are a couple of other things there that might solve your problem.

If you've had your computer a while, you might also need to clean up your registry. An excellent free one is CCleaner. You can trust what it finds. Download at: http://www.ccleaner.com/

After that, do a defrag of your hard drive. When you get all cluttered up with info here, info there, etc. on your hard drive, it slows things down as it try to match "like" info together. It has to go looking in several places all over the hard drive. By defragging, your hard drive re-gathers all the same related information together.

If that doesn't solve your problem, do a Hijack This scan (info is in the monthly maintence thread) and post that info here so we can take a look at what's running. Sometimes you get conflicting software or spyware/virus that doesn't get cleaned.


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## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Southpaw said:


> I am getting this message a lot and my computer is really slow. It's Windows XP system.


That happens a lot when you're running without enough memory. 

How much memory do you have? If you're not sure, right-click on the My Computer icon and select properties. On the General tab under Computer you'll see how much RAM you have.


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## HappyYooper (Jan 26, 2005)

Mine shows: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4CPU 2.80 GHz 2.79 GHz, 128 MB of RAHM
I have Windows XP...how do I know how much I should have & if I can increase mine?


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## Guest (Jan 5, 2009)

MountainMamma91 said:


> Mine shows: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4CPU 2.80 GHz 2.79 GHz, 128 MB of RAHM
> I have Windows XP...how do I know how much I should have & if I can increase mine?


You want a bare minimum of 512 MB RAM, and 1 gb would be better. Yes you can increase it, Any motherboard capable of a P4 CPU will support at least 1 gig memory.


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## arabian knight (Dec 19, 2005)

zong said:


> You want a bare minimum of 512 MB RAM, and 1 gb would be better. Yes you can increase it, Any motherboard capable of a P4 CPU will support at least 1 gig memory.


 Very true. I kick myself everyday for only having 256 in this Dell.~! It is now over 5 years old. But the Dell I have takes special memory that is way too expensive, So I am just saving up and waiting for the day to get a new computer. I sometimes also run into this Program not responding, and it is different ones at that, not just IE.


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## 2horses (Jul 19, 2004)

XP is a memory hog and you definitely need more than 128. I agree 512 is minimum and 1Gb is better.


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## HappyYooper (Jan 26, 2005)

Hi,
Thanks for your help but I have yet another question....how do I add more memory to my computer? 
Thanks again!
Paula


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## beorning (Apr 14, 2006)

You'd need to purchase additional memory sticks and physically install them into your pc.


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