Does my T43 need mre RAM?

I have had this T43 for almost two years and these days, it takes i a
long time to load programs and to switch from one to the other, maybe 20
seconds at times. Meanwhile, the HD light is on continuously. I have 1
gig of RAM. Do I need more? If so, how do I do it?

Angelo Campanella

John Navas wrote:

> On Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:25:18 GMT, Angelo Campanella
> <> wrote in
> <Ora1l.202896$>:
>>I have had this T43 for almost two years and these days, it takes i a
>>long time to load programs and to switch from one to the other, maybe 20
>>seconds at times. Meanwhile, the HD light is on continuously. I have 1
>>gig of RAM. Do I need more? If so, how do I do it?
> As I wrote that first time you posted:
> More [RAM] is always better, but 1 GB should be enough unless you've got
> lots of crap getting loaded in your system when it starts up. I suspect
> you've been infected with a virus, worm and/or spyware. Do some serious
> anti-virus checking.
>
> Look at Commit Charge down at the bottom [of Task Managler]. If it
> exceeds the amount of physical memory, then you're swapping; otherwise
> you aren't.
>
> Possible hardware fault, but I suspect malware.
>
> Please do check thoroughly for malware before posting again.


For some reason, my previous post and all your previous answers did not
show up in my message cache. I waited a day in hopes of seeing anythins.
Just the messages here over the past hour have shown. I apologize for that.

To answer other respsnes:

1- My task Monitor "Commit charge" is at this istant 805M/200M whatever
tht means. It has been like that over the past hour and maybe more, I
can't tell.

Admittently, I'm a work hog, leaving several half-done tasks up in RAM
simply because that's the way I work... Life is never perfect.

2- What I need is a procative way to monitor this situation so that I
know when to off-load some secondary tasks.

3- I am running a Norton AV scan now. It's chugging slowly... it has to
get up to couple of hundred thousand count before it's done.

Sincerely,

Angelo Campanella

John Navas wrote:
> Look at Commit Charge down at the bottom [of Task Managler]. If it
> exceeds the amount of physical memory, then you're swapping; otherwise
> you aren't.

Correction, the latter Commit figure is 2013M, not 201M.

Does that mean I have 2 Gig of RAM? or what.

The physical memory show 522M total, 56M available, 225M system cache,
Kernal 163M, paged 86M, notepad 77M. (All afer I unloaded Firefox which
often goes over 100M).

T do the Startup Load investigation, I should use the TU2009TrialEN-US
package i just downloaded?

> Possible hardware fault, but I suspect malware.
> Please do check thoroughly for malware before posting again.

The only toools I have for such are Ad-Aware and Norton AntiVirus.

Angelo Campanella

On Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:03:53 GMT Angelo Campanella wrote:

> The only toools I have for such are Ad-Aware and Norton AntiVirus.
>
I would suggest adding the following to your arsenal. Download, install,
update and run:

Superantispyware, <http://www.superantispyware.com/>
Spybot Search & Destroy, <http://www.spybot.info/en/index.html>
Malwarebytes <http://www.malwarebytes.org/>

All of these are free to download.
--
Ernie B.

Communication: The art of moving an idea from one mind to another, hopefully
without distortion.

~misfit~ wrote:
> Somewhere on teh intarwebs "Angelo Campanella" typed:
>>Correction, the latter Commit figure is 2013M, not 201M.
>>Does that mean I have 2 Gig of RAM? or what.
> It means that your system wants, and can easiily benefit from 2GB or more.
> Commit charge is the figure that is called for, in your case what you don't
> have as physical RAM gets paged to HDD.
>>The physical memory show 522M total, 56M available, 225M system cache,
>>Kernal 163M, paged 86M, notepad 77M. (All afer I unloaded Firefox
>>which often goes over 100M).
> It looks like you may have had 2 x 512 and one of them had either died or
> needs to re pulled / reinserted as it's not registering. That's probably why
> you noticed the slowdown so much, a sudden drop from 1GB to 512MB. Usually
> when it's just bloat it's not so noticable, being gradual.
> If it were my machine I'd get 2 x 1GB PC2-4200 SODIMMs and install them. (I
> believe that's the max your machine can run.)
>>The only toools I have for such are Ad-Aware and Norton AntiVirus.
> Forget the software for now. Even squeaky-clean it's going to be slow on
> 512MB.

Misfit might get the cigar.

I shut down and open the RAM cover. 512M RAM! But there is a 2Rx16 in
the nomenclature, and my Control panel System screen say 1 gig of RAM.
The next thing for me to try is the re-seating exercise. I'll be back...

There is no room in the slot for aything else. I have to swap plug-in
RAM chips, I think. The nomenclature on this RAM chip is

512 MB 2Rx16 PC2-4200S-444-11-A0

The receptacle says 57xPB.

Do I buy one of greater capacity at Micro-Center? or what?

Angelo Campanella

~misfit~ wrote:
> Somewhere on teh intarwebs "Angelo Campanella" typed:
>>The physical memory show 522M total, 56M available, 225M system cache,
>>Kernal 163M, paged 86M, notepad 77M. (All afer I unloaded Firefox
>>which often goes over 100M).
> It looks like you may have had 2 x 512 and one of them had either died or
> needs to re pulled / reinserted as it's not registering. That's probably why
> you noticed the slowdown so much, a sudden drop from 1GB to 512MB. Usually
> when it's just bloat it's not so noticable, being gradual.

OK. Final roundup.

After I sent the last message, I looked again at the Systemmcomponent
count to see that, after disturbing the RAM socket, the tally came up to
one Gig. So Misfit does get the cigar.

The tally for memory is now
Physical Total 1046M
Availabe 479.
Cache 610M
Commit 411M/2459M

> If it were my machine I'd get 2 x 1GB PC2-4200 SODIMMs and install them. (I
> believe that's the max your machine can run.)

when posible, I'll see wahat microcenter wants for the 2 gig.

Thanks, fellows, it's been real (nice)

Sincerely,

Aangeo Campanella

~misfit~ wrote:
> Cool. Even if you just get a 1 gig SODIMM and replace the easilly acessable
> one then 1.5 GB will run quite well.
>
> This is a good resource, it has a link to the relevant hardware maintainence
> manual so, if you decide to go with 2 gig then you can access the second
> SODIMM slot. (It's easy, it's just under the keyboard.):
>
> http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T43

I looked t that, but the photos shows components in place and I thought
I should see an open slot.

So you say that there is a second place to insert a fresh RAM? I think
I see one there....

I just called Microcenter here. They say that the 4200 is obsolete and
that they have a 5600 that is backward compatible. Does this make sense?
also he said the price was $30 for a 2 gig RAM. Am I misunderstanding?

Finally, I have not had the keyboard of this T43 yet so i don't know
how to do it.

Comments?

Thanks,

Angelo Campanella

John Navas wrote:
> I don't think adding 1 GB RAM will solve your problem.

On re-seating the RAM, the count came up to a gig, and things are going
faster now.

But, on a Search (using search for words in documents), it became
really slow again. I think the Explorer's text search is a lot slower
than the filename search...

I agree that I should search for malware; I have yet to do that sort of
search. I'll try to work it in over he next several days.



Angelo Campanella

John Navas wrote:
> What kind of search? Windows Desktop Search is very fast once indexing
> is complete.

OK, so I looked it up.. it's apperently a paid software. I nosed about
and found a free download, but my XP turned up its nose at it, claiming
it to not ne a valid win32 app. Who'd a'figgered? It might be just an
update.

> Standard search in Windows XP and earlier is very slow no
> matter how much RAM you have because the scanning is done in real time.

The search i now use is that bundled with "Windows Explorer".

>> I agree that I should search for malware; I have yet to do that sort of
>>search. I'll try to work it in over he next several days.
> Make it a priority. Seriously. You can run Windows Live OneCare Safety
> Scanner in the background while you do something else.

You guys spiel off all these softwares as if they;re part of the bed
linen. Some is. Some is not...

Anyway, I need to settle how to upp to 2 gig RAM.

Angelo Campanella

John Navas wrote:
> See the Hardware Maintenance Manual, link in my other post.

OK.. downloaded manual, and for the keyboard it says to pull a few
screws on the underside and then finesse the keyboard off the top... I
think I can handle that.

>> So you say that there is a second place to insert a fresh RAM? I think
>>I see one there....
> One on the bottom; one under the keyboard. See my other post.

So, which of the following two items is true:

1- The dimm I see on the bottom labeled 512M 2P is really two 512s on a
single board, and that the top slot in question is now empty. -or-

2- The dimm I see on the bottom is one of two dimms, being itself 512M.
The other slot on top now has another 512 dimm in it.

(I know I'm paranoid, but I have been twiddling with electronics gear
since the 1950's, and I have been burned by odd semantics more than
once... I like to get things clear. This aspect - misundersandings - has
only been geeting worse...)

>> I just called Microcenter here. They say that the 4200 is obsolete and
>>that they have a 5600 that is backward compatible. Does this make sense?
>>also he said the price was $30 for a 2 gig RAM. Am I misunderstanding?
>
> Compatible parts are:
> DDR2 PC2-4200 - CL=4 - Unbuffered - NON-ECC - DDR2-533
> DDR2 PC2-5300 - CL=5 - Unbuffered - NON-ECC - DDR2-667

OK I can handle that. I just need claraifaicarions about the onezys and
twozies

> If you're going to ask questions, please have the courtesy to read all
> the answers more carefully.

I'm trying.

Angelo Campanella