JWB Posted November 14, 2017 Share Posted November 14, 2017 On Task Manager CPU load will bounce around from 80% to 90% then spike 100% and crash the chrome browser. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Posted November 14, 2017 Share Posted November 14, 2017 can you give specs on your computer like what the CPU is memory etc? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JWB Posted November 15, 2017 Author Share Posted November 15, 2017 Intel Pentium dual E2140 1.6 GHz. RAM 4.00 G. 32 bit Pretty ancient but I don't really want to buy a new machine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CT96 Posted November 15, 2017 Share Posted November 15, 2017 Limit how many tabs you have open. Chrome eats resources badly. Close and restart it often to flush it out of the system. For old hardware I especially like to run a lightweight linux desktop (xfce or similar). It lets me run a browser (chromium, firefox) and the like. No gaming or real number crunching, but it breathes extended life into old hardware. It also may seem counter-intuitive, but using an SSD instead of a spinning disk, and maxing out RAM goes a much longer way than you think it does in improving overall performance. Limited RAM pushes more things out to the pagefile on disk, faster disk reduces the impact of that paging - paging will eat CPU cycles on a low end/old/slow system. Reduce the paging hit and you save CPU cycles (dirty little secret is that most of what you wait for in computers is I/O block waits, not CPU calculation). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murph Posted November 15, 2017 Share Posted November 15, 2017 I agree completely. When I went from 4 gb to 8 gb on my old system, I saw a dramatic improvement. Also an inexpensive SSD such as the Crucial MX300 makes a world of difference. Limit how many tabs you have open. Chrome eats resources badly. Close and restart it often to flush it out of the system. For old hardware I especially like to run a lightweight linux desktop (xfce or similar). It lets me run a browser (chromium, firefox) and the like. No gaming or real number crunching, but it breathes extended life into old hardware. It also may seem counter-intuitive, but using an SSD instead of a spinning disk, and maxing out RAM goes a much longer way than you think it does in improving overall performance. Limited RAM pushes more things out to the pagefile on disk, faster disk reduces the impact of that paging - paging will eat CPU cycles on a low end/old/slow system. Reduce the paging hit and you save CPU cycles (dirty little secret is that most of what you wait for in computers is I/O block waits, not CPU calculation). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ivanhoe Posted November 15, 2017 Share Posted November 15, 2017 I haven't had time to investigate, but I had a runaway browser event the other day. Waterfox v53, system slowed to a snails pace. Fired up Task Manager, and watched Firefox eat more and more CPU (Core i5) and RAM (from 0.5 to 12 GB when I killed it with fire, pardon the pun). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TTK Ciar Posted November 16, 2017 Share Posted November 16, 2017 (edited) You might want to try Pale Moon -- it's somewhat more lightweight than modern Firefox or Chrome, and much less buggy. On my systems it typically runs 30-40 days between restarts, and once made it to 81 days before starting to misbehave. Right now with 15 windows and about 200 tabs open it is using 3.5GB of memory. With fewer windows/tabs it's frequently less than half that. The main downside is that if you want to use plugins, you will need to either use plugins developed for Pale Moon and/or Firefox plugins of the right version (PM is forked from Firefox 24). The https://addons.palemoon.org/ website has plugins and extensions listed. I'm using Downloadhelper, MozRepl and FireBug without problems. Edited November 19, 2017 by TTK Ciar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ivanhoe Posted November 17, 2017 Share Posted November 17, 2017 Thanks. I downloaded PM and a few others for trials. So many browser forks, so little time... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Posted November 18, 2017 Share Posted November 18, 2017 Yeah what others suggested. You can't really run much more than 4gb for Ram since you are running a 32bit system.....You would probably see a nice loading increase with a SSD but that is going to be cost and your older sata standard will limit the gains. You could always try and pick up a cheap CPU that is faster if your MB supports it. Depending on your Motherboard those old 775 chipsets were pretty easy to overclock but if it isn't something you have ever done I wouldn't recommend it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JWB Posted November 18, 2017 Author Share Posted November 18, 2017 I closed Chrome opened FF and my CPU is pegged at 100%. It isn't crashing but it is slow as molasses. Would Pale Moon be an improvement? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CT96 Posted November 18, 2017 Share Posted November 18, 2017 you are really hamstrung by the 32 architecture. 32-bit addressing only gives you 4GB of memory total. Some of that is mapped to I/O, so in windows you have 3.5GB total Physical Ram that can be addressed. Sitting here on my 64-bit Windows my chrome is using 14GB of RAM for a few dozen tabs. I have 24GB of RAM on the system, so it's no problem for me. On a 3.5GB hard ceiling system, there's just not much you can do other than minimize how heavy your RAM footprint is, and maximize your performance of what you have. In this day and age, there is little/no point in upgrading a 32-bit system anymore. You are to the point where what you realistically should do is acquire a more modern 64-bit system (say Core i5 based system) and get your RAM ceiling above the 4GB addressing. 32-bit architecture is (basically) over and will soon be as arcane as the 16-bit architecture it replaced. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JWB Posted November 18, 2017 Author Share Posted November 18, 2017 The machine was built in 2005. New computer then my only option? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CT96 Posted November 19, 2017 Share Posted November 19, 2017 A 12 year old computer is... OLD. It's amazing that you can run anything remotely current with something that old. Consider a 12 year old computer in 2005.... puts the build date at 1993. That's likely a 386-33MHz with a 387 math coprocessor (if you splurged for it). Maybe 2MB of RAM (again, if you splurged). Probably a HDD. Might have been 50-100MB. If you splurged. Now imagine running that computer still in 2005. Fortunately for you the 386 with the 387 coprocessor meant you could run 32-bit programs. But you aren't running XP. Or 2k. You're stuck with 95/98 or ME. MAYBE NT4. Doesn't matter how much RAM or how big a HDD you put in it (while the 32-bit addressing could get you 4GB on that 386, no manufacturers built hardware for consumer desktops in 1993 that supported even 1GB). Yes, you *can* still use it. Barely. Time to move on if you can scrape together the money for it (I know, not everyone can for various reasons), otherwise you'll have to live with the limitations of basically running one thing at a time, and running it slowly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CT96 Posted November 19, 2017 Share Posted November 19, 2017 The good news is, if you are running windows 7 and want to stick with it, both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions use the same licence key - so you can transfer your key to a new build. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TTK Ciar Posted November 19, 2017 Share Posted November 19, 2017 I closed Chrome opened FF and my CPU is pegged at 100%. It isn't crashing but it is slow as molasses. Would Pale Moon be an improvement?Probably. A friend of mine is using it on his Atom-based netbook because Firefox overtaxes his processor, and he says Pale Moon is snappier, but YMMV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TTK Ciar Posted November 19, 2017 Share Posted November 19, 2017 The good news about upgrading from a 12-year-old computer is that you can buy a 6-year-old computer for a song, and it should be at least 10x more capable (though beware old hard drives -- six years is around the time they start blowing up. You may want to plan on replacing the disk with a new one, even though the new drive might cost as much as the whole computer). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JWB Posted November 21, 2017 Author Share Posted November 21, 2017 A 12 year old computer is... OLD. It's amazing that you can run anything remotely current with something that old. Consider a 12 year old computer in 2005.... puts the build date at 1993. That's likely a 386-33MHz with a 387 math coprocessor (if you splurged for it). Maybe 2MB of RAM (again, if you splurged). Probably a HDD. Might have been 50-100MB. If you splurged. Now imagine running that computer still in 2005. Fortunately for you the 386 with the 387 coprocessor meant you could run 32-bit programs. But you aren't running XP. Or 2k. You're stuck with 95/98 or ME. MAYBE NT4. Doesn't matter how much RAM or how big a HDD you put in it (while the 32-bit addressing could get you 4GB on that 386, no manufacturers built hardware for consumer desktops in 1993 that supported even 1GB). Yes, you *can* still use it. Barely. Time to move on if you can scrape together the money for it (I know, not everyone can for various reasons), otherwise you'll have to live with the limitations of basically running one thing at a time, and running it slowly.Build was 2005. Bought in 2008 with vista. Put a new HD in 5 years ago and upped the RAM to 4MB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucklucky Posted November 26, 2017 Share Posted November 26, 2017 You have probably a virus or malaware, If you just opened a browser there is no reason for it to be at 80-100% CPU even if you had a 500mhz celeron from year 2000 You are also not helping yourself not telling what can help you like: is this a new behavior? what the story of this PC... etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JWB Posted November 26, 2017 Author Share Posted November 26, 2017 Malware? I have run multiple scan software. CCcleaner, Malwarebites, SuperAntiSpyware, Avast, etc........ For several years upon boot I get a black screen with "Diskett drive 0 seek failure". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucklucky Posted November 30, 2017 Share Posted November 30, 2017 (edited) That is a bios issue. And if you can run all that stuff there is no reason a browser does not work for you. Edited November 30, 2017 by lucklucky Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murph Posted December 3, 2017 Share Posted December 3, 2017 Best Buy has this one: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/ibuypower-desktop-intel-core-i7-7700-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1060-120gb-solid-state-drive-1tb-hard-drive-gray-black/6032004.p?skuId=6032004 For $999, and they had lots of them in stock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beans4 Posted December 3, 2017 Share Posted December 3, 2017 If funds are an issue, check out the refurbished machines at New Egg. I got a HP Win 10 box with 8 GB memory and a 1 TB hard drive for $189. Downside is a complete lack of expand-ability aside from memory, but on the whole a decent value Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now