http://www.safer-networking.org/dl/

this page, and I don't know what to do. Makes no sense to me.

http://www.safer-networking.org/mirrors/

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/



Usual caveats apply: Backup, backup, backup!!!

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Look to see what process is consuming your resources. Yes I know it looks intimidating, but it is just displaying a lot of information on a single screen. Just focus on the data that is important to determining why your computer is running slower than it should be and you'll be fine.

CPU usage is usually the most common reason other applications get slow. If it is your Browser that is using a ton of CPU, try disabling plugins.

Memory usage is the second place to look. If you do not have any available physical memory, Windows will have to take application data out of physical memory and write it to the hard drive while it loads the active application's data from the hard drive back into physical memory. There is a special file (page file) that is used for this memory swapping. Your hard drive is way slower than your physical memory, so this swapping will cause a great lag. If you are running out of physical memory, determine which process is consuming your physical memory. Adding more memory is usually a cheap performance boost.

Disk I/O (input/output, or writes and reads) if you have an application hitting your hard drive constantly, everything else will slow down. Your hard drive can only do one read or write at a time. if it is busy doing something else when a process needs to read or write to the drive, that request gets queued and the process waits. Frequent waits can be caused by a misconfiguration in application settings, virus/malware/etc or a hard drive that is badly fragmented. A fragmented drive would be like reading a book where every sentence is located on a different random page and you would have to keep looking at an index to determine which page the next sentence is located. Running a defragmenter will place all the sentences in a contiguous order on the drive, causing fewer index look-ups.

Another good utility to clean out the garbage your computing habits have gathered is CCleaner Free (first 'C' stands for crap).
https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download/standard

The same company also makes a hard drive defragmenter:
https://www.piriform.com/defraggler/download/standard

1. Hitting ctrl-alt-delete and getting into Task Manager shows this:
(I currently have my hotmail open and DU, nothing else...but see below a WiFi issue might
be impacting these numbers, too, I dunno).

DOES IT LOOK LIKE I NEED MORE MEMORY?
I think I can add some to this computer; not sure though it was my Mom's and I'm unfamiliar with its capabilities.

Physical memory:
Total 6050
Cached 2709
Available 3647
Free 994

Kernel memory
Paged 366
Non-paged 117

System
Handles 27762
Threads 964
Processes 75
Commit (GB) 2/11

CPU usage is running about 3 percent
Memory 2.5 GB and if I'm reading the stuff correctly, using about 40%

No big spikes on the CPU usage graph

2. As far as processes running:
Firefox is using about 430,0000
Adobe FlashPlayer 15 is using about 25984
A second Adobe FlashPlayer 15 shows using 4176
plug-in container, which says it is for Firefox, using 11000
DeskTop Windows manager 71000

Windows Explorer 28296 .... I rarely use Explorer, though did use it yesterday when Firefox couldn't access google or gmail. I don't know why it is running anything now, nor how to turn it off or if I can
Canon Solution Menu EX 34620 I used this sometimes when I have problems with my printer, but same as Internet Explorer above, should I somehow turn it off except for rare times I want to access it?
Nothing else is using much; one is at 8k the others mostly under 5k

2. Regarding defrag: I used to run this on one of my older computers all the time. With my last one, my son, who helps me with these types of things on occasion (he lives out of state), told me to never run it. That doesn't make sense to me, but on the computer I had prior to this one, I had not run defrag maybe ever in 7 years. And I edit pictures and Word files constantly. Hundreds of them. This computer I am currently using, I've had only a few months. My Mom, who is 86, had it for a few years and rarely used it, and for nothing much at all, and gave it to me. BUT when I got this one, my son downloaded all my stuff onto it for me. Now, 'all my stuff' includes files that ultimately were transferred by my son from I think from three or four other computers over the years, plus one transfer done by Circuit City that sucked so my son did it again trying to get what they missed. I used the 'library' systems that were the defaults for programs, and each program did it differently, and wow, what a mess. I have a lot of duplicates (a lot of that due to Circuit City). I've been trying to delete duplicates and organize my files, but this will take me over a year to actually get done, no exxageration. I have several years of college stuff plus family history research, tons of photos, just a huge mess of stuff. My son this time put all my files into one area called Media and Files making it easier to locate. My son is very good with computers, but sometimes his judgments are faulty because he has severe OCD and a few other things, and I think that is the source of him screaming at me, don't use defrag. He is wrong, isn't he? I do understand what it does and how it works. And that sometimes it can crash a file, so you backup files first. He is probably over-reacting to the latter statement and his own experiences.

This is probably another example of his OCD impacting his judgment, and the reason why I don't have a current backup: I have a back up/Seagate drive, but when I bought that, I did so because I was having major issues. I bought the drive two years ago, copied my files, AND no doubt copied onto it the Trojan virus that had infected my computer. I removed the Trojan from my PC with Malware. Then, I was going to plug in the Seagate and run Malware opn it too, but my son said DON'T the Trojan could hit my PC again. That sounds like OCD to me, too, but out of fear and ignorance, I haven't plugged in the Seagate or run a backup in two years now.

So should I a) run the Malware and clean up the Seagate drive; 2) back up my files to the Seagate drive, then 3) run defrag? And then expect it to take a few days to run maybe, and then have to run it a second time too?

3. WiFi issues that might be sucking up memory/processing capabilities:
First, as an aside, as part of the process of trying to clean things up, and poking around, I found a message from HP that there was an update to be run that had something to do with my computer processing WiFi. I ran it. No real improvements; maybe some MINOR one. Second, I checked for Windows updates. I used to run all of them automatically, until shortly after Windows 8 came out (I have 7), and then updates were screwing me up and I had to run Restore several times. Honestly, I forget now what I changed, if anything, but currently some updates run automatically, and others are optional so I have to check for them and choose to run them. I went in after posting this message on DU and ran the optionals, and saw there was also some references in them to WiFi. Again, there might have been some minimal improvement, but the big slow down continued. I also checked and my Firefox is updated.

Here is why I think WiFi issues might be a problem.

We got the new Comcast/Xfinity box in August because we wanted the features for the TV. What I didn't know was that that this Xfinity 1 comes with its own WiFi, two WiFi's, actually: one for you to use, and one guests can log into if they are also Comcast customers. After the technicians (there were FOUR of them) hooked up the new box, they said here is your WiFi password. I said, Huh? I have my own WiFi.

Now, herein I will continue to display my ignorance most likely. My immediate response was that I'm not comfortable using a WiFi run by some major corporation. If I were a hacker, I'd try to get into some major corporation's WiFi supplying that service to millions of people instead of going after DebJ's little home system. I'm sure Xfinity has more expensive security measures that are updated frequently. Still makes me uncomfortable paying my bills using it. (Part of that is I don't trust Comcast whatsoever.) So I told them I'd rather use my own WiFi, with my OWN password and security blocking other people from accessing it. They said oh, okay. But apparently their WiFi is running or impacting my computer anyway somehow. And I also have my own one plugged in and was using that. Or, I was trying to..........

Shortly after they hooked up this new system, I believe that was in late August, we started having annoying things happening. I get a message on my screen about internet connected/disconnected constantly, although on my PC, my own internet connection didn't seem to be disturbed. So I ignored it, but it was annoying because this little message was popping up like every few MINUTES, gets in the way of me clicking on things I have to click on so I have to close the boxes constantly, and I'm on here for hours a day. Then, my husband uses an old iPad One that my sister gave us. It kept being unable to access our WiFi network, unless I re-ran set up from the CD for the WiFi. I had to do that everyday for several weeks. I finally called Comcast (twice) to ask if this could be because of a conflict being caused by having my WiFi equipment so close to their equipment, or having both systems, or what. First call was an utter waste of time. Second call, I asked if they could disable their WiFi on my equipment. He said he did, but in checking later, it seemed he had not or could not, and problems continued. My son said to move my WiFi to another room in the house, but I don't have time to do that and I'd have to get longer cords and either run them down the hall or drill a hole in the walls and it might not solve the problem anyway.

Then, suddenly somewhere in this process last week, the iPad was able to retain its ability to access our WiFi without problems (except for those caused by the fact that it is an iPad One; for example, Facebook freaks it out often.) Hubby uses the iPad everyday. Don't know why his access got better, though, not really, because I think it got better before I ran any of the updates for my HP or Windows.

But meanwhile, over the last 7-10 days, my computer was getting slower and slower and slower, ultimately loading pages so slowly it would time out, which is when I posted my message here on DU. Right after I did that, I called Comcast and asked them how to access their WiFi, and started using that, and BOOM, suddenly, my speed problem resolved itself. But the internet connected/disconnected message continues to plague me, though at a smaller rate of frequency, just a few times an hour, ugh. Hubby's use of the iPad has been fine.

What are your thoughts about using Xfinity WiFi to pay my bills, etc., rather than using my own WiFi? Am I being stupid? Should I just unplug my own WiFi with its password that no one knows but me and forget my uneducated fears? I sure wouldn't mind having more wires and boxes disappear. And part of the problem could also be that my WiFi box is now four years old, whereas the three prior WiFi's I had bought conked out after a year of use (all including the current box were about the same price range, cheap). But should I bother buying a new box? I don't want to put out money if the problems with competing WiFi's is going to persist with a new box....thinking that the problem was a worn out box, when instead it might be simply that I have one at all.

Typing all this out, I just realized that since I'm using Xfinity WiFi at the moment anyway, I could just disconnect my WiFi and see if that resolves the issue, duh. I think I'd rather pay my bills one more time first though. And damn I hate connecting and disconnecting stuff. Always end up disconnecting something I didn't mean to disconnect. And getting behind my enormous L shaped desk to get to it is a huge ordeal.

Thanks for reading this, if you had the time to do so. And thanks in advance for any/all advice you might be able to offer.

Your FireFox memory seems a little bit high, probably because you are visiting pages with Flash content.
Curious, in Task Manager how many CPUs does your CPU Usage History show?
Windows Explorer is not the same as Internet Explorer... Win Explorer is Windows File Manager and the Start Button and Desktop - don't worry about that one.

I totally suspect your slowness to be caused by a networking issue.
Make sure you have the latest drivers for your WiFi adapter.
NETSTAT -es at a command prompt will show you if you are getting a lot of network errors.

You can disable the Xfinity Guest SSID by visiting your My Account page.
You should be using either your own WiFi or the Xfinity password protected SSID, not both.
If your router is a newer one that offers dual band (2.5 & 5 GHz) then I would see about disabling the Comcast one and using your own. If not, consider using only the Xfinity access point and removing your completely.

I would suggest getting a free utility like InSSIDer 3 from MetaGeek to see what WiFi channels are currently occupied.
I suspect that everything is running on Channel 6, and that is the root cause of the slowness (shared radio frequency bandwidth).
If you have lots of neighbors, keep your SSID at the most unused channels.
You want to isolate to the least used frequencies. If you notice a lot of slowness when Netflix is being used, try to hard wire your streaming clients to reserve the WiFi signal bandwidth.

Another option is to use Netflix on the Xfinity SSID and use your own router's SSID for your stuff, as long as they are on very different channels.. like 3 and 11.

You can always try to connect your laptop directly to the router via a wired connection and disable your WiFi on the laptop... that would give you a quick hint of it is your WiFi signal or not.

On the other issues.... Always backup data. Always scan for Malware and Viruses. Always check, defrag and optimize your hard drives if they are more than 10% fragmented. Always monitor neighboring WiFi channels to keep your SSID at the best performing frequency.

Hope this helps. And don't be shy about asking more questions... there are a lot of smart people on this forum that are very willing to assist!