Please Respond To This One - Help Needed!

I've stirred and stirred; but no additional memory - The witches are trying hard to stir up extra help for my computer - or for me to learn how to take better care of my computer.
United States
February 14, 2007 4:52pm CST
My computer is not very old at all, in fact it is only about 6 months old. I don't speak computer at all so I don't know how many gigabites or whatever it has. All I know is that it is a Dell. When I do a defragmentation it says that I have 86% free space; but when I downloaded the new Firefox browser and put the add on thing in the side bar that tells about my computer workings, it is showing that I my memory is almost full. Can anyone please tell me what the difference between empty space and memory is? I have deleted as much as I possibly can. About the only things that I have left to delete are -My favorites (bookmarks) -My pictures -My word processing information I would really appreciate any information and help that I can get. Thank you on this totally non-controversial and very boring topic~Donna
13 people like this
21 responses
@not4me (1711)
• United States
14 Feb 07
Please forget all of that memory cr@p - people get caught up in that for no reason. Yes memory is important but if you don't take care of the source it's like spraying air freshener on a dirty diaper instead of changing it. Download two free programs - Spybot search and destroy and Adaware. Install them and run them both, one at a time. It deletes all of the adware and spyware on your machine. Do this once a week and your computer will be super fast, I promise. I was an IT tech in Japan for 4 years and I work on computers from home now. If you have any questions please PM me! Tammy
10 people like this
• United States
15 Feb 07
That's fantastic information, thanks for sharing it.
3 people like this
• United States
15 Feb 07
Excelent information not4me. Eeryone who has ever worked on my computers gave me the very same advice.
4 people like this
@not4me (1711)
• United States
15 Feb 07
You're very welcome. I like helping people out when I can, especially when people in general start threatening to tinker with the memory or virtual memory because it's almost always malware. But ya, who ever reads this and doesn't know about it already, download those programs and use them faithfully. Your computer will thank you!
4 people like this
• Romania
15 Feb 07
Well Donna, defragmantation shows you the usage of your HDD (HardDisk Drive), which is where your information (operating system, applications, data) is stored. RAM (Random Access Memory) which is also a physical component, delivers a certain amount of memory to any process or application that is running at some point. There are 2 different components indicating 2 different things. As explained in the above post, more applications / processes running higher memory consumption. This being said, there are few solutions to your problem: - try to avoid to have many applications open in the same time; - try to close some of the unnecessary processes / services that are running in the background of your OS; - use a program called System Mechanic, a complete tool for maintaining your PC (need license though, since it's not free) in order to defragment your RAM memory; Hope this helps, if you have any more questions, do not hesitate to post them here. Good luck!
@Sir_bobby88 (8231)
• Singapore
15 Feb 07
I think you should check out your hardisk by press right lick and chooese proporties at the C: yea ... hope that helps you if not serious just ignore the message yea come to worst reformat the computer ... it is that simple yea especially with Windows XP
2 people like this
@emarie (5442)
• United States
15 Feb 07
when you see the 86% free space, thats hard drive space. virtiral memory determines how fast your computer runs. Some programs take up a lot of memory to run, and when you run it it might not be able to run the program to its fullest, if thats the case the most likely the computer will be slow or crash/freeze on you quite often. depending on what you're using the computer for your memory will need to increase. you could buy extra memory and have someone install in into your computer. just look in your manual (or it may be on the computer itself on the stickers normally) and see how much memory you have.
4 people like this
@mahayla (192)
• United States
15 Feb 07
go to aol.com and get free virus/spyware/adware protection also phishing protection its great and free but some things will always slip by so make sure you have back-ups too and use system restore..
5 people like this
• United States
15 Feb 07
You need to buy more RAM so the the processor is faster and wont have to use so much power to pull up those files. Plus, having a Dell, norton needs to be changed to something else. Dell told me that they can't fix the problem with norton, and to get another virus protector. Ciao for now never goodbye
• United States
15 Feb 07
I have a Dell computer and the only security program I use now is Windows Live OneCare. I got a free three month subscription (go to their website) and I loved it. So I bought it for a year, and it runs a tune-up monthly (or whenever you like) and it checks for viruses, defrags, frees up space, etc, etc. I like it much better than any I've had before and it wasn't that expensive. I do on-line earning all the time, and visit some strange sites, and I've had no viruses.
5 people like this
@vhansen (2029)
• United States
15 Feb 07
A similiar thing happened on my home computer.I tried all the deleting things,defrag and scandisk and the spyware removers.They helped but didn't cure the problem so I tried to do a system restore..it couldn't.So I got mad,did a restart and f10-ed that sucker.You can either do a complete wipe,which means it clears everything and reintalls all the orignial programs or a partial which leaves what you have alone and just repairs the orignial programs and drivers.I did a partial and now everything is fine,it runs as good as new.
• India
15 Feb 07
what u saying is rite but thts like operating immidiatly. Probably u could try some pills
1 person likes this
• India
16 Feb 07
Hey donna Letme tell you that by Disc fragmet you got that you have that much free space in ur HDD you need not remove any Data from ur Computer what you need to do is just increase the Virtual memory of ur computer ...Increase it To double......Also as you are using a Dell system You can always call there support line that is toll free ---18006249896 or you can always visit there support site that is ---- Support.Dell.com ...Regards
1 person likes this
@aprilten (1966)
• Philippines
15 Feb 07
i didn't know that your problem is quite technical. i'm sorry i can't be of help to you. i'm sure by the responses here you must have solved your problem.
2 people like this
@slickcut (8141)
• United States
15 Feb 07
I want so much to help you but i am also not to good about gigabites..I do know that your computer is a very good leading brand ,i also have a dell computer..I also know that defragment suppose to compact your files so it can free up some more space for you to use.It soumds like since you had 86% and then when you downloaded the new firefox browser and added the side bar it has really taken up a whole lot of space,it just don,t sound right does it?Im sorry i don,t know so let us see what others say about this..
1 person likes this
@slickcut (8141)
• United States
15 Feb 07
OMG thank you so much for asking this question.I have read over all these answers and it not only helped you but i was so excited to find answers that i needed also.
1 person likes this
@langhua (501)
• China
15 Feb 07
i thought may be your computer has some virus in you computer.or you system has some trouble.i suggest you to redo your computer's system ,and take an antirvirs in ,then your computer may be can get well.
2 people like this
@sourav9 (122)
• India
15 Feb 07
It might be hardware problem. Sometimes it happens and very difficult to fix this type problem. If you don't mind you may format your entire drive which might solve your problem. Or you can only format the drive where your OS is installed. Hope this will help you.
1 person likes this
@nqbest (36)
• Philippines
15 Feb 07
i think formatting is the worst recourse.... :-)
2 people like this
@plumty1 (173)
15 Feb 07
wel there is no diference at all. it is because your computer is 6 years old it wont have much memery there for 86percent on your pc may be like 5 percent on my brand new pc. thais is why it says you have little space.
1 person likes this
@slickcut (8141)
• United States
15 Feb 07
Plumty,sorry you mis read she said 6 months,not 6 years,
1 person likes this
@anzil05 (14)
• India
15 Feb 07
i would like to help u with the little knowledge i hav.. Could u let me know as to what u refering to as side bar.
1 person likes this
• India
15 Feb 07
You could possibly try to delete cache and cookies from your comp and disabling the start up items. b' cos i work with computers and i feel downloading programs could also cause problems. What ever even that is a software rite. LOL
1 person likes this
• United States
16 Feb 07
Sounds to me like your cookies & cache need cleared. Possibly a disk cleanup and an adware/spyware scan might free up some memory. You can also save any music or images you have on your pc onto a cd or flash drive. Music and photos take up mega-room. Don't know what other advice you've already been given, I'm answering from the email notification.
1 person likes this
@tw99384 (259)
• Jodhpur, India
15 Feb 07
Thanks for asking this question. It was a great help to me too.
1 person likes this
@ukchriss (2097)
16 Feb 07
I'm no expert - my other half is its his job, so he does all the fixing when its needed on my computer. But would just like to say Spybot search and destroy and Adaware are the two which he downloaded for me, so thats what i use and ive never had any problems - touch wood Hope you manage to get things sorted out ok
@SpitFire179 (2536)
• Canada
15 Feb 07
Hey there Donna.... First off, I think you should know something. Windows Explorer is the safest browser ever. Firefox causes quite a bit of computer problems and also allows in more spyware than anything else... I had several bad experiences with it, and then when i went to uninstall it it took days. I help program many of my family and friends computers, and one thing i make them aware of is the way this firefox mozilla works. It's your choice if you want it, but i would go into www.gooogle.com and search it in forums, you'll see how many people genuinly have had too many problems to count with this browzer.
1 person likes this
• India
15 Feb 07
The free memory available is the amount of free RAM available to the computer for storing data by various programs.While the memory consumed by installing programs is the hard disk memory.The programs running on the computer consumes almost all the RAM.You does not have to worry about free RAM since it get cleaned up automaticaly on shutting down the computer.However to improve the performance of your computer you can add more RAM.
1 person likes this
• United States
15 Feb 07
Pictures take up a lot of room. You might want to load your pictures onto a memory card and keep them that way. This way you can delete them from the memory and make more room. You can do this with most of what you have in memory and make more room. Get a norepad and list the addresses of all you favorites and then delete them as well. Any programs you have the disc for and can reload, delete them as well. If you have Dell, then you can also call their trouble line and get a rep to help you with it. I'm not calling you dumb, but there are a number of things you need to learn and you might even pick up a copy of the book, "Computers for dummies. It puts everything into plain english and is easy to read and understand. Good luck.
1 person likes this