Hi,
My computer runs at a real sluggish pace, especially when anything is downloading. The processor usage never seems to go above 10% yet when an application like azureus is running there can be a delay of up to a minute between when I make an action and when it occurs.

When I am having this problem my resource monitor always shows the hard drive as operating at a very intense rate, and when I drag a file from one drive to another it also creates this same problem, leading me to believe the problem is something with the hard drive. My boot drive is a Hitachi 250 gb 7200 rpm serial ata drive.

My other thought is that it could be my memory... I currently only have 512mb of RAM, because of the speed issues I am having with my computer I'm not using much for ram-intensive applications but I am usually using about 75% of my available ram... my thought was maybe the computer is trying to use the hard drive for virtual memory and is causing this drag in performance.

I have also been having some problems with my computers integrated NVidia GeForce 6100, but I think it is unrelated, a firmware update I installed 2 days ago seems to be helping.

Here is my computer, except mine only had 512mb ram: Acer - Aspire 4400+ Desktop - AST180-UD440A

Any ideas?

Welcome to PC Help Forum haptic,

Ok, let's start by doing 2 simple things;

1) Defrag your hard drive
2) Raise the virtual memory available to Windows
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Win...5c4b81033.mspx
I would suggest, if you have the space on the hard drive, a minimum figure of 512mb and a max of 2048mb

Let's see if those two things make a difference.

Done and done, my drives are also scheduled to defrag every 7 days. Its still crawling. Its been like this since the first boot-up out of the box.

any other ideas? I'm considering going to purchase more RAM today, but I just feel like theres more to it than that. Since drive transfers are real slow. I do also have another hard drive connected, I believe its a 7200 RPM IDE drive, but its not the boot drive and is just for backup.

thanks for the help so far; but the problem persists...

Yes...yes and oh, YES!! A RAM purchase is a great move

512mb is considered to be woefully small for todays applications and PCs. Just for kicks, did you disconnect the other drive and test?

yes I have disconnected the drive and tested it. It did not seem to be the source of the problem.

1.5gigs would be considered plenty adequate right? I'm not doing any gaming, I may in the future be doing a little video editing (but thats not the machines primary use).
I hate to go purchase 2 more gigs (for 2.5gigs) when the machine isn't looking very promising.

Alright, I just ordered this: Newegg.com - OCZ Vista Upgrade 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail

2gigs, should be plenty. It still feels like a hard drive thing, but I guess I'll find out soon enough.