ram amount and computer speed

[HipHoper]

Hi,

I've installed a client of mine a G2020 based 2GB windows 7 32bit machine.
He complains that sometimes his computer respond very slowly (takes few seconds to open a webpage or outlook).
In several visit to his office i haven't noticed a problem, So I tried to replace his antivirus from avg free to avira free - He said it didnt halped, And yesterday I've compacted his outlook 2007 pst from 8.5GB to about 4GB after creating new pst for old emails.
I've checked computer usage while opening : word, a webpage, and sql database software he connects to, And it uses about 1.2gb from 1.7 available (Only 1.7gb is accesible to windows).
I'm not sure if i'll install 4GB of ram if it will improve his computer performance. I also considered installing an SSD drive, But I don't think the client want to invest in his computer.
I scanned for malware/viruses, But the system looks clean.

What do you think ?

Thank you

[MobilePCPhysician]

I had the same problem with a 32 bit Vista install. I reloaded with a 64 bit Vista version. Dramatic speed increase. Your mileage may vary.

[HipHoper]

Hi MPP,

How much memory that vista system had ?
I also guess it's been few years ago, So maybe it's not as relevant to an windows 7 system with latest updates

[CeeBee]

Find the real bottleneck before throwing memory at it. More memory will help between "a bit" and "a lot", but you can't tell until you look at the performance counters. Monitor CPU usage, page faults, disk read / write queues, disk bytes transferred, disk usage % time.

[MobilePCPhysician]

It was 3 months ago, and it was 2 gig of ram

[Ferrit]

I would say in the last few years the real speed increase has been the SSD cause the ide
is the bottleneck.
Also any system i removed AVG from always saw a decent speed increase.
Since you say " his computer respond very slowly (takes few seconds to open a webpage or outlook)."
It seems to me that they both use internet and look for a connection when you open them.
So maybe that's where you should be looking.

[HipHoper]

Thanks for the info and tips guys.
@ Ferrit - You reminded me to check if i disabled the "automatically detect" on the connection tab of IE which I did and was ok. Most of my client's computers use avg free and i haven't heard any complaints about speed and in general i have a good experience with avg (It's less secure than avira free, but also less restricting)
I've checked HD with atto and it works quite fast for a sata drive (11000/14000 at 0.5k blocks).
I've noticed his outlook also shows future tasks in a side window which seems to slow down outlook's opening, So I've disabled it and it seems to load a bit faster and more consistently now.
This user used to work on an amd 3500 cpu with 40gb corsair ssd drive.I've mentioned it to him several times that if i'll put an ssd drive again his system will work faster, But he said that the speed of the computer is fine and that every few days he experience this slow responses like chrome opens a page after 5-10 seconds and outlook also takes more time than usual to show data and that even a restart of the computer does not helps.
I will keep an eye on this system for the next week and will let you know whats up with it.

[Zonie]

Several things youmay want to take into consideration, 1. a 32 bit system will not take anymore than 3GB of memory. A 64 bit will take whatevere the PC can handle. If you go to crucial.com and do a system scan you can see what the maximum memory is for your system.

2. Outlook can be very slow when it comes to the version and size of the PST file. 4GB for the 2007 is really pushing the limit. ( Surprised it worked with 8GB). 2010 & up works better with larger pst's. You might want to also look at the settings to see if you have the Indexing turned on as well as the RSS feeds. These can sometimes cause a problem loading or slowing processes down.

[Ferrit]

Just a little note about the above statement that 32 bit will not use more then 4 gig of memory.
Although it is Windows 8.1 32 bit they are dealing with,I wonder if said tweaks can be used elsewhere.
Apparently if you are a particularly clever person that's no longer true.
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/win...tag=TREe331754

I personally have never tried this but it is a legit article

[nunob]

Yeah that PAE is how the old servers 32bit os's got past the memory barrier. That's a great find Ferrit.

[SpywareDr]

Pro tip: Override the 4GB memory barrier on 32-bit Windows 8.1 systems

Although you can address up to 64GB of memory in PAE mode, each process is limited to 2GB of memory space per active process. For certain memory hungry applications, like Adobe Photoshop, you are still far better off using a 64-bit version of Windows instead. For this reason, I would consider PAE mode to be more of a Band-Aid than an actual long-term solution.

[HipHoper]

Update : After few days computer seems to work fine but client complains about internet slow page loading at times and access to network files. Will go there next week trying to replace router or switch or test network/internet speeds.