just recently performance has dropped right off. RAM is constantly running at 70-80% and as a result, Windows keeps stuttering and giving me low memory warnings.

I don't know if it's linked, but it seems to have been happening since I put firefox 3.6.2 on. Upgrading since to 3.6.3 hasn't helped matters.

All av software is up to date and scans show nothing untoward. I haven't installed any programmes that run in the background recently and there's loads of space on the various drives.

At biggest demand I'll be running
outlook
msn messenger
firefox
spotify
skype

Which it has been fine with in the past.

Any idea what it could be?

Why not just look in task manager and see what processes are using most of your memory?
How much ram does it have anyway?

p.s. I'm assuming it's windows.
p.p.s. if it is and it's more than 1 year old, I'd just re-install windows fresh. It always gets buggered up some how within a year.

What OS?

Probably worth defragmenting the drive, tho' I'd be surprised if it would make *that* much difference.

If it's only whilst you're running firefox, you could try Chrome or IE and see if there's much difference – tho' lots of firefox tabs/windows really won't help.

Otherwise – +1 for a fresh windows install I suspect..

BTW – your virus checker might not help, we run McAfee at work and it's an absolute hog at times (but it shouldn't be all the time)

The very bottom line of your problem is Windows. Try linux.

I'd just re-install windows fresh. It always gets buggered up some how within a year

Really? Not for me it doesn't.

I've seen this problem before, something goes bananas chewing up loads of memory.. open the task manager and select the processes tab. Then go to View and Select columns. Scroll down and check Memory Commit Size. This tells you how much virtual memory is being grabbed by each process. Click on the resulting column heading to sort by that value and you should see something huge taking up all the mem.

I found Firefox to be a resource hog (despite other people not having the same issues – this was a couple of releases ago)…dump it and use another browser (I went with Chrome which works great for me)

p.s. I actually reinstalled my OS (Vista) but it was still an issue

running vista.

checking the processes shows McAfee and Firefox at the top end of things. Changing to chrome has shaved some 100mb processing off the figures, but my av software is still going mad.

What's the next step?

Did you install an update for quicktime?

I'm using an Acer laptop (5670) and recently experienced performance slowing to a crawl. I checked for new installs and tried a system restore (xp)before the quicktime update and performance went back to normal.

(edit – just checked and that roll back was April 5th.)

Having said that – it does seem a little bit slower the last few days. The only new installs in the past week have been microsoft updates so it could just be this old machine overheating.

can't remember a quicktime update….

The very bottom line of your problem is Windows. Try linux.

Oh yawn 🙄
It has as many vulnerabilities as windows,
dont listen to the hype surrounding this.

First thing i would do is look at startup programme in Vista, shut down everything you do not need to run on startup, ie printer, messenger etc

Then see if it makes any difference.

My ACER Aspire was running like a dog – but I did (and do this every 2 years or so) the following to get back to fastness:

1) Backup all personal data (+ Firefox/Spotify) Setup
2) Reinstall from Recovery Disks (should've been delivered with the laptop)
3) Connect t'internet install Avast as Virus checker
4) Copy personal data back
5) Reinstall Firefox & Spotify

dyna-ti, take a step towards being educated enough about OS's to comment. Even a search engine can help with this:

http://www.sans.org/top-cyber-security-risks/

or

http://www.omninerd.com/articles/2006_Operating_System_Vulnerability_Summary

There are plenty of criticisms that can be said of linux (no OS is perfect), but the one you've picked is pure nonsense.