Subscriber Don Newsham wrote this week to ask about a problem that he was having with his computer — he was getting unusual high spikes in his CPU usage: I have Norton on my computer. A couple of times a day I get an alert message that says high CPU usage by iexplore.exe and it [...]
Speeding Up a Slow Dialup Connection
Reader Teri Scott wrote me to ask about her slow dialup Internet connection: Hello, I have a desktop and a laptop and live in a remote area so the only internet I can get is dial-up. We recently moved and in our previous home, my desktop and laptop connected consistently at about 36.8kps. Now my [...]
Defragmenting a Hard Drive
Subscriber Bill Lomax wrote me to ask: Have you ever defragged your drive "Freespace"??? My first thought was "How would you defrag freespace?" Then, I realized that this was someone’s advertising term for a very interesting and impotant operation. For most people with today’s huge drives, it’s less of an issue, but for some operations, [...]
What is CPU Usage and How Can I Reduce It?
Recently, I received a question from jnc, who wrote: When you go to the WINDOWS TASK MANAGER, it has at the bottom of the window, "CPU USAGE" and a % sign. What does that mean and what should it be? I searched your web site of COMPUTER TIPS, and wasn’t smart enough to locate the [...]
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