System Error

[reckless]

My laptop, running in Vista home basic op system, has been running quite slow, especially on startup. This has been going on for a while now, so after each session on the Internet, I would run Crap Cleaner (I also have Defender running in the background). This would work OK for a day or so only but eventually it would return to the very slow startup again.

The laptop took forever to boot and startup this morning.

I shut it down, waited 4-5 minutes, then started it up again. When it booted up, I ran my Disk Cleanup.

I was watching the screen and then the progress 'light' (?) basically stopped. It looked like it was trying and trying but going no where fast. :)

Just below the progress bar there was this message:

System error memory dump files.

Does anyone know what this means, what caused it, and how to correct it? Could this have been the cause of the slowdown of my laptop?

Thanks everyone.

[GameTheory]

Ever defrag your hard drive? (Does Disk Cleanup do that?) If not, that will eventually slow your system to a crawl. Should also do a full error scan (with "fix errors") as parts of the drive will get corrupted and need to be avoided.

[JustRalph]

Is it a blue screen?

If so, your system crashed bad, dumped everything in memory and wrote it willy nilly to the hard drive, where it is basically unusable.

That's the short version. Is the hard drive almost full? If not I suspect the drive is going to HD heaven, but that's just a guess.

Backup whatever you can, ASAP. Just try to boot it up and forget repairs for now. You can work on repairs after you get any data u need

If you don't need anything off of it, run the system recovery and see how it acts. Really bad corruption and other things can cause this, including bad ram, but you didn't mention any new hardware so I don't suspect that's a prob.

I'm suspect of the HD.

But the only way to really know if it's hardware or really trashed software is to recover it back to like new. Trust me, this is the short answer. If you want to spend a weekend tinkering, go ahead. I tend to go the other route

[reckless]

Game Theory and Just Ralph -- thank you both for your replies and suggestions.

The hard drive is almost full, with about 3 gb available on a 30 gb C drive, which is probably the root cause of this slowdown.

How the hard drive got so full, I'll never know.

I do not save any videos, audios or even have excessive productivity programs installed.

My computer is an Acer Aspire 5315-2153, a nice but cheapie kind of basic laptop.

Between my posts this morning, I removed a bunch of pre-installed Acer software and thought that might help. That's when I discovered that my C drive is only 3 gb free, with the D drive 30 gb free.

I never use the D drive and don't know why it was configured this way.

So my new assignment is to try and re-configure the entire laptop, expanding the C drive to 50 gb of so, and cutting down the size of the unused and unneeded D drive.

Do I need a special 3rd party utility to do the reconfiguration or will the basic home version Vista op sys make this possible?

Thanks again.

[JustRalph]

D might be your recovery partition. If you erase it you will be hosed, unless you have another copy of windows and drivers to put on

See this link


https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120226100145AA6RxIW

And hit the acer website for info

Read this too......for the links

http://community.acer.com/t5/2013-Archives/How-do-I-access-the-recovery-partition-on-an-Aspire-5315-2153/td-p/27997

[Longshot6977]

My laptop, running in Vista home basic op system, has been running quite slow, especially on startup. This has been going on for a while now, so after each session on the Internet, I would run Crap Cleaner (I also have Defender running in the background). This would work OK for a day or so only but eventually it would return to the very slow startup again.

The laptop took forever to boot and startup this morning.

I shut it down, waited 4-5 minutes, then started it up again. When it booted up, I ran my Disk Cleanup.

I was watching the screen and then the progress 'light' (?) basically stopped. It looked like it was trying and trying but going no where fast. :)

Just below the progress bar there was this message:

System error memory dump files.

Does anyone know what this means, what caused it, and how to correct it? Could this have been the cause of the slowdown of my laptop?

Thanks everyone.

The small 30GB HDD that has only 3GB left could be the cause, but I think you may have a corrupted/bloated registry. Make sure you run the tool in CCleaner that cleans up and optimizes the registry. if it doesn't have this feature, download the appropriate app from your favorite software site.

System error memory dump files are files created when the memory is dumped after a BSOD. You may have had many since this laptop is so old. Run a 'Disk Cleanup' for drive C and make sure to check the box for system memory dump files. These dump files are safe to delete.

Also, it is possible you have some malware causing the slowdowns so make sure you run a few different malware apps. Let us know the outcomes on what you try. Good luck.

[HUSKER55]

Just a thought,....probably wrong.....

The new SSD's seem to offer a lot of storage in a small space. Maybe a larger HD would help, if you have the room.

There is also a program, [I forgot what it is called...assistance please], that allows you to take chips, and flash drives to use as external hard drives.

I ran into that awhile back it was not a common thing at the time, but hey, if it works for you then whatever does the trick, right?

JMHO

[Longshot6977]

So my new assignment is to try and re-configure the entire laptop, expanding the C drive to 50 gb of so, and cutting down the size of the unused and unneeded D drive.

Do I need a special 3rd party utility to do the reconfiguration or will the basic home version Vista op sys make this possible?

Thanks again.

I think this laptop comes with an 80GB drive, correct? Try a program like Partition Magic.

[reckless]

I think this laptop comes with an 80GB drive, correct? Try a program like Partition Magic.

Thanks for the thought Longshot...

My problem -- after 2-3 days of fiddling every way but loose -- seems to me to be simple: a rapidly filled up C drive.

I spent most of today going through all my e-mail folders and thrashed all the things I saved over the years, text files, pdfs, some family pictures, small horse racing You Tube videos, etc..... you guys know that drill.

The laptop I bought indeed comes with a 80 GB hard drive.... or so it seems. I say that because when I go to start... computer ... I see three hard drives listed: C, D, E ...

It says that C drive is 32.5 GB... D drive is 32.2 GB and nothing is listed, of course, for the E drive which is used for DVD/CD purposes.

The C drive, at this moment, has but 3.22 BG free, and the D drive has 32.1 GB free. That adds up to about 64-plus GB... so, happened to the remaining 15 or so GB of disk space?

As far as I can tell there are no hidden files in D drive.

I noticed this once before but didn't want to say anything about this in my first post for fear the real story would get sidetracked so to speak. :)

Is Partition Magic a Vista operating system program or must I buy third party?

Thanks again, everyone.

[reckless]

D might be your recovery partition. If you erase it you will be hosed, unless you have another copy of windows and drivers to put on

See this link


https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120226100145AA6RxIW

And hit the acer website for info

Read this too......for the links

http://community.acer.com/t5/2013-Archives/How-do-I-access-the-recovery-partition-on-an-Aspire-5315-2153/td-p/27997

Thanks for the links, Ralph.

I have been removing all sorts of software I don't normally use -- anything pertaining to Apple, Google for instance, plus ridding all my old email folders I kept over the years that included attachments, etc. I know in the scheme of things it doesn't add up to much but everything helps and I haven't accessed these files for months and even years so why keep them?

Thanks for your help and the others that posted, too.

I would like the challenge of fiddling with this as best I can. Even I kill the laptop by mistake, c'est la vie. I also know I could now buy a brand new laptop for about the cost of going to a computer shop and have them fiddle with this.

[reckless]

The small 30GB HDD that has only 3GB left could be the cause, but I think you may have a corrupted/bloated registry. Make sure you run the tool in CCleaner that cleans up and optimizes the registry. if it doesn't have this feature, download the appropriate app from your favorite software site.

System error memory dump files are files created when the memory is dumped after a BSOD. You may have had many since this laptop is so old. Run a 'Disk Cleanup' for drive C and make sure to check the box for system memory dump files. These dump files are safe to delete.

Also, it is possible you have some malware causing the slowdowns so make sure you run a few different malware apps. Let us know the outcomes on what you try. Good luck.

I believe the small amount of free disk space is the root cause of my machine running as slow as my last three wagers at Saratoga on Sunday :).

I did all the dignostic stuff you mentioned above and I thank you for the suggestions.

I have Windows Defender running in the background, and do use CCleaner regulary. Actually, when I first started getting this slowdown problem, I started to use CCleaner after every extended session online. Same thing for the registry repair utility.

In the end I'll probably need to upgrade my laptop, which isn't the end of the world but was something I didn't feel I needed to do at this time.

Thanks again, Longshot, and to everyone who posted their thoughts and suggestions.

[headhawg]

Due the to way manufacturers report hard drive size, your 80GB is likely to be around 74 or 75 GB formatted. If the D: drive is actually a real partition then there's no reason that you can't copy/move files to it. It's interesting that you have two partitions on such a small drive but so be it. JR provides a good caution about D being the recovery partition, but it seems pretty large for that. For optimal performance, partitions on HDDs shouldn't be more that 50% full. In most cases that's unrealistic, but a good rule of thumb should be 20% free. It's not a surprise that with only 3GB free on C: that you're having some issues.

Rather than messing with a partitioning program, I would move as much of your data files over to D:, and leave C: with just Windows. If you install other programs in the future (or have to reinstall what you already have) install them to D: instead of C:. There is a slight advantage to deleting the D: partition and resizing C: to the full 74GB size. Not worth it, imo, as you probably should think about getting a new laptop soon. Something with more RAM and more storage space.

[reckless]

Just a thought...
There is also a program, [I forgot what it is called...assistance please], that allows you to take chips, and flash drives to use as external hard drives.

I ran into that awhile back it was not a common thing at the time, but hey, if it works for you then whatever does the trick, right?

JMHO

Thanks for post Husker.

You know, when the pen-type Flash drives got cheaper and cheaper, plus getting larger and larger... I once thought of installing an older and slimmer DOS op system that I still have onto the flash drive. Then I was going to install the two DOS-based Sartin programs I had bought years ago.

I never got around to that particular folly, but using flash drives as a complement isn't a bad idea, Husker, on the margin. Thanks.

[JustRalph]

Due the to way manufacturers report hard drive size, your 80GB is likely to be around 74 or 75 GB formatted. If the D: drive is actually a real partition then there's no reason that you can't copy/move files to it. It's interesting that you have two partitions on such a small drive but so be it. JR provides a good caution about D being the recovery partition, but it seems pretty large for that. For optimal performance, partitions on HDDs shouldn't be more that 50% full. In most cases that's unrealistic, but a good rule of thumb should be 20% free. It's not a surprise that with only 3GB free on C: that you're having some issues.

Rather than messing with a partitioning program, I would move as much of your data files over to D:, and leave C: with just Windows. If you install other programs in the future (or have to reinstall what you already have) install them to D: instead of C:. There is a slight advantage to deleting the D: partition and resizing C: to the full 74GB size. Not worth it, imo, as you probably should think about getting a new laptop soon. Something with more RAM and more storage space.

Good post

[JustRalph]

I'm suspect of the HD.

But the only way to really know if it's hardware or really trashed software is to recover it back to like new. Trust me, this is the short answer.

If you want to spend a weekend tinkering, go ahead. I tend to go the other route

Well, it's Monday..... :lol:

Get your data you need and recover it