dawgfan
03-13-2011, 04:34 PM
Something I've noticed since I got my most recent laptop about 1.5 years ago - it's a Win7, 64-bit machine, and I have it set up with profiles for me and my wife (I have administrator privileges ;) );
I've noticed that if my wife has been logged in for a while, and I'm also logged in and using it, that I have a relatively high rate of programs not running or crashing; just this morning, when trying to check the help manual for FBCB, Word would not launch and I was given an error message saying that I don't have enough memory available. I had open at the time Chrome, FBCB2 and Carbonite (an online data backup program), plus the usual anti-virus/anti-malware programs in the background (IObit, Microsoft Security Essentials, Spybot anti-spyware). My wife was also logged in, probably from the night before. She usually doesn't have anything running other than Firefox.
My machine has 4 GB of RAM, so I wouldn't figure that I'm over-taxing the memory, which leads me to wonder if I have some kind of memory leak issue happening, or if this is perhaps an indication of malware/virus that is operating in the background. I've tried a few times to call up the Task Manager and see what's running, but knowing what each .exe really is takes a greater degree of IT knowledge than I possess (one of the things I dislike about Windows - I wish there was a better way of tracking what each .exe is associated with which programs/processes).
I should probably also note is a refurbished Dell; I don't know if there's any possibility I have issues with the hardware, and if it might be related to why the machine was returned to Dell in the first place, but I thought I'd mention that as a possible factor.
Any ideas?
I've noticed that if my wife has been logged in for a while, and I'm also logged in and using it, that I have a relatively high rate of programs not running or crashing; just this morning, when trying to check the help manual for FBCB, Word would not launch and I was given an error message saying that I don't have enough memory available. I had open at the time Chrome, FBCB2 and Carbonite (an online data backup program), plus the usual anti-virus/anti-malware programs in the background (IObit, Microsoft Security Essentials, Spybot anti-spyware). My wife was also logged in, probably from the night before. She usually doesn't have anything running other than Firefox.
My machine has 4 GB of RAM, so I wouldn't figure that I'm over-taxing the memory, which leads me to wonder if I have some kind of memory leak issue happening, or if this is perhaps an indication of malware/virus that is operating in the background. I've tried a few times to call up the Task Manager and see what's running, but knowing what each .exe really is takes a greater degree of IT knowledge than I possess (one of the things I dislike about Windows - I wish there was a better way of tracking what each .exe is associated with which programs/processes).
I should probably also note is a refurbished Dell; I don't know if there's any possibility I have issues with the hardware, and if it might be related to why the machine was returned to Dell in the first place, but I thought I'd mention that as a possible factor.
Any ideas?