Increased RAM but speed didn't change much

[DrWho]

Getting the PC from Dell was bad enough, but I'd not want to complicate things by getting anything else from them.
I've had way too many dealings with their products over the years to give them any credibility at all.

For the most reliable place to get replacement ram, I go right to www.crucial.com. They use only TOP Quality ram chips, from well known and trusete companies like "Micron" and warranty them for life. They never use seconds or refurbished ram like some other vendors I could mention. (but won't)
You can take their ram test right from their web site and then they can tell you what you've got and what you can add, how much it will cost and you can even order the ram right there on their web page. I do this all the time at my customer's homes and then go back a few days later and install the new ram. (always clean the edge connector, even on brand new ram sticks)
* Never touch a ram stick till you've touched the PC frame, to discharge any static that may be on your body.

If a PC is bogged down with garbage, both stored and running, just putting in more ram will seldom let you see a Huge increase in performance.
That doesn't come till you (I) optimize the PC for best performance. Clean out the 'Junk in the trunk'.

Cheers mates!

The Doctor

[shelquis]

I wonder if your system is really slow? I don't know about Windows update (but if you are letting it update automatically, then it will slow your system while it is busy replacing files), but who cares how long the Secunia or MSE scans take? I just let MSE run at night (although I had to find a batch file on the web to do it, its internal schedule never worked properly). I'd only be concerned if things I wanted done 'now' took too long.

Really, my main complaint is poor performance during windows updates. Several times a day, for up to maybe an hour each time, my system performance just drags. When I check the task manager, the only thing running is usually wuauclt.exe (windows update) or Msmpeng.exe (MSE). I do schedule my MSE scans for overnight, but the updates are just so painfully slow, and make any other activity virtually impossible. I mentioned the Secunia scan only because it provides a reference to what the time should be for comparison to what my scan time actually is.

...... you may want to check what else is starting up on your PC, and I recommend Autoruns (by Sysinternals).

I do have Autoruns, and I've looked at it, but there are probably a hundred or so listings, and everything seems legitimate. I guess basically I just don't know how to use it to speed up my system. If there were only a handful of entries, I could disable and observe the results, but with so many entries, that would seem to be an impossible task.

Thanks for your reply.

[JonP]

Memory is not the only resource where you could be having a problem. With Windows/7, it is easier for normal people find where you have the problem (bottleneck). This item is more for an average PC user rather than advanced because I think these concepts are easy for average person to understand.

I'll describe that in more detail but first, you believe the problem is windows update. On windows 7, it defaults to download and update at 3:00am every day. If it's causing problems during the day, then something more than memory would need to be the problem. You could change the settings to a different time. In the worst case, you could set it to NEVER UPDATE to eliminate it as a problem (although I don't think it's the problem). Just remember to run it manually every couple of weeks. I personally have mine set to download updates and ask me if I want to install. I always wait a few weeks to install just in case some undiscovered bug exists.

I use the term BOTTLENECK. It refers to something that restricts (slows down your system). In your case, you believe that memory too small and was slowing your system down so you added more memory.

When trying to fix a bottleneck, always ask several people for possible solutions because there are many problems that are not obvious because they might not have seen it before or you might be using something that helps in one area but causes problems for you in another area. There are so many variations in software and hardware that getting that good balance in your environment is not always obvious. I'll describe one of those situations below in the DISK section.

To find your system bottleneck, open TASK MANAGER. On the PERFORMANCE tab, click on RESOURCE MONITOR. Running the resource monitor will put extra load on your system but it allows you to see what is going on. It may also change the numbers somewhat but it should be close enough for you to find out where you are having the problem. You should shut it down after you are all done.

You should see a new display with 5 tabs and graphs to the right. The tabs are Overview, CPU, MEMORY, DISK and NETWORK and the graphs are visual displays over the last 60 seconds for resources related to the selected tab. A resource is where a bottleneck can occur.

Watching the graphs will probably give you the best idea of where you have problems and the displays help you figure out what programs are heavily using the resource that is having a bottleneck.

OVERVIEW tab is a good place to start. I suggest looking at it while the system is running well and when it is not running well so you don't panic when you see some bad numbers. For instance, maximum frequency is always high but this is usually a good thing. OVERVIEW allows you to get an idea of where you might have a bottleneck. Watch the graphs for CPU, DISK, NETWORK and MEMORY. They are for 60 seconds and if you see something staying high, then this could be where you have a problem. For instance, the CPU green line should be bouncing up and down all the time which is really good. If it's always at the top, then you should try to reduce the CPU workload.

On any of these tabs, you see the light blue lines, you can expand these by clicking on them. You can play around with these to get additional information. For example, the light blue CPU line in the OVERVIEW tab will show processes. Clicking on these lines will show some specific information (in the CPU case, it shows you programs that are running and information about those programs).

CPU tab shows a lot of CPU information. For example, the graphs show CPU total (total % cpu used for all cores - CPU 0, 1, 2 ...), Service cpu (advanced information that I don't want to explain), CPU 0, CPU 1, and ... (Multi core processors - some older machines only have 1). Some programs are designed to only use a single core (e.g. CPU 1). In this case, you may see a lower total CPU % but one of the CPU's always high. This occurs because you may have 2 or 4 CPU's but those other CPU's can't run the problem process. Click on the blue PROCESSES line, so you can see specific programs running. Clicking on a header in this area will sort on that information (in this case, you could sort on CPU to see which processes are using the most CPU. Average CPU can be misleading because you may a really long running process that has a low average but high CPU for the last few seconds or minutes.

DISK tab shows you information about the disk. This can be a little misleading because there are a lot that is not obvious. Disks today are getting really large which can impact your system. The farther apart the data being used, the longer it takes to use the disk. Defrag does a really good job at fixing some of these problems because it tries to put a file into sequence in the same area of the disk. But it does not place heavily used files together. There's not an easy solution to this problem. An good example is the system page file which is used when your memory is full and you have a program that loads lots of data from a file into memory. Memory starts getting low cause memory to be written to the system page file. This causes the disk to bouce between these and if they are far apart, it can slow things down. It is possible to artifically cause this problem by creating 2 drives (e.g. C: & D on a single drive. These are called partions and if you place them far enough apart and use files on both drives, then they will slow things down.

NETWORK tab shows your internet communications. Rarely will problems be obvious in this area. If you expand the blue TCP CONNECTIONS line, the PACKET LOSS and LATENCY columns might be interesting to watch. PACKET LOSS is where a packet of data is sent to the internet but for some reason doesn't get received by the receiver. This could mean there a problem between your computer and the end computer. LATENCY is the amount of time it takes for a packet of data to be received by the end computer. This indicate various problems somewhere between you and the end computer. If most connections are seeing high numbers, then it's likely the problem is with your internet provider (not always). If it's with a single connection, then it's likely to be with that end computer. If it's mixed, then the problem is likely to be at a common router somewhere between you and those end computers.

MEMORY tab shows you what is happening with your systems memory. This is where you will find out if memory is a problem. You are looking for changes rather than spikes (as compared to CPU because CPU is either doing something or it is not doing anything where member is being used, sometime later freed or acquired.

I hope this helps to take some of the mystery out of what may be causing your problems but this is not meant to be the gospel on fixing your problems. There are many complicated theories on all these areas. This only gives you the area's where you are likely to be successful in correctly fixing your problem rather than guessing at what is causing your problem (In this case, Windows update and memory being the cause). You could be correct but you could just as easily try fixing something that is not broken without looking at some of the basics.

Regards, Jon.

[starvinmarvin]

Those old 80GB hard drives are slow compared to newer ones, and they seem to become slower over time. Using the free HD Tune speed test program I recently tested the daughter's old Dell Dimension 4550 (it has Intel P4 2.53GHz cpu and 1GB of RAM). The original 80GB hard drive that came with the computer measured an average speed of just 44.2 MB/second. The newer 320GB hard drive we installed for her a year or two ago measured an average speed of 92.4 MB/second - more than twice as fast! The newer drive was intended just for her photos, music, videos, etc., but it's so much faster that I created an 80GB partition on it and copied/cloned everything from the old slow 80GB drive onto the newer drive (using the free Easeus Partition Master Home Edition). Both drives are the older PATA/IDE type with the wide ribbon cable connector, not the modern type SATA drives.

So, download HD Tune free version (the Pro version costs $$$) and test your existing hard drive. If it measures an average speed of less than, say, 50MB/second then buy a new 7200 rpm drive, maybe Seagate or Western Digital brand. These usually measure somewhere around 88MB - 96MB/second. Samsung and Hitachi drives are good, too, but they tend to be 6MB - 10MB/second slower.

In HD Tune you can select different file size blocks for the speed test and maybe get faster results from choosing larger file sizes. As I recall, the default file size for the speed test is 64kb. You may wish to also test using 512kb or even 2MB file size. To select those, click on the little gears icon in top right corner of the HD Tune window, then click on Benchmark in the left side menu. That will bring you to the area where you can choose or change the file size.

Another point is that years of using aggressive registry cleaners can mess things up and make Windows sluggish. Although I've never had a problem with the excellent CCleaner, other more thorough (aggressive!) cleaners have caused me problems. Also, installing and uninstalling lots of programs, games, etc. over the years will bring Windows XP master file table near its limit of maximum size. In any case, a fresh install of Windows or maybe a nondestructive repair install would surely be a step in the right direction, especially if it's on a new 7200 rpm drive.

Finally, have you tried removing one stick of RAM to see if the computer performs better or worse? Maybe try that for a day then substitute the other stick and try again. Usually, RAM either works or it doesn't. However, I've seen one or two cases where a stick had mediocre performance and that slowed everything down; unlikely, but possible.

Regarding your Dell computer, they were building pretty good machines back in those days. We used our Dell Dimension 4550 many hours every day for about 8 years before passing it on to the daughter. It was fashionable to knock them at a number of tech forums (mostly by people who built their own computers) because they could not be overclocked, you couldn't use a big powerful graphics card, and upgrades were very limited. So, if you are/were a dedicated tweaker, overclocker, or gamer then, yeah, look elsewhere. What those critics failed to appreciate is that the Dell had good design and solid construction. The motherboards were totally stable and reliable (with very few adjustments in the BIOS setup screen so that users couldn't screw things up!). The power supply was not massive at 250 watts but it was very well made, even handling a bigger graphics card I installed for a couple of years which needed an extra power connector. The cpu was underclocked maybe 1% or 2% and it, too, was totally stable and reliable. The cooling/ventilation design was very clever; a passive heatsink with tall fins and a shroud over it which led directly to the rear exhaust fan. Air was sucked in under the shroud and up over the heatsink fins. The rear exhaust fan was a sturdy double-ballrace type that ran very quietly and efficiently, speeding itself up whenever the processor was working hard,; and it still runs that way now, ten years later!

[DrWho]

If any computer was NOT slow when it was new, then it should not be slow now, , , that is to say, IF it were properly maintained since it was new, not allowing the garbage to just build up till it choked the PC.

Many of us have the bad habit of Collecting Programs like some would collect coins, or stamps, beer cans, etc.

I could be one of the worlds worse, about that. But many of the programs I download and install either don't work as advertised or are duplicates of programs I do use.
So at least once a month, I go into my Windows Control Panel, the "Add/Remove Programs" app, and I remove every program that I don't need or use anymore.
I keep all the downloaded program files on a separate HD partition, so they don't load down my C: drive.

So, in short, any OS, properly maintained, should run forever, or till the PC itself dies. My own XP OS, has been running now for several years, without any degrading in speed or efficiency.

Most PC makers are getting a little better about putting enough RAM in a new PC. Thank Goodness, buying a new PC with only 512 megs of ram and an 80 gig IDE hard drive are things of the past.

I did just install a new Asus desktop PC that had a Toshiba Laptop drive in it.
I'd never seen that before. (a 2.5" drive, mounted on spacers so it could be mounted in a 3.5" drive bay.)
It should be common knowledge, that a laptop drive cannot perform as well as a real desktop drive. I'm just assuming that the current shortage of new 3.5" drives prompted this shortcut and that it won't become a common practice.

Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?
Me, The Doctor

[shelquis]

With Windows/7, it is easier for normal people find where you have the problem (bottleneck).

Jon, thanks for your comments. That was a very thoughtful, and thorough discussion of a completely different approach than anyone else had suggested. I've printed out your reply and will save it for future reference. It's been a while, but my original post shows I have WinXP, sp3, and as far as I can tell, does not have a resource meter. Thanks anyway.

[shelquis]

[QUOTE=starvinmarvin;837890]

Using the free HD Tune speed test program I recently tested the daughter's old Dell Dimension 4550 (it has Intel P4 2.53GHz cpu and 1GB of RAM). The original 80GB hard drive that came with the computer measured an average speed of just 44.2 MB/second.

Hi Marvin. I downloaded HDTuner and got basically the same results as you got for your daughter's 80GB HDD. I got 43.1MB/s average. I didn't bother to run other than the default 64 KB test. The HDD is a Seagate Serial ATA 7200 RPM. I'm satisfied that it's adequate for what I'm doing, and I don't think it's responsible for my poor performance, but it has to be a contributor

Finally, have you tried removing one stick of RAM to see if the computer performs better or worse? Maybe try that for a day then substitute the other stick and try again. Usually, RAM either works or it doesn't.

No, I've haven't removed any memory. It's not that my performance got worse after the upgrade, I just (perhaps erroneously) expected it to get MUCH better after I installed 2 sets of matched 2GB Crucial memory, thus filling up all 4 slots. I do see improvement compared to the performance it had with the original 512 MB. Thanks for your comments and suggestions.

[JonP]

If you are using WinXP, then there are some free programs that might be useful. I did a quick search and here are a couple I would recommend trying. I've never tried these but they look like good alternatives although they may be a little more complicated than I would prefer for an average user. Don't let details like DLL's, threads, file handles and various other terms overwhelm you. You want to look at the general picture of your system and once you decide what your problem is, then figure out how to best relieve the problem. These other terms are only interesting to people who want to look at the internals of how things are running.

1. Microsoft has a free download for PROCESS EXPLORER that is available thru their sysinternals group at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s...rnals/bb896653. I've never used this program so I don't know it's specifics. For average users, always look at the graphs during good and bad times to get a better feel for what is good or bad.

2. Cnet reviewed PRISM HUD which looks somewhat promising. http://download.cnet.com/Prism-HUD/3...ml?tag=mncol;1

I found others but these looked to be the most promising.

Good luck, Jon.

[shelquis]

If you are using WinXP, then there are some free programs that might be useful........
I found others but these looked to be the most promising.
Good luck, Jon.

Thanks Jon, I'll give 'em a try.

[JonP]

HD Tune may show that the 320GB disk is 2 times as fast as the 80GB disk but it is just a benchmark tool that may or may not be applicable. You should look at multiple benchmark results to get a better picture (hopefully).

A benchmark is a very specific event sequence to get numbers that compared (old saying: comparing apples to oranges). To put this into terms everyone can understand, compare 2 cars (Ferrari and Toyota Prius). If the Ferrari is 2 times as fast as the Prius then why does it take the same time to travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles? An even better example: has your car ever had the same MPG as stated on the sales sticker? Not mine.

The uncached 80GB disk may actually perform better in some situations than the 320GB disk with 2MB cache. Disk cache: memory in the disk where the disk temporarily saves data during read and write to make the disk seem to be faster. If you are running mostly database writes, then database commit to disk ignores the cache and waits for the actual disk write. If you are running an Intel I3, I5 or I7 processor (runs 4 programs at the same time in parallel - I know "program" is the wrong word but I want to make this easier to understand), then the disk cache could be wasting time during reads. In this case, programs ask for some data which the disk reads but the disk continues reading more data into cache because programs will usually request the next few blocks of data so it is ready for the next read. With 4 programs reading the disk at the same time, the disk might releases the read ahead blocks because the cache is needed for another read.

The solution to the problem only changes the problem.

[bigbadsteve]

Shelquis, I very strongly suggest you do something differently than almost everyone so far has suggested, in light of your new information:

Stop tweaking your computer immediately, and don't follow any further general tweaking suggestions made here, no matter how persuasive the poster. If you do try any, try them after you have fixed the real problem, and then only one at a time, carefully backing up or settings a system restore point beforehand and testing your system well after each, for safety.

Why? Because your problem isn't a slow computer. You didn't state your specific problem in your original post, but now you have:

(2012-01-27 14:36) Really, my main complaint is poor performance during windows updates. Several times a day, for up to maybe an hour each time, my system performance just drags. When I check the task manager, the only thing running is usually wuauclt.exe (windows update) or Msmpeng.exe [Microsoft Security Essentials].

Solomon in the Bible stated, "The study of books is endless". The study of tweaks is also practically endless. Some procedures stated to be tweaks aren't really. Some will actually slow down your computer (e.g. cleaning the Prefetch drawer) or make it unreliable or even unstartable (e.g. aggressive registry cleaning). And all are just confusing the issue, now you've recognised your specific problem.

Since Windows Updates critical updates are only released generally once a fortnight, it's clear that your slowdowns are due to Windows Update downloading the definitions updates for Microsoft Security Essentials. I don't have MSE installed so I can't tell you exactly how to do so, but it's clear that to fix the problem you need to stop MSE updates downloading updates a number of times a day.

If you're on dialup or other slow connection, and the slowdowns are specifically with browsing and general internet access speed, then it's no wonder, since the MSE updates will be using up practically all your bandwidth. But even if you're on fast broadband, you will see an improvement if you tame the MSE updates.

Have a look within MSE (systematically check all its options) to see if the frequency of updates can be set. Once a day is more than enough.

Failing that, try the following (tested on XP Pro though not specifically for MSE updates): Find Security Center in your start menu chain and run it. If you can't find it, in the Run box in the Start menu, type wscui.cpl and hit the Enter key.

In Security Center you will see "Automatic Updates". If you see ON next to it, you should change the setting as follows. Scroll down to the very bottom of the window and click "Automatic Updates" under "Manage security settings for". A new, separate Automatic Updates window will pop up. Select "Notify me but don't automatically download or install them", and click OK. If you changed this setting, then downloading & installing Windows updates, including hopefully MSE definitions, has now become a controllable multi-step process for you. You will be notified via the taskbar when there are new updates available, but now you choose when to download them, and after they're downloaded you are notified and choose when to install them (also handy since sometimes a reboot is prompted and you could be in the middle of something).

Hopefully this will solve your problem. If it doesn't then I suggest you uninstall MSE and replace it with a freeware malware checker with which update frequency is configurable. (Avira Antivir Personal for instance, AVG would be probably be configurable too and I'm told has not-too-big a footprint).

Briefly, re system speed on XP after a RAM upgrade (which I've done on my highly-tweaked XP system so I'm not just theorising): If you're running only say two or three smallish programs at a time, browsers and Office say, then it's normal to not see a big improvement in speed, since XP already uses small amounts of RAM very efficiently, in fact better than Vista/Windows 7. If instead you're a power user typically running dozens of programs at once, or using RAM-hungry applications such as video editing or Photoshop, you would see an improvement (unless there are major bottlenecks elsewhere on your system). If you don't multitask much or use powerful programs yet, don't worry, you will, so you didn't waste your upgrade money - but don't expect much apparent general speed improvement in the interim.

[Browni]

So, download HD Tune free version (the Pro version costs $$$) and test your existing hard drive. If it measures an average speed of less than, say, 50MB/second then buy a new 7200 rpm drive, maybe Seagate or Western Digital brand. These usually measure somewhere around 88MB - 96MB/second. Samsung and Hitachi drives are good, too, but they tend to be 6MB - 10MB/second slower.

I find that a rather surprising comment as the Samsung Spinpoint F3 drives have an excellent reputation when it comes to speed.

When I replaced a Maxtor (Seagate) drive in my PC with a Samsung there was a noticeable improvement in performance. You can see below the speeds reported by HDTune

samsung.PNG

spinner.PNG

[mngerhold]

Really, my main complaint is poor performance during windows updates. Several times a day, for up to maybe an hour each time, my system performance just drags. When I check the task manager, the only thing running is usually wuauclt.exe (windows update) or Msmpeng.exe (MSE).

I can concur that my XP machine slows when MSE is being updated (or when it is scanning other MS updates - I can't tell which it is). However, as Windows updates tend to appear in blocks about once a month, its not a problem I care to solve. However, if it happened several times a day I'd want to fix it.

As Steve notes below, there might be issues with your MSE update interval. First note that the regular Windows update cannot be set (via the GUI, anyway) for more often than once a day, and that ought to be enough, even for MSE. I found this link with some info on the MSE update interval, which suggests: You can turn off automatic signature updates by setting the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Antimalware\Signature Updates\SignatureUpdateInterval dword value to “0”.

So I had a look in the registry, and found mine was set to (hex)18=24 (hours), which seems a sensible default. Perhaps yours has been set (somehow) to a lower value? It seems from the link to Technet that 24 is the maximum value.

Secondly, have you set the scheduled MSE scan to check for updates before running? If not, then turning that on might allow MSE to update prior to the the scan (at night), and thereby prevent it from trying to update during the day when you want to use the PC.

Good luck! I have found MSE to be mostly unobtrusive, but it has an annoying habit of (sometimes) scanning all items in my start menu folders as I try to navigate them, leading to painful delays (of up to 20sec) before the shortcuts will appear. I have confirmed with Sysinternals FileExplorer that it is actually opening and scanning the .exes the shortcuts point to (which seems pretty dumb to me), but I have not managed to elicit any help or even concurrence from the MSE support forum. I have found that, once scanned, a start menu folder behaves normally on subsequent accesses, but something makes MSE 'forget' the scan eventually (and turning its real-time protection off temporarily, say to perform a task I dont want MSE getting in the way of, and then turning it back on, results in full folder scanning).

[shelquis]

Since Windows Updates critical updates are only released generally once a fortnight, it's clear that your slowdowns are due to Windows Update downloading the definitions updates for Microsoft Security Essentials. I don't have MSE installed so I can't tell you exactly how to do so, but it's clear that to fix the problem you need to stop MSE updates downloading updates a number of times a day.

Well, it's clear you gave my problem some thought. I've checked and it appears that MSE downloads definition updates just once a day, and typically it's at 24 hour intervals. Wuauclt.exe apparently checks for other things to update.

If you're on dialup or other slow connection, and the slowdowns are specifically with browsing and general internet access speed, then it's no wonder, since the MSE updates will be using up practically all your bandwidth. But even if you're on fast broadband, you will see an improvement if you tame the MSE updates.

Well, I'm not on dialup, I do have "broadband", but I'm not sure how broad my band is. I just ran a speedtest on DLRReports and it reported a 2500kb/s download speed. Just for the hell of it, I ran the same testimmediately after using a win7 computer, and it checked out at 4500kb/s (those are approximate averages of several tests on each). So clearly, my XP computer is much slower than the win7. I have no idea why.

Have a look within MSE (systematically check all its options) to see if the frequency of updates can be set.

As best I can tell, it is not.

In Security Center you will see "Automatic Updates". If you see ON next to it, you should change the setting as follows. Scroll down to the very bottom of the window and click "Automatic Updates" under "Manage security settings for". A new, separate Automatic Updates window will pop up. Select "Notify me but don't automatically download or install them", and click OK. If you changed this setting, then downloading & installing Windows updates, including hopefully MSE definitions, has now become a controllable multi-step process for you. You will be notified via the taskbar when there are new updates available, but now you choose when to download them, and after they're downloaded you are notified and choose when to install them (also handy since sometimes a reboot is prompted and you could be in the middle of something).

I had previously already tried that. Didn't help. The problem still is that wuauclt.exe does something anyway. This is a daily problem, not something related to the monthly critical patches.

then I suggest you uninstall MSE and replace it with a freeware malware checker

I know I could do that, but I was hoping there was some setting that I should have changed after installing the additional RAM.

Briefly, re system speed on XP after a RAM upgrade (which I've done on my highly-tweaked XP system so I'm not just theorising): If you're running only say two or three smallish programs at a time, browsers and Office say, then it's normal to not see a big improvement in speed, since XP already uses small amounts of RAM very efficiently, in fact better than Vista/Windows 7

I think you pretty much described my situation. And I think I've prtetty much resigned myself to living with the situation until I get so fed up I decide to do a clean instll of XP. Thanks for your input.

[shelquis]

...You can turn off automatic signature updates by setting the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Antimalware\Signature Updates\SignatureUpdateInterval dword value to “0”.

So I had a look in the registry, and found mine was set to (hex)18=24 (hours), which seems a sensible default. Perhaps yours has been set (somehow) to a lower value? It seems from the link to Technet that 24 is the maximum value.

I've checked, and MSE definition updates are in fact installed every 24 hours, generally (for some reason it occaionally changes schedule, but then maintans the 24 hour interval until something else changes it).

Secondly, have you set the scheduled MSE scan to check for updates before running?

Yes I do, and I've set it to run only if the computer is NOT being used (but that doesn't seem to stop it from doing so). Thanks for your suggestions.