Just because you're running Norton Internet Security that doesn't mean you're clean, try Malware Bytes just for the heck of it.

There's nothing inherently wrong with buying HP, it's not like every unit is a dog or they experience common failures, but modern PCs are complicated beasts, and they're not always really good at tell you what's wrong with them.

HP took some big risks with the Touchsmart line, they were first out the door with usable touch units and an application suite that is, well, pretty sweet :-) Apple really has nothing like it, and the other PC manufacturers are still trying to catch up.

The noises and stuttering you're hearing with music or video is the same byproduct of running out of resources that you're having with IE.

Here are some tests:
Disconnect it from the internet 100% and play music or watch videos, do things work better?
Test with wireless off using a network cable, does the issue go away?

I think you have something, and the IE resource issues suggest to me that whatever bug you have is related to IE.

Diane

maverick said: It did act better when I unplugged the internet modem. But that just tells me that the HP Touchsmart is not processing Internet Explorer properly. It's allowing too much memory to accumulate until the machine slows to a crawl. I can't believe I'm the first person to have this problem. And again, I had the TimeWarner people come and check -- it's not my modem. So it must be the HP machine. That's why I'm asking you and any others on this forum what the right fix is for this type of problem. I also don't think that it's related to security. Again, all signs point to problems within the HP Touchsmart. Once again, help!

You're not listening to what I'm saying, if you have a bug, virus, or malware, and IF it's connecting to the internet, that's the cause of your slowdowns.

If when you're not connected to the internet you don't have the issues, then you know it's not anything inherently wrong with the OS or the programs on the PC itself, if it were something wrong with the PC, then it would slow down whether or not it was connected to the internet.

You should be able to google Malware Bytes and get to the right product, I wouldn't have recommended it if it was going to cost you money, it's a great product for personal use.

Diane

also you can remove some of the startup programs which arent needed,

and easy way to find out the cause is to keep a eye on the windows task manager and see which process is eating away at the ram or cpu

maverick said: Hi Diane, I just got back and I installed MalwareBytes (I bought the full version for $25). I just did a scan and it didn't find any infected files. But during the last half hour, I think my system is going faster. My question to you is: does MalwareBytes do anything else besides find infected files? i.e. even though it didn't find any infected files on my system, am I imagining it that it still could be making my system act better? I'm not complaining but am just curious about it. Thanks, Everett

It does nothing behind the scenes, but it's a great product when you get hit by malware.

Diane

Chuck K said: We are having exactly the same problem. The HP is the slowest computer we have ever owned. The mouse cursor gets jerky, video starts and stops and buzzes. We're ready to throw this thing out and buy a Mac. Clearly, the system resources are getting overwhelmed by something but we haven't been able to figure out what it is. Do HP technicians not jump into these forums and try to provide solutions? I'm skeptical that this is a virus. I've done plenty of detailed virus scans as well as full system diagnoses and nothing shows up. I'm wondering if Adobe software is causing the problem.

Review the items in Task Manager for what is taking the highest memory and CPU cycles, it's the time honored way to review performance issues in Windows, that hasn't changed in over 15 years. This is not standard behavior.

By the same token, if you're having video and internet issues as the OP was, try a hard wired connection in your tests. The OP is specifically having issues with IE and video, when not connected to the network or using IE, they did not have performance issues, that eliminates the OS and hardware as the cause of their issues.

Diane

I'm not sure that I can promise you a fix for what you are describing, but here are my thoughts.

It is very typical for any computer to become slow when it runs out of physical memory, because at that point it will attempt to use the hard drive as a "reserve", moving things back and forth between memory (RAM) and the drive. Since hard drives are thousands of times slower than RAM, this will really make you feel the computer is crawling to a halt.

There may be other reasons than malware why Internet Explorer doesn't properly release the memory it uses. Often the cause of this is that you have add-ons installed (perhaps unknowingly or unintentionally) for Internet Explorer that are misbehaving. This can happen with other browsers as well. I've had situations where Firefox ends up using similar amounts of memory as reported in this thread. Once that happens my system (in this case a non-TouchSmart by the way) will slow to a crawl, and the only remedy is to "kill" the Firefox process using Task Manager or the more powerful/insight providing Process Explorer from sysinternals.com.

My suggestion would be to use the Tools button in Internet Explorer to look at "Manage Add-Ons" and perhaps turning all Add-ons off for a while. This may stop your ability to see YouTube videos and other multimedia content on the web, but you may be able to turn the Add-ons back on one by one and by this process of elimination find out which Add-on is behaving badly. And perhaps there is an update available for whichever Add-on that might be.

In general, troubleshooting something like this is pretty difficult without very detailed information as to what precisely is installed on the system, what your habits are of closing programs versus minimizing them/reusing the windows over time, and which websites are involved. Sometimes even the websites themselves can be to blame when they write code for their webpages that are complicated and do a lot of "Web 2.0" stuff. Since asking for that level of detail in a public forum would most likely be a bit insensitive, I'd recommend that you find someone in your circle of trusted friends who is knowledgeable in these things and ask if they'd be willing to help. It really can be a time consuming process to figure out.

Edit/Update: One really simple thing I'm just thinking of now is simply to close Internet Explorer every time you're done using it. That should release the memory it used, even if Add-ons are misbehaving.

Hi Everett,

I'm very happy to hear that. Hope you'll be able to enjoy the machine a bit better now. Thanks for letting everyone here know that things are smoother for now.

-G

http://malwarebytes.org/
Download the free version, and don't choose to activate the paid aspects.

I think the confusion is I'm trying to say that there was nothing inherent in the system that was causing the problem, i.e. hardware or operating system issues, the IE Add-ons had to get added in somewhere, and usually they're malware related, but apparently in your cases they appeared legitimate.

This is always a tough thing to help people with since we have no idea how they're translating what we say, and then what the actual system has installed on it.

HTH
Diane