What Uses Up Memory On A Laptop, and Other Qs?

Skid Row Joe wrote:
I just bought a new HP 2000 laptop with 750 GB memory.

My old HP laptop was 6 years old and it's screen gave up the ghost to black, so I bought a new one.

The problem I experienced on my old laptop was it was always flagging up to delete items because of low memory.

Does too many bookmarks take memory? For the life of me, I don't know what memory I was using that it was so lacking.

Bookmarks take almost no resources. But temporary Internet files can be taking up a lot of room on your hard drive. To get rid of them, open Internet Explorer. Find the little gear symbol in the top right corner and click it. That opens a pop up window. About 3/4 of the way down the page, click the box that says "delete browsing history on exit" then click OK at the bottom. That will help with problems of you hard drive filling up and it will also make your pages load faster when you're surfing the Internet. :)

Skid Row Joe wrote:

I want to avoid the same situation with this laptop, because it is working lightening-fast!

Also, does leaving a laptop in Sleep mode, age the motor inside?

Sleep mode doesn't hurt anything but you do want to do a complete reboot regularly. Some updates won't take effect until the computer is reset.

Skid Row Joe wrote:

Also, does using the CD player to watch a movie hard on the laptop's CD-playing mechanism?

My old laptop's CD player quit working two years or so ago, so I was thinking I may have burnt it up.

You know from your RV that anything mechanical will wear out. If it has moving parts and you use it, sooner or later the moving parts won't. ;)

Skid Row Joe wrote:

Also, how can I get all the bookmarks transferred to my new laptop, when the screen is black - no brightness to see the bookmarks?

You might not need to. A lot of the browsers now store your bookmarks in the cloud. But if they are gone, SCV Jeff gave you good advice about using an external monitor.

You have a lot of good advice in this thread, I just tried to answer your questions like my hubby would answer my mechanical questions. :) Simple and straight to the point.

Skid Row Joe wrote:
Not complaining, but did want to report that much of what is being written about here in terms of direction and nomenclature is over my head to follow. I guess I first need to understand what is being talked about, before I can then know how to follow and execute them.

There are a series of computer orientation videos here that might help you to understand some of the terminology being used. These are very basic, to the point of explaining what a keyboard and mouse are, but some go into a little more depth which could be helpful in understanding things such as the difference between RAM and hard drive space. If this doesn't help much, search around. There are lots of helpful sites out there.

Wondering about that old HP. Do you still have it? Has anyone checked if the black screen is caused by an inadvertent press of the function keys that turn it off? Seen that happen more than once in many years of PC support. For HP laptops I think it was Fn+F4. But don't quote me on that, I've been retired awhile.

Skid Row Joe wrote:
Not complaining, but did want to report that much of what is being written about here in terms of direction and nomenclature is over my head to follow. I guess I first need to understand what is being talked about, before I can then know how to follow and execute them.

Help us help you by reading the posts, doing some of the steps listed and providing the results. Without you giving us this info, we have nothing to address.

Understand that you may not understand everything but some steps have been provided. Do you have a friend that has some more knowledge of computers, that can at least help you get the info?

Was your old laptop running Windows XP? My desktop is seven years old, was running XP, and had started to slow down significantly and crash on occasion. Recently reformatted the hard drive and loaded Win7 Pro. It is like a new machine, zipping merrily along. Will soon reformat the laptop too. It is running Vista, which I detest greatly.

Regarding the blacked out screen, as suggested connect it to a desktop monitor. Then you'll see what you need to transfer. Even if you temporarily use someone else's monitor.

The "motor inside" is just a cooling fan or two. Fans can wear out. Fans might need replacing. These keep the computer cool enough for it to do its job. If it gets too warm, the computer might slow down. Be sure your new laptop can breathe, don't use it on a soft surface. Make sure the air vents (usually sides or back) can draw in cooler air and expel the warm air.

CD or DVD player...both of the ones in my 7-year-old desktop continue to work. They can be affected by a dusty environment. Unlike a vinyl record being played by a needle, CD/DVD players user an optical reader. Did your player stop spinning or reading the disk inside? Sometimes these drives need "cleaning". Sometimes they need re-aligning. If the optical reader gets misaligned it may not read the CD well.

Sleep mode doesn't wear anything out.

Your new HP likely has a 750GB hard drive. A hard drive is sort of similar to a CD/DVD in a hard shell case. Sort of. Files are physically saved on the drive.

How much RAM (memory) does your new HP have? When you run a program, memory might be used to make the program function efficiently. It's a temporary storage place. Sort of like your brain. When you shut your computer off, the memory doesn't retain too much. If you run numerous memory-intensive programs at once, then things might slow down a bit. For most folks, 4GB memory is enough. Gamers might want four or eight times that much to run their programs well.

Also, set yourself up with a back-up system. Hard drives fail. If you value what is on your hard drive, then back it up. Include your favourites in the backup. An external back-up drive can be purchased for much less than $100.

Hope I explained this simply enough.

FWIW, I looked to see that it was just a year ago that I downloaded CCleaner after seeing it come up often on this forum. It was probably around then that I started looking into cleaning and speeding up our 7 and 10 y/o WinXP laptop and desktop, and I had little knowledge of many of the things you are addressing.

A good way to learn is by asking some general things of Google, then you will start to refine your knowledge.

I am open to fielding what questions that I can. There were a few I couldn't, like the CD hardware life.

It would help to know - for both the new and the old rigs - the hardware specs (right click on 'My Computer' in the Windows menu and click 'Properties' to see basic RAM, CPU, OS name, etc. (In XP and probably 7, not sure about 8)

Not complaining, but did want to report that much of what is being written about here in terms of direction and nomenclature is over my head to follow. I guess I first need to understand what is being talked about, before I can then know how to follow and execute them.

Also, sleep mode is fine

joebedford wrote:
Don't confuse storage (disk 750GB) with memory = whatever RAM you have. Different thing use each of these.

Cerevisaphile wrote:
Memory and storage are terms that are NOT interchangeable. Deleting items wont free up memory.just storage. Maybe the message said to delete files due to low storage..meaning the hd was full.in order to free up memory programs / processes can be stopped..or programms can be uninstalled / modified so they dont start all the time amd eat up resources..meaning memory.

Go to the task manager of your os and see what is running and how much of your memory its using up... Usually firefox is a bit of a memory hog and needs a restart every few days...on some versions of windows u can also run a small app called msconfig.exe that will give you the ability to disable certain software at startup.
Bookedmarks a small and only use a few kb of storage...they can be easily exported from within your browser.
Pretty mich all cd players come with cheap plastic gears and give up after a few years of usuage..also they domt lan for people to have their laptops more than 3~4 years so why make a cd player that lasts 10
Few tips on keeping your laptop fast ...

Dont install every free software there is....if you dont use it uninstall it.. Dont just remove files
Only upgrade if needed... Having the latest and greatest software version installed also uses more and more memory and storage.
With harddrives getting bigger and bigger be careful how much space is used for caching of internet files...dont use more than a few MB for it.
Get a brand name virus scanner most ISPs give them away for free.. If not buy one , use live protection and keep it updated.

The above two posts are very worth your time to read.

Can you please provide the exact (copy it down as spelling is important) error?

Open a Windows "file" Explorer. Click on Computer. Now tell us how many drives the computer has. Better yet, can you take a snapshot of the window? If not tell us, by letter and name of the drive, how large (Total size) each drive is and how much free space. Many computers come preloaded with recovery and system drives, which uses your space. Have you done a back up of your drive.

Is your OS 32 bit. You can tell by right clicking on "Computer" and selecting "Properties." While there, tell us how much RAM (that's memory) the system sees (and it is not 750GB), probably 4 - 8 GB. Your hard drive is storage and is likely the 750GB device and is not memory. They serve 2 different functions. If 32 bit OS, tell us what folders you have in "C:/Programs" folder. If it is 64 bit, what folders are in the "C:/Programs" folder and the "C:/Programs(x86)" folder.

As already mentioned, RAM (Random Access Memory) and storage space (space on your hard drive) are two different things. If you have 750 gigs of something, you're talking about storage space. No home computer has 750 gigs of memory (RAM).

Which were you running out of on your former PC? Could have been either. If it was storage space, I doubt you'd have to worry about it for a good long while if you've got a 750 gig hard drive, unless you're doing some serious high res photography, videography, etc., and lots of it. But if for some unknown reason your hard drive was created with a small partition for the C: drive, it could happen even if your physical drive is huge. That's unlikely, I would think, but could be resolved by reconfiguring the drive.

If it's RAM, on the other hand, easily handled - eliminate startup programs you don't need, possibly increase virtual memory or add more RAM. Virtual memory is a lot slower than RAM, so if it came to that, adding RAM would be preferable, but adding virtual memory is free (just change a setting and reboot).

What operating system do you have? I'm assuming it's Windows something.

Don't confuse storage (disk 750GB) with memory = whatever RAM you have. Different thing use each of these.