My PC is running like a 1975 AMC Pacer

Good Evening Friends,
My Gateway Win 7 Home Premium Desktop is running badly, I'm almost certain I have a virus/Trojan though I've run half a dozen AV proggies and cleared out what they found. The symptoms;
I had one blue screen followed by an auto-reboot
It sounds like an SR-71 Blackbird taking off inside my office
My "free" physical memory in Task Manager is a measly 23 MB, though my C drive is half empty (over 300 GB free space)
Every browser or search engine I use freezes and I have to kill explorer using task manager to surf again
Under the task manager in "performance" it's reading between 0% to 7%, a PC should never idle that low, even now when I'm on this website
I ran all the usual suspects, Superantispyware, Mbam, Ccleaner, Rkill, Hitman, JRT..since then, the Hard disc no longer sounds like a freight train, but I need help boys. Tong Po?

 

We've been over this before, you're running too many programs that start and eat up your RAM.. Hard drive space has absolutely no bearing on the RAM space..........

 

as 2oldGeek states - you'll need ccleaner or similar installed, then under 'tools' then 'startup' click all processes to NO, now reboot, whe restarted goto ccleaner again and only enable the apps you need running (AV, certain drivers etc) reboot again and that should make a noticible difference.
windows startup manager does the same but I find ccleaner IO better

 

Hey pop,
Stop being a cheapskate, break down and buy some more RAM.

 

grammer,grammer,grammer.and you call yourself a canadian.lol.

 

Or, grammar, grammar, grammar.

 

er,you have a point there.

 

ah,anyone remember the show "the land of point"?lol

 

I remember "the land of point". Actually, "The land of beans and point". We were poor when I grew up and Mama would buy a ham once a month and hang it on the wall, high so us kids couldn't reach it..... Then at supper time we would eat our beans and point at the ham saying "When we gonna get some ham, Maw?"

 

you are so fricken funny.lol.land of point was a cartoon.all the people had pointed heads while little oblio had a round head.music was by harry nillson.

 

Hey my friend,
I'm sorry I let this go awhile, I've been busted up more than usual (10 blown discs) and I can't sit at my desk for long when it flares up, I'm not irresponsible, just "broken" with a 10 yr old boy full-time. Ok, hopefully I can give you enough useful info, but feel free to ask for more. It's an HP Pavillion P6803W Windows 7 Home Premium w/Service Pack 1
Installed RAM is 4 GB AMD Anthlon 2x220 2.80 GHZ 64 bit.
C-Drive has 302 GB free of 687 GB... Of the total content, 102 GB is family photos and vids. I use my PC only for surfing and storage of my pics/vids, no gaming etc. I have a 1 TB external attached to it for photo storage and backups when I've restored Windows. It doesn't "crash" per se, but it often freezes while on internet and it sounds like a freight train. I will add more ram as 2Old has strongly advised. Thank you for looking it over

 

I will oblige promptly. I assume I need two 2 GB cards or two 1GB cards?

 

I use cCleaner all the time, as well as Superantispyware, Malwarebytes and others (as one-time runs, not running in the background)...but I haven't tried using cClean to organize my startups

 

4gb ram is enough for windows 7 - I personally wouldn't upgrade it (if you do, you will need 2x4gb sticks or 1x2gb 1x4gb for 8gb or 6gb ram)
highly recommend using ccleaner to disable all startups except AV and maybe touchpad driver if you have one installed (synaptic, elan etc) and only enable ones you feel are needed - I doubt any apart from those mentioned.

On another note - your backups - make a fresh backup today if possible and delete the other ones completely then copy the newest backup onto the 1tb external (a backup of a backup) the duplicate file finder in ccleaner is ok but I wouldnt bother using it. consider using google drive or similar for all your photos - stored free for life and available on any pc, phone, tablet etc (I have 3 google accounts 1x photos 1x videos 1x docs) you can convert pics to make them smaller if needed, same with vids.

I mentioned in another post for a user to install Immunet AV as it is cloud based and is very lite on system resources and touch wood* I havn't had any issues with viruses to date (4yrs+) if you decide to install this -- uninstal all the other AVs and malware progs, having too many can impact on performance too