[A-13]

Yes, it's an epic battle, but my computer has the skills of being a real piece. I'd love to use my tablet more- heck, I've barely used it since I purchased it, but my computer can be so slow that it's just not worth getting choppy lines and slowdown. Aside from the obvious, (closing all other programs down, defrag, and all that good stuff) does anyone know of anything else I can do to use my tablet smoothly? I think part of the problem is that photoshop is such a processor hog. All well, if worse comes to worse, I get my own computer next year for college...
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Self-pity and modesty get you nowhere

[B0b]

b nice if u posted ur computer spec

[Tomasis]

work at lower rez of pix or with small brushes if you use quite large..

otherwise, uppgrade to better/bigger hardwares.. it is obviously

i dont think that depends much of processor power without memory bandwith

[A-13]

Hmm, I suppose it's best to wait till I get a new comp. This one is a 499Mhz Processor, 248 RAM, Windows 98 2nd Edition, Trident Blade Video Card (It's old n' crappy), and of course, here I am with AIM, Internet Explorer, and my virus protector running, and I'm at 57% system resources free. Something tells me that I've got some other stuff running, or I need to get away from this computer as fast as possible.
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Self-pity and modesty get you nowhere

[Al Ian]

I run PS 5.0 on two machines. One is a PII 450 with 384MB RAM and a TNT 2 16MB card. It runs fine with my WACOM. Comprable to your computer. Id say you have a TON of crap running in the background you dont know about.

Go to task manager "ALT+CTRL+DEL" and see whats running. On either of my systems after start up I have 5 things running. If you have more then that you have to much crap going on.
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http://jmarkey77.home.bresnan.net/

[A-13]

Very true, there's a lot of stuff, and I've got no idea what most are...
Can I close any of these and prevent them from running? (using msconfig, I assume)

Bttnserv
Findfast
Osa
Em_exec
Stimon
Alogserv
Ptsnoop
Atwtexe
Atwtusb
Rulaunch
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Self-pity and modesty get you nowhere

[Al Ian]

All those you listed are CRAP. And some of them are snoopers. Things that tell people on the net your surfing habbets and what not. So they can tailer POP UPs for just you. How sweet of them huh. Bleh.

Look on the net for a piece of software called "Ad-Aware". It removed all those sniffers, even the ones that like to hide in your registry. I run it about once a week, always seems to find 4 or 5 sniffers each time. Scarry!

Other then that yeah, run MSConfig and dump what you can. Should help alot!
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http://jmarkey77.home.bresnan.net/

[A-13]

Well, I guess I might get another speedy response, since you might still be here- Are you sure all of those are useless. I don't want to get rid of anything important. I've run a spyware program every so often, it doesn't pick those up. But I'd love to delete anything slowing me down.
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Self-pity and modesty get you nowhere

[Al Ian]

I dont recognize any of them. That dosent mean I'm not wrong. However just end task them in task manager to start. Worst that can happen is your comp will freeze. Also MSConfig wont let you uncheck needed system stuff. So only applications that are not needed will get messed up. Like if you run special desktop 3D software for example.
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http://jmarkey77.home.bresnan.net/

[A-13]

Ok, I disabled some in msconfig, and killed some off through task manager- everything seems to be working fine, so I'll restart and hopefully clean this comp up a bit. Thanks for your help!
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Self-pity and modesty get you nowhere

[Al Ian]

Anytime. Next time delete your "tree" files. Use the deltree function in MSDOS.

JUST KIDDING

Dont do it, seriosly.

It delete's your directory tree.
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http://jmarkey77.home.bresnan.net/

[eyalyab]

you can terminate all those processes and prevent them from starting on windows startup. except STIMON = something to do with usb hardware detection.

other than that, scan for spyare too (adaware6 at lavasoftusa.com)

i have a p3 450MHz with 3 x pc100MHz 64MB sticks = 192MB sdram 100MHz (old piece of shit. i think they are actually 66Mhz tho but i dont feel like checking now), S3 Trio3d (4MB vidcard for heaven's sakes!! and its onboard too along with the sound card and the nic, so it slows down the mb too) on top of this winXP pro, and in the bkg, norton av/fw, mirc (which is okay), and some other lan monitor tool. /w ps 7me and i can draw on ~2400^2 canvases with many layers without a problem.

check that everything in your pc is okay, hardware-wise. maybe hceap ram is giving you problems. define is ps on the brushes the smooth option. and as a last resort, overclock your cpu. the mb should automatically oc your ram accordingly.

[Tomasis]

As other mentioned, better trim your OS for your purposes.. dont try use too many apps which may slow down you computer

if you want to draw smoothly, then format C: and install PS directly and begin draw

[eyalyab]

i also forgot.
if you have 2 seperate physical drived, best to put your scratch disk on the seperate one (or even on a seperate pertition).

also make sure you have enough free space on your hdd's because ps uses hdd space as "virtual memory" and if you have none, it will need to swap occasionally and slow you down

[A-13]

Thank you all for the continued help, I've taken off a good amount of those programs running in the background. I'll be sure to scan for spyware more often, too. I do have 2 separate drives, so how do I go about moving my scratch disk? I'm not even positive on what it is (my guess is some sort of temporary storage, since I did get a warning it was full before I added more HD space to this computer), let alone how to move it.

edit: Ok, I think I found how to move it, thanks again for the help everyone
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Self-pity and modesty get you nowhere

[lalPOOO]

I have a computer much like the one you described that I was "forced" to work on for a while. Steps I took to make it actually work, and stop behaving like a bitch were:
1) Reformate, put on xp
2) disabled a bunch of garbage services -> http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm
3) worked small and took breaks often to insure mental stability.
4) avoided using any sort of fancy brushes, they require more calculations.
5) Defragged OFTEN, (at least once a week, just for fun)

also, EM_EXEC was your logitech mouse drivers
I don't remember with Stimon does, but I belive its a windows component. If you ever have any 'questions' about these programs, just open up windows find, and type in the name. Usually the directory that its in will tip you off to whether or not is screwing you over.

You could always overclock too... but thats a whole nother story.

and finnally a last but pretty futuile "solution" turn off onboard audio and replace with a sound card...might free up some cpu cycles.

[skrubbles]

if you are ever unsure of a program you have running in the background and whether or not you should turn it off/delete it, just go here:

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_pages/startup_full.htm

This place helps me out a lot... helps me find spyware and viruses and all the other junk.