New computer, but super slow and freezing.

[MART3R]

Ive been building another computer to give to a family member, and I've just finished installing Windows7 x64 along with all the necessary drivers.
My problem is, its running WAY too slow. And at some points it will freeze when opening the most basic of programs (My Computer, CC Cleaner, etc) basically everything.
Now my personnal rig has almost everything on an SSD so im not sure how fast things are supposed to load on a computer that runs purely on HHD power but Im pretty sure its not this slow. Even whilst installing the drivers I had to do them one by one because clicking "Extract All" nothing would happen for a good 2 minutes before it would finally start extracting.

(Everything Stock speed)
Pentium G3258 CPU
H97M Anniversary MOBO
Radeon HD 5700 GPU
Western Digital Blue 320GB HDD
2gb SK Hynix 1333 RAM
coolermaster ex2 525w PSU
Some Optical drive from 2006
3 case fans

Anyway if theres anything you guys can think of let me know, because Im somewhat of a novice and Im stumped. Theres probably some simple explanation for it. (reinstalled win7 thrice because of it.) Do I not have enough RAM? HDD problem? Also If theres something thats key and I havent said, let me know. I really wanna fix this thing up but I'm not even in the mood to turn it on with these problems.


TL;DR - New computer running super slow on the most basic of programs and 'Not Responding' freezes every time I click something.

 

[elbert]

Hard drive issues can often cause the issues your seeing. I suggest running WD's testing software to see if its failing.

 

[renz496]

so the PC only have 2GB RAM?

 

[unclemao]

Try defragging your hard drive as older harddrives tend to run slower because they are not defragged , And another solution maybe to remove your gpu because your cpu is alot faster than gpu and while i'm not to sure how it would impact day to day performance but it's worth a try anyway, and consdier getting some more ram if all else fails,

Best of luck,

 

[InvalidError]

With only 2GB of RAM, swapping would ruin performance even with an SSD. High swap traffic would also cause premature wear on the SSD.

I wouldn't go below 4GB even for the most basic PC. With today's ridiculously low RAM prices, I'd recommend 8GB as a minimum regardless of use and 16GB for more serious everyday productivity/gaming.

 

[amtseung]

I think you just don't have enough RAM. Windows can barely function on 2GB of RAM (especially windows vista and 7), and with it constantly having to reallocate RAM just to do anything (even opening windows explorer), the system will grind to a halt as everything that should be written into RAM is being written onto the windows page file on your hard drive. Open resource monitor, open the memory tab, and see how many hard faults you're getting. If it's constantly hard faulting when idle at the desktop, you don't have enough RAM.

Optimize your hard drives. If that doesn't fix it, then you probably need more RAM. As an intermediate solution, try increasing the space allowed for windows page file. Once you have an adequate amount of RAM, that page file should be used extremely rarely, if at all.

 

[Cybrmge]

Although those are pretty low-end components/specs, it still shouldn't be freezing and going slow opening simple programs. I have an old test computer with similar hardware and it runs Win7 just fine. It sounds like a Windows installation/Hard drive/RAM problem.

-Hard drives will feel like they take forever going from an SSD, so make sure you are letting it fully load everything at startup first. Check if there are any unnecessary programs loading with windows that could be chewing up CPU/RAM/Harddrive resources.

-Hit ctrl-alt-delete and go to the processes tab in windows task manager. Whenever you try to open something that freezes or takes forever, see if a program or service is taking up all the CPU resources.

-Try running memtest86 to check to see if your RAM is bad or not.
-Try running a scandisk on your Hard drive to check for bad sectors and corruption
-Try HWmonitor to see your computer's operating temperature

 

[InvalidError]

-Hard drives will feel like they take forever going from an SSD, so make sure you are letting it fully load everything at startup first.

With only 2GB of RAM, there will be hardly any room to keep stuff in RAM or cached, which will make HDD performance much worse than it could/should be. With enough RAM to keep all frequently and recently used data in memory, most HDD accesses beyond initial load can be eliminated and that can make HDDs feel practically as fast as an SSD.

 

[Cybrmge]

-Hard drives will feel like they take forever going from an SSD, so make sure you are letting it fully load everything at startup first.

With only 2GB of RAM, there will be hardly any room to keep stuff in RAM or cached, which will make HDD performance much worse than it could/should be. With enough RAM to keep all frequently and recently used data in memory, most HDD accesses beyond initial load can be eliminated and that can make HDDs feel practically as fast as an SSD.

True that 2GB will make things slower than say, 4GB+, but he is having issues just trying to open My Computer. Like I said, I have a box running Win7 64bit with a normal HDD and 2GB of ram that runs just fine. There is something else going on with his rig.

 

[InvalidError]

True that 2GB will make things slower than say, 4GB+, but he is having issues just trying to open My Computer. Like I said, I have a box running Win7 64bit with a normal HDD and 2GB of ram that runs just fine. There is something else going on with his rig.

The first time you open "My Computer", it will still take a while since Windows has to load all of Explorer's DLLs, load the icons, viewer filters, the file system data and a bunch of other stuff. If you close it, do something else, and re-open it, it may take a while again as all of that stuff either got released or swapped out and needs to be either reloaded or de-swapped.

Life under 4GB can quickly get miserable. I get a reminder of that whenever I boot the laptop which has 1.25GB of RAM or my P4 which has 3GB.