Firefox and Thunderbird had a few upgrades that came within a day or so each. I generally upgraded every time they said it was necessary. One of those upgrades correlated with a problem I have now. Just in booting up I have over 700 megs used up of my gig of RAM. I used MemTurbo to scrub the RAM and it added to it. I had 850 megs used up then. (It used to be a great program for this)
I went to the firefox/thunderbird sites and they had no answers but it seems a few others have the same problem.
Do any of you know how to figure out what application may be loading up the ram? Any clues on how to fix it? I already tried to delete the Mozilla apps and that didn't help now.
This really kills me from web surfing. It took forever to get this posted
What do I do?
If you've got nearly 3/4 of your RAM occupied, it is with applications and routines that are running active.
XP does a fairly good job of "releasing" memory when an application terminates, so programs like MemTurbo are of little use, and often create more load, which you've just discovered.
I would suspect Malware of the "phone-home" spyware variety, but you may also have a number of legitimate programs that either run in the background or frequently attempt to connect to the internet to check for updates.
You can safely disable most of the items in your StartUp File via MSCONFIG.
Leave your AntiVirus and Firewall running active. Beyond that, it's user preference.
Need a guide to know what is safe to disable? Try http://wwwanswersthatwork.com.
First on my agenda, though, would be to run a full scan with the onboard antivirus and antispyware you have installed. (update each antimalware tool that you use, immediately before running their scan)
This Forum "other computer problems" is not primarily for Malware removal, so if your problem persists, will you please Run and Post a HJT Log over in the Malware Removal Forum here at TomCoyote, for expert assistance.
After you are clear of any/all Malware, you can post back here for further assistance if necessary.
