Need advice to streamline PC

I am having execution problems (dreadfully slow) in placing orders and manuevering around MT4. Every action (placing an order, pulling up navigator or terminal) takes a few seconds for a response. I thought it might be a problem on the end of Interbank FX, but I want to check all avenues before I make a switch. I trade the 1 minute charts which could be memory hogs. Here are some stats:

Intel Pentium 4
CPU 2.80 GHZ
512 MB of RAM

67.7 Gigabytes of free space (computer is used only for trading)
CPU usage averages approx 12% (surges up to 55% for a second or two sometimes)

Page File usage is 588MB

Physical memory total is 522732
available is ~137050
system cache ~92200

Computer is roughly 1 year old and I re-installed the OS and wiped the CPU clean 1.5 months ago.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

buy a new notebook... they are so cheap now. And the screens are gorgeous... 15.4" is a great size. I replace my desktops.

1280x800 might sound limiting.. but I got used to it and I like it. Plus there's always an attached external monitor.

apparently the intel graphics chip gives you 30 mins longer battery than an ati or nvidia.

dual cores are cheap now too because there is pricing pressure from the core 2 duo that was released... so the core duo is already an older generation - but great.

if you want to save more money, buy a refurbished notebook.

and if you have a new notebook, your existing pc can go for leisure activities like media related and other non-business activities.

also for XP 1 GB is good for most busines apps (like lots of metatraders, email, web browsing and such)

I always usually have about 500 MB free of physical memory when running... but if I only have 512MB total, my machine would defnitely be much slower.

So you need more than 512MB to have a decent XP experience.

Couple of things you can do. Sounds like you have something running in the background that is sucking your cpu cycles.
Right click on your taskbar (empty spot) and choose your taskmanager.
Click on the processes tab and then sort by CPU (click twice to get the most cycles on top.)
Also sort by mem usage to see which program has a high usage.
If you see a program that you dont need, and the task.
Make sure you get out of ALL programs you dont need as a main rule.
Sometimes my virus program kicks off and slows everything down, check on that.
Also, when still in taskmanager, there are a bunch of programs that run in the background that you don't need. Same with services. Do a search in google and look for xp services, and I am sure you will find the guide which ones you can turn off.

Remove all the indicators from the MT4 folder that you dont use, just copy them somewhere else....

Also,

uninstall ANY program you dont use anymore. After that I suggest you down a utility to clean your registry, that makes a big difference also!
A good is: http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/fil...scription.html#

Good luck.

Thanks guys, I have utilized some of your suggestions and have seen some improvement. Unfortunately, a new laptop is out of the question... this one just turned one and it is a widescreen etc. etc. It's just fine. A little more memory is what it needs. I did lose some of the services and cleaned the registry and removed many many of the installed indicators. I did not think they could slow things down if I did not have them running in a chart. Apparently I was wrong. Thanks again.

forgot about the taskmanager cpu thing, I had thought it was just one of the things all windows users do instinctively (because they had been doing it so many times over the years... don't know how one can survive without it

Hey there Hungry!

I have worked in the IT field for quite a few years. There are a few things I would recommend that should help you out.

1. Definitely add 512mb more ram (as already stated). This will give you a HUGE performance boost!! Windows XP is a pig!!

2. I will assume you are somewhat of a noob (no offense) for this one:
- Go to Start and click on Run
- Type in 'msconfig' (without the ' of course)
- Go to the 'Services' tab
- Scroll down and disable (Uncheck) the following:

> Indexing Service <- This service catalogues most of the files on your computer for faster searching. It is a complete pig as it constantly updates in the background (if your computer is fine for a bit, then suddenly goes all to crap for up to 15 minutes at a time this is probably the culprit)

> Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing <- If you don't use netmeeting then disable it. It does exactly what it says and can possibly be a security problem.

> Remote Access Connection & Auto-Connect Manager
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
Remote Registry
- These all allow access to your computer via network. Huge security risk.

If you are running a third party firewall, you may want to disable Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing.

I would advise you to do a quick search on each of these points so you can see for yourself what they do, and how they affect (or do not affect) your system.

Good luck,

If is in good shape, dont change,
I use a celeron(Cheap for the price and it work great, better than my desktop and it suppose the be faster).
And my MT4 hang sometime on my desktop and never on my laptop.

The only thing, i use my laptop for trading only, so i do not install software that i dont really need.

Just one thing:
- If you have a antivirus ( They drain alot of ressource )
- Also, next time you re-install, install one software at a time and test your MT4.

HI, I noticed you had plenty of hard disk space. I would increase the cache to 1536 and see what you think (you could always turn it back) Look under control panel\system\advanced. Don't make it any larger than 1536, you are limited by your ram. This should help!