Somewhere you asked about SWAP.....Do you have a SWAP partition and is it working?

Also, I wonder if a high CPU usage can be related to having inadequate RAM?---My hunch is YES.

Open a terminal and enter this (without the quotes): "top | head -n 15"
Post the results here. (cut and paste from the terminal**)


**If needed, a handy hint: terminals do not typically support ctrl-C and ctrl-V for cut and paste. There is sometimes an alternative shortcut, or maybe a command that shows when you right-click on the terminal window. When you paste into the reply window (in most browsers) ctrl-V will work.

I think pixellany is right. I believe LXDE uses less processes, so I would suggest switching to LXDE (as some others have suggested). So, try the following in your terminal:
This installs lxde. Try exiting xfce and then booting into lxde, and see if it is quicker. Then, try removing xfce with the following:
Less is more, as they say.

Xubuntu should run fine on the specs you give so something must be wrong.
May I suggest the following:

open a terminal
use 'sudo init 1' Without quotes
then 'fsck -f /dev/sda1' or the name of the partition where it lives, /dev/....
see how much is 'non-contiguous'

ps, ignore the warnings once you at run level 1.

Then post results.

Fred.

More System Information

Thought I'd post some more information. Maybe it might help.

OK SEVERAL DIFFERENT things here...


I tried Midori. It too maxed out the system load to 100% when working, it fell back down to 34% when idol. It was a bit faster, but not as much to make any kind of real difference. It wouldn't load weather.com for some reason, but right now that's the very least of my problems.

Also, flash videos seem to be out. Not that it had much of a chance with about 12 to 15sec load times per page. Anyway, the video doesn't play at all. The first frame comes up and then it just sits there acting like it wants to do something but can't. I don't have audio hooked up so I don't know if it plays, my guess would be that it does since the play seconds counter is moving along, I guess the video is just too much for it.

Number 2

Someone asked for my CPU, Memmory, Swap information. Here it is....
From Xubuntu's system resource monitoring application...

CPU (system Load)- Idol not doing anything, nothing open - around 30%
CPU (system Load)- Program open and running - jumps to 100%

Memory - always hovers around 80 to 132MB used of 244MB
(Memory never maxs out)

Swap (which I don't understand) seems to stay at 2mb of 713mb used.

Number 3

Bios Settings

Just random stuff that I thought might help or I didn't understand....

CPU Name: Intel Celeron MMX
CPU Operating Speed: 500(66)
*NOTE - I can change this higher, should I? Is that what's called 'overclocking' ?

*Setup

Boot Order" CDRom,C,A (this becomes important in point number 4, below)
Virus Warning: Disabled
IDE HDD Block Mode: Enabled
Memory Parity/ECC Check: Disabled
PCI/VGA Palette Snoop: Disabled
OS Select for DRAM> 64MB: Non-OS2
Report No FDD for WIN95: No
Video BIOS Shadow: Enabled

*Chipset Features Setup

Memory hole: Disabled
Read around write: Disabled
Concurrent PCI/Host: Disabled
Video RAM Cacheable: Disabled
AGP Aperture size: 64M
spread spectrum: Disabled

*Standard CMOS Setup

Base Memory: 640k
Extended Memory: 261120K
Other Memory: 384K
Total Memory: 262144K

Number 4

The second blue setup screen. Yes there is another blue screen not seeming connected to the first.

So remember back on page 2 of this thread where we were talking about getting rid of the "Press N to Boot from Network" black screen that appears before XuBuntu loads up?

This is how it goes...

-Computer is booted up...
-The regular intro page (press DEL to enter setup) comes up and goes away
-Then a black screen comes up "Initializing MBA, Press clt-alt-b to configure"
-Another black screen "Press N to boot from network"
-XuBuntu welcome screen

So during the load up I press clt-alt-b and I get a whole other blue screen that says...

Managed PC Boot Agent (MB) v4.00
Boot Method: PXE
Default Boot: Local
Local Boot: Enabled
Config Message: Enabled
Message Timeout: 3 seconds
Boot Failure Prompt: wait for timeout

Now the boot method options are: PXE, TCP/IP, NetWare, RPL.
I have no idea what any of those options mean.

Why is it booting for a network first when the BIOS settings say boot from CD then C Drive? It has to be this Managed PC Boot Agent thing causing it, but I can't figure out the dang boot method acronyms!

Number 5

ARGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ummm---would not he be running fsck on his active partition? I thought that was not recommended....

You guys figure out what you want me to type in the terminal, it might be a liitle while before I can get back to that computer.

@Parallaxis

Try these two commands:

Post the output here. The first command displays your hard drives and partition layout, the second displays the top CPU-hogging processes.

Note: as stated before, the Ctrl-C and V commands for Copy and Paste DO NOT WORK IN A TERMINAL! Ctrl-C, for example, kills the currently running command. If you're wondering why, then remember that the command line existed far before things like GUIs and "copy-and-paste". Instead, use the right-click menu.

Another neat trick is that you can select text and paste it using the middle button (for a wheel mouse, press the wheel), without having to use right-click menus or keyboard shortcuts.

This might have been suggested before, but you might like to try CrunchBang Linux. It's derived from Ubuntu but is minimal, much lighter on resources, and uses the Openbox window manager and the tint2 taskbar application.

I think that Fred's first command brings it to maintenance mode (aka single user mode). Rebooting and choosing that option would be a less dramatic way of doing this, I feel. One would have to have a pen and paper in hand to be able to "Then post results", I think (IE, xwindows won't be running during this process -- though maybe a log is created somewhere in /var/log that can be copied later, I'm not sure).

I do agree with Fred that it's surprising that the OP's machine with the specs it has is giving the OP the problems with speed that he describes. Like I said earlier, my machine has similar specs, and I've rarely had such extreme speed issues.

Hating to contradict what I just said, but I do still feel that lxde would give better results than xfce -- but I'm biased, because I never cared for xfce when I tried it.

Hmmmm---I'm not sure you will ever get total agreement here---on anything...

I would stick with safe things---commands with do nothing but gather information.

Speaking only for myself, I want to know what is taking so much CPU time----"top" will tell us this.

*deleted*

I will post those.
It's gonna be awhile though. I can't get back to that computer right now.

Also don't forget my whole "Boot from Network" issues. Maybe if I could shut down that MBA (Managed PC Boot Agent (MB) v4.00), or the other stuff I listed above in my 'system information' post it might help speed it up?

I've never heard of this MBA thingy you're referring to. Is that a part of Xubuntu? I likely should go back reread this thread.

Okay, so this MBA thingy has nothing to do with Xubuntu. I would try using the step you described that occurs before the MBA thingy begins, that being "The regular intro page (press DEL to enter setup) comes up and goes away". So, try pressing DEL at this point, and see if you can find an option to deactivate the MBA thingy from starting up.

I'll look again, but I didn't see one.

A quick trip through yahoo revealed this....

http://www.xtec.es/~mjuarez/transpor/3com_mba.htm

I don't have time to go through it right now, I hope there is an option to get rid of the damn thing. (This may not even be it)

EDIT- This fits with what I heard about the computer before, that it was hooked up to a network and most of the work being done on it was over the network.