hi there!

i'm having a very slow processing on my machine , this is the first bit of top :

1:55pm up 6:21, 2 users, load average: 4.23, 4.17, 4.10
66 processes: 58 sleeping, 8 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 63.7% user, 36.2% system, 0.0% nice, 0.0% idle
Mem: 255032K av, 251240K used, 3792K free, 0K shrd, 9876K buff
Swap: 257000K av, 0K used, 257000K free 111696K cached

what could this be ? many thanks

Looks like your using all of your ram. I wonder why?

Heres mine:

Mem: 512908K av, 180764K used, 332144K free, 2064K shrd, 5236K buff

Run "top" and see who/what is using the most cpu
and mem. You can use "P" and "M" during the top view to sort by either cpu or memory usage.

Does this happen "all the time", or infrequently?

i knew KDE was a huge RAM consumer cause it happend when i added two extension bars (kas bar and a child bar ) to my desktop . i took it off right away . now my ram use is of about 170 180 Mb but now i have another problem , my kcontrol doesn`t show the left side ( where the options are ) does anyone know how to get it back ? thanks for the help,see you!

when i tried to shange some ugly fonts i got after rebooting my machine ( i had anti aliasing fonts on) i got this at konqueror :

error - KDE Control center Module
there was an error loading module `n plugin .desktop`
the diagnostics is : empty page

I have a similar problem with KDE 3.0 When I turnanti aliaised fonts on or off in the control centre, KDE seems to crash. This causes window decorations to dissapear (Title bars etc) also on the taskbar if you close a window the applications name stays. To solve this I just restart X windows. Note KDE does keep your font setting change.

To restart X, close all open programs, press CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE then restart X with startx or init 4.

As for your memory hog here is what KDE looks like on my system.
9:38pm up 1 day, 21:26, 0 users, load average: 1.23, 1.23, 1.18
75 processes: 70 sleeping, 5 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 2.3% user, 1.7% system, 95.8% nice, 0.0% idle
Mem: 513768K av, 470248K used, 43520K free, 0K shrd, 53132K buff
Swap: 128516K av, 448K used, 128068K free 274796K cached

All the nice is distributed net client running in the background.

This is KDE with konq, Kmail, Knode, Control Centre and a Konsole open. Using Liquid Theme. System specs are
Athlon 1.2GHz C
512MB 133MHz SDRAM
ASUS A7V 133 Motherboard
Voodoo 3 16MB
IBM Deskstar 20Gig Drive
3Com 3C905B vortex boomerang 10/100 LAN

Running Slack 8.0 with some 8.1 upgrades and KDE 3.0

i just reinstalled again everything and it worked fine . BTW if you would tell me about your athlon and which motherboard you have i would apreciate , mine is a athlon K7 slot A ( i heard they don`t make them anymore) on a asus K7M and i think it`s somehow fscked up cause it gets really hot ( i was told i was going to have problems with it ) like becoming unstable and stuff so i`m planning to change them ( they are keeping processor and motherb so i can buy new ones for less money ) .

It's a Athlon 1.2GHz Socket A. The Motherboard is a ASUS A7V133
This is an old Athlon now the two newest models are the Athlon XP and Athlon MP. The MP is a multiproccessor version (put 2 CPU's in one machine ). I would recommend you get a Athlon XP. Note the XP has nothing to do with windows XP it's just a marketing gimmic name.

The newer CPU's run cooler and faster. They are cheaper than a Pentium 4. If you do get a Athlon I recommend getting a good heatsink I have a old ThermoSonic Thermoengine cooler on mine. It can overheat in the summer 35 + celcius causes overheating on my CPU. The newer Athlon XPs are much better.

A Pentium 4 is good for Linux if you can afford it $$$$. We have a P4 1.7Ghz machine here and it can compile really fast. However if you dual-boot and play games it is not really worth the extra money. You are better off spending more on a Geforce 3 or 4 Card for Games.

thank you for your time man really apreciate , i`ll have to check price$ first