Re: Should XP SP2 run in 128 MB RAM?

Chris Whelan wrote in message
94h0f.8645$hP.5437@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

> Martin Underwood wrote:
>
>> Customer's PC - *very* slow (takes about 2 minutes from clicking on
>> user-selection icon to desktop appearing, then about 10 minutes to
>> start all the system tray icons such as McAfee). Even after that it
>> is exceptionally slow to run any apps.
>>
>> Control Panel | System says the PC has a 1.30 GHz Athlon and 112 MB
>> of RAM - presumably 128 MB with 16 MB shared with the graphics card.
>> The memory SIMM is indeed labelled 128 MB.
>>
> I was given some 900MHz Celeron machines. I upped the 64 MB of ram to
> 128, with 16MB shared for graphics. They run XP SP2 quite acceptably.
> I even ran Photoshop Elements on one of them with reasonable results.
>
> I have just booted one of them and timed it. It took 63secs from
> power on to Welcome screen, then 51secs until the last system tray
> icon appeared. This is with a "vanilla" XP install, plus AVG and
> Microsoft Antispyware.
>
> Have you checked for spyware/adware etc?

Yes. Adaware with definitions about 5 months out of date (couldn't get the
dial-up modem to work; can't be arsed to install a network card to get
updates; customer has ADSL modem) found about 400 nasties - rogue diallers
etc. And having got rid of the PC, it doesn't boot any faster :-( And, no,
the spyware isn't reappearing on the next boot - I've scanned again and
found nothing. I want to rescan when I can use the customer's ADSL
connection to update the definitions tomorrow.


Someone mentioned uninstalling drivers for hardware that's been removed. How
do you do this? Where is there a list of drivers and is there an easy way of
relating drivers to hardware, short of going through each device in Device
Manager and noting the drivers that it uses?

The customer reports that the PC ran OK when it was new but it's gradually
got slower over the four years he's had it.


.

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