Re: Speeding up slow XP PCs - suggested remedies when you've tried the obvious
- From: PeeGee <triessuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:51:07 +0000
Mortimer wrote:
When a Windows XP runs painfully slowly, there are lots of magazine articles which suggest the same old things to try: uninstall programs that aren't needed; scan for viruses and spyware using AdAware and/or Spybot; add more memory; defrag hard disk; remove any unnecessary programs from All Programs | Startup and the HKCU/KHLM | Run sections of the registry.
But can anyone suggest a good book or magazine article which goes one stage further and suggests other remedies for when the default ones don't fix the problem?
For example I'm trying to speed up a customer's PC at the moment.
The symptom is very long boot times (about 1 minute each on the Windows logo and the Welcome screens, and a total of 5 minutes before clicking an icon on the desktop will actually run a program. New programs (or even Control Panel) take a minute or so to begin after clicking on icons (with lots of disk thrashing) and repainting of the screen when a window is moved to reveal another one can take 30 seconds.
Task Manager says there's no excessive CPU usage (normally about 98% idle process) and the Available memory is around 100 MB ("low memory" disk thrashing usually happens when you get down to 10 MB or less). There are no unwanted programs in Add/Remove Programs. I can't see any unnecessary
I tend to work on the assumption they are *all* unnecessary :-)
Startup and HKCU/HKLM | Run entries. AdAware 2007 and Spybot 1.5 now give a clean bill of health (although they initially removed a lot of crap!). The disk now has 0% file and volume fragmentation (originally 36% fragmented!).
This system I'm using runs with 50MB free physical (it's only 224MB + 32MB graphics) and none of those problems, however, letting the disk space drop for temp and paging can have an effect out of proportion - especially if you allow hibernation when not required (power options/hibernate), which eats up disk space "just in case" :-(
Just a thought - it's not looking for a network printer is it? I have seen systems virtually halt when the default printer is a network device. Installing a "print to file" printer as default was an instant cure :-)
--
PeeGee
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