Re: Speeding up slow XP PCs - suggested remedies when you've tried the obvious

Dave wrote:
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 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!).

Just a guess...

How many fonts are installed?

Dave

Is that still a problem - I know it was with Win98 etc (and I still use a minimum of fonts, with extras in a separate folder to install if ever required).

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