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


"Mortimer" <me@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:13qiv2nfl29p6c5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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!).


I had general slowness and an annoying problem where the whole
system would freeze
when scrolling, mostly in IE6 or OE, or even if I put the cursor on the
video display screen in
realplayer, the only choice was to press the reset button. After trying
various re-installs etc I finally ran
System File Checker. (Insert XP install cd and exit the autostart welcome
screen....click Start>Run...
type sfc /scannow at the prompt.){note space between sfc and / }
It checks all system files against the cd and replaces any damaged or
changed files. Mine took 3 hours to complete, but seems to have done the
biz.
Secondly, running msconfig from the prompt I found several programs in
startup that I did'nt really
need to run at start ( In my case, bluetooth, TV tuning device with its
various ancillary programs, Adobe updater and several of that ilk ) The
icons are still there and these will all start when you need the main
application.
I also moved many unwanted fonts from Windows fonts to a spare folder, as
Windows has to load all these at startup, just be sure not to move any that
are used in the system or by the regular user.
A lot of useful info and how-to can be found here:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/index.htm





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