Help me speed up an ancient machine!
osaddict
London, UK
Right, I have an old PC - windows xp OS but around 8 years old! (no really lol)
It's an ok spec imo - 640mb ram 700mhz P3 processor.
Basically its the XP machine I use very very occasionally if I cant do something on Vista, and its the machine my parents use - literally just for Firefox.
Steps Taken so far:
Defragged
Ran disk cleanup
Looked at msconfig and unticked any non important start up items
Looked at the services which are automatic and made some manual where possible
Ran spybot and ad-aware
Startup is pretty ok now - but once youve logged on the lag kicks in - literally pressing start will not yield any kind of response for literally 10mins or so.
When its actually 'running' properly it works fairly ok.
Any ideas on how I could improve it?
(A fresh reinstall is not an option - I've got quite a lot of little apps on there that are useful from time to time etc)
It's an ok spec imo - 640mb ram 700mhz P3 processor.
Basically its the XP machine I use very very occasionally if I cant do something on Vista, and its the machine my parents use - literally just for Firefox.
Steps Taken so far:
Defragged
Ran disk cleanup
Looked at msconfig and unticked any non important start up items
Looked at the services which are automatic and made some manual where possible
Ran spybot and ad-aware
Startup is pretty ok now - but once youve logged on the lag kicks in - literally pressing start will not yield any kind of response for literally 10mins or so.
When its actually 'running' properly it works fairly ok.
Any ideas on how I could improve it?
(A fresh reinstall is not an option - I've got quite a lot of little apps on there that are useful from time to time etc)
0
Comments
When you log on, is the hard drive doing a lot of work? Do you hear it constantly cycling, or is the activity light solid? How much free space do you have on your hard drive? What does the performance monitor tell you when you log on? When was the last time the computer was given a wipe and a fresh install of the OS?
Despite what you said, wiping the OS would probably yield much improved performance, but if you can't back up your system, then I obviously understand.