Do updates previously applied to XP slow it down?

[Miriam Moore]

Hello,
I have a 2 GHz machine at home. Not super fast compared with modern
machines, I suppose, but fast enough, I would've thought. I had noticed that
it has been getting very slow over the past year. I had initially suspected
virus or registry problems,so I reformatted the hard disk, and completely
reinstalled everthing from scratch.

I've applied all the recent XP updates, reinstalled Ofice 2003, ZoneLabs
firewall, and Grisoft anti-virus. The PC is as slow as before, so I was
thinking, is it possible that updates applied to XP have the side-effect of
slowing down the entire XP installation?

Curious

 

[Guest]

You did not describe what is slower; Bootup, saving a file to hard drive,
typing, opening a program, opening email, or surfing the Internet. I have not
experienced an update slowing down the computer. I also have Grisoft
Anti-virus software and I found that it checks all of my incoming email for
viruses which slows down opening MS Outlook. Also Grisoft checks my documents
when I open My Documents. Have you checked what programs start up when you
boot your computer.
Click Start, then open Run, then type msconfig. Select the Startup tab to
see what runs at Startup/Bootup. Be very careful if you uncheck any program.
Make sure it is not necessary for proper operation. I turn off programs like
Real Player and others that I don't need to have running in the back round.
Another thing you can do is check how much memory is available and what your
CPU usage is after bootup. Open the Task Manager by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del at
the same time. The tabs on top let you select Applications, Processes,
Performance, and Networking. The Applications tab tells you what programs are
currently open and the Performance tab tells you several things. You can see
how much memory is being used and how much is available. Also the Processes
tab tells you how much memory each process uses, so you can see which one is
using up most of your memory.

My brother-in-law told me his computer was slow and what he really meant was
the bootup time had gotten slower due to several junk programs that his
grandson installed and ran in the back-round so they started up when he
started the computer.

I hope this information helps you trouble shoot your slow down problem.

 

[polomora]

Wizkid,

Many thanks for your extensive reply.

To clarify, I meant that startup is slower, but that isn't such a big
deal, since I usually hibernate the machine when not in use. But
especially computer use, starting up MS Word or Excel, and other
programs that I know aren't scanned for viruses when running.

So, to answer my question, you don't think that XP updates and patches
have a noticeable affect on perfromance?

Regards,
Paul