Performance Problem

[Jannoth]

My XP machine sometimes slows down to a crawl and I don't
know why.

It's a PIII with 128MB RAM and a 30BG HDD with a pagefile
set at double the ram size.

When it slows, Norton reports lots of free RAM and CPU
running at about 10% and about 65% of HDD free space. I
try deframenting but nothing works.

Sometimes, a reboot does the trick but I've lost a lot of
confidence in XP.

Does anyone have any ideas please?

 

[Richard.]

First the no cost solution. Disable all services you don't
need. This may help some. By default XP automatically
starts many services that most users don't need. Each
running service uses up some resources and it doesn't take
long before they add up. Particularly indexing and the
computer browser.

Go to http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm for a
comprehensive description of XP services. This site will
help you decide which services to turn off.

Second, run Defrag regularly (or Norton Speed Disk if you
have it).

Third, and much more costly, you should really upgrade you
RAM to at least 256MB and 512MB if you can.

You should see at least some performance improvement.