Windows XP xp on old pc = headache

[mesteve]

hi
1st the tech stuff its a 550 mhz cpu (please stop laughing)
20 mb ram of which a third is free.
i use avg a/v & spyware
CCleaner regularly
have just defragged and cleaned up registry . deleted temp files.

problem is when i have IE open it can stop responding , i get
error reporting / apphang.

when this happens i have to open taskmanager to start closing
programs.
whilst its doing this the sytem idle can be as high as 80 % which seems
ridiculous to me - but then i dont know much which is why i am
here asking for help /advice.

NB cant afford a laptop just yet so must persevere.

Thanks

Steve

 

[Madxgraphics]

hi
1st the tech stuff its a 550 mhz cpu (please stop laughing)
20 mb ram of which a third is free.
i use avg a/v & spyware
CCleaner regularly
have just defragged and cleaned up registry . deleted temp files.

problem is when i have IE open it can stop responding , i get
error reporting / apphang.

when this happens i have to open taskmanager to start closing
programs.
whilst its doing this the sytem idle can be as high as 80 % which seems
ridiculous to me - but then i dont know much which is why i am
here asking for help /advice.

NB cant afford a laptop just yet so must persevere.

Thanks

Steve

Hi and welcomme to the forum....

These are the minimumspecs to run XP

• Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
• At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)
• At least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available space on the hard disk
• CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
• Keyboard and a Microsoft Mouse or some other compatible pointing device
• Video adapter and monitor with Super VGA (800 x 600)or higher resolution
• Sound card
• Speakers or headphones....

You are nearly there, i'd say a memory upgrade, but it would probabvly be better for you to find an O/S more supported to your spec. Why not try something like one of the Linux distros? Their minimum requirement are a lot less.

I'm supprised you are even able to run your machine with XP and AVG together...GEt rid of AVG and go for something like AVIRA, it use a lot less than AVG and is far better...

 

[mesteve]

avira ?

hi havent heard of that but will do search.

just realised its a 20 gb ram - oops !

thanks

 

[Madxgraphics]

just realised its a 20 gb ram -s

Te 20 gig you are seeing will be your HDD size, not RAM...Can you post the system spec...? If you can get on Internet download SIW and that will give you all you need to know...

 

[floppybootstomp]

With those specs it's struggling, to be quite honest.

If it was working well at one stage and you've de-fragged and run all av/malware checks all I can suggest is that you wipe the hard disk and do a fresh install.

Posting your full specs may help.

Motherboard
CPU & speed
Memory
Hard disk(s)
Graphics card

 

[Abarbarian]

Don't know what you use your pc for but this Kanotix linux os would run very nicely on your pc. As it is a live distro you could try it out without installing it to see if it would suit. Here is a link to a so so walkthrough about it.

https://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-3464463-4.php

 

[mesteve]

hi system info from siw

Property Value
Machine Type AT/AT COMPATIBLE
DMI System UUID 53797374-656D204D-616E7566-61637475

Disk Space Disk C: 6391 MB Available, 19530 MB Total, 6391 MB Free
Disk F: 0 MB Available, 19 MB Total, 0 MB Free
Disk H: 1600 MB Available, 1906 MB Total, 1600 MB Free

Physical Memory 320 MB Total, 63 MB Free
Memory Load 80%

Virtual Memory 777 MB Total, 262 MB Free

PageFile Name \??\C:\pagefile.sys
PageFile Size 480 MB
In use 285 MB
Max used 378 MB
Registry Size 5 MB (current), 56 MB (maximum)

Profile GUID {ea64b4c0-3eb6-11db-953f-806d6172696f}

The system clock interval 10 ms

motherboard

Property Value
Manufacturer ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Model P2B
Version REV 1.xx

North Bridge Intel i440BX/ZX Revision C1
South Bridge Intel 82371EB/MB (PIIX4E/M) Revision C1

CPU Intel Pentium III E
Cpu Socket Slot 1 SECC2

Warning! Accuracy of DMI data cannot be guaranteed

cpu

Property Value
Number of CPU(s) One Physical Processor / One Core / One Logical Processor / 32 bits
CPU Name Intel Pentium III E
CPU Code Name Coppermine
Platform Name Slot 1 SECC2
Revision cA2
Technology 0.18 µm
Instructions MMX, SSE
Original Clock 550 MHz
Original System Clock 100 MHz
Original Multiplier 5.5
CPU Clock 551 MHz
System Clock 100.2 MHz
Core 0 Speed 551.2 MHz
Core 0 Multiplier 5.5
L1 Data Cache 16 KBytes
L1 Instructions Cache 16 KBytes
L2 Cache 256 KBytes


Hope this helps

i am interested in changing the O/S to resolve this problem

 

[Madxgraphics]

Hope this helps

i am interested in changing the O/S to resolve this problem

Looking at those specs I would go for Abars suggestion here...I have never been one for Linux or the like, suppose I never liked change, but I have given a few of the different distro's a go and I know use Mint aswell as using W7 everyday....Try and see, you have nothing to loose...

 

[muckshifter]

Your motherboard was originally designed for Pentium II, although Intel's cheat on the PIII meant you could run it on the BX MB ...

You'll also find the "original" operating system would have been Windows 98 ... XP would have needed a BIOS update on a lot of older boards, not sure about your board, but even the newer socket 7 needed a BIOS update from a lot of MB manufacturers after the release of XP ... I know, I'm older than your 110 year old MB.

I see, once again, Linux being touted as an alternative OS, well and dandy, if you can find one that will work ... no, really, the newer Linux 'distros' also expect to see newer hardware. If you are already hairless, carry on.

Sad to say, bottom line is ... your system is almost extinct.

 

[Abarbarian]

Your motherboard was originally designed for Pentium II, although Intel's cheat on the PIII meant you could run it on the BX MB ...

You'll also find the "original" operating system would have been Windows 98 ... XP would have needed a BIOS update on a lot of older boards, not sure about your board, but even the newer socket 7 needed a BIOS update from a lot of MB manufacturers after the release of XP ... I know, I'm older than your 110 year old MB.

I see, once again, Linux being touted as an alternative OS, well and dandy, if you can find one that will work ... no, really, the newer Linux 'distros' also expect to see newer hardware. If you are already hairless, carry on.

Sad to say, bottom line is ... your system is almost extinct.

The above is not quite true.

Kanotix is designed to run on older systems and worked well for me on the three pc's I tried it on.

From the link below you can get a glimpse of what linux can do on older hardware. Of course there are a lot more distros that would be suitable and a lot more guides to read up on them. I belive there are other flavours of os as well but I am not familiar with them.

http://linux.com/news/hardware/desktops/8248-linux-distros-for-older-hardware

"For these tests, I dug out Igor, an old PC that had been collecting dust in my closet. Igor is a Pentium II 233MHz machine with 64MB of RAM, an 8x CD-ROM drive, a 3GB hard drive, and an integrated ATI 3D Rage Pro video card with 4MB of video RAM. You can run Linux on older and slower machines, but this is the most under-powered machine I had available.

Next, I selected a handful of lightweight Linux distributions that looked promising, and started downloading. The distributions ranged from popular "mainstream" distros such as Slackware and Debian to distros that are specifically developed for lightweight machines, such as Damn Small Linux (DSL). I apologize in advance if your favorite lightweight distro is not represented here."

 

[floppybootstomp]

Slackware is 'popular' and 'mainstream' ?

Slackware's the hardest one of the lot

(Unless you're really masochist and are going to write your own kernel)

But I will agree there are some versions of Linux that will work very well indeed with older systems.

The secret, of course, is knowing which ones and getting advice and information, which unless you have a reasonable amount of patience and determination, is where Linux usually falls down.

 

[Abarbarian]

http://distrowatch.com/

They just announced the latest 64 Bit Mint.

Yep finding out stuff in linux can be a fag but a lot of popular type of programs work out of the box generally these days. Why throw a working piece of kit away ?

 

[muckshifter]

I have had the "pleasure" of conducting my own evaluations of (attempting) to run Linux on an old system, including a couple mentioned in your link ... every one but SUSE failed, and it crapped out so many times it became unworkable.

Window ME worked, faultlessly.

You may find a few of my Linux ranting here, but I suggest you go over to Scots' place and see if you can dig up some more of my "dealings" with Linux.

If you know what you are doing, have a very good Linux working knowledge, carry on, I bid thee good luck.

 

[michael555]

hi havent heard of that but will do search.

just realised its a 20 gb ram - oops !

thanks

you would be better off getting more ram if u still can.

128gb ram is really need.

 

[michael555]

Property Value
Machine Type AT/AT COMPATIBLE
DMI System UUID 53797374-656D204D-616E7566-61637475

Disk Space Disk C: 6391 MB Available, 19530 MB Total, 6391 MB Free
Disk F: 0 MB Available, 19 MB Total, 0 MB Free
Disk H: 1600 MB Available, 1906 MB Total, 1600 MB Free

Physical Memory 320 MB Total, 63 MB Free
Memory Load 80%

Virtual Memory 777 MB Total, 262 MB Free

PageFile Name \??\C:\pagefile.sys
PageFile Size 480 MB
In use 285 MB
Max used 378 MB
Registry Size 5 MB (current), 56 MB (maximum)

Profile GUID {ea64b4c0-3eb6-11db-953f-806d6172696f}

The system clock interval 10 ms

motherboard

Property Value
Manufacturer ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Model P2B
Version REV 1.xx

North Bridge Intel i440BX/ZX Revision C1
South Bridge Intel 82371EB/MB (PIIX4E/M) Revision C1

CPU Intel Pentium III E
Cpu Socket Slot 1 SECC2

Warning! Accuracy of DMI data cannot be guaranteed

cpu

Property Value
Number of CPU(s) One Physical Processor / One Core / One Logical Processor / 32 bits
CPU Name Intel Pentium III E
CPU Code Name Coppermine
Platform Name Slot 1 SECC2
Revision cA2
Technology 0.18 µm
Instructions MMX, SSE
Original Clock 550 MHz
Original System Clock 100 MHz
Original Multiplier 5.5
CPU Clock 551 MHz
System Clock 100.2 MHz
Core 0 Speed 551.2 MHz
Core 0 Multiplier 5.5
L1 Data Cache 16 KBytes
L1 Instructions Cache 16 KBytes
L2 Cache 256 KBytes


Hope this helps

i am interested in changing the O/S to resolve this problem

goto start then setting then control panel.

click on system there it will say your ram.