Help! Windows Slow and Choppy after sp2 Install

[Guest]

Recently installed SP2 on xp home edition. After installation and the updates
it is still slow and choppy, cpu usage is almost always full. Any
suggestions? Thanx

 

[S.Sengupta]

Please go through:-
'What to Know Before You Download and Install Windows XP Service Pack 2'
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/sp2_whattoknow.mspx

regards,
ssg MS-MVP

 

[Guest]

My friend updated before taking precautions and his machine was very slow.
Removing SP2 did not seem to solve the problem. I ended up having to do a
clean install because of the decrease in speed and other reasons.

 

[R. McCarty]

Service Pack installs cause heavy drive fragmentation. Because of
this and purging of Prefetch/Layout.Ini data the system performance
will be degraded. However, an immediate Defrag will help and after
the Prefetch (.PF) data is re-built and the ProcessIdleTasks runs,
the performance will be back to the pre-Service Pack levels.

Unfortunately, Microsoft does not present any notice that Service
Pack installs create this situation, so many think (incorrectly) that the
Service Pack install "Permanently" slowed down their PC. Usually,
it takes several days of use and a few reboots for the Layout data
to be created and for Defrag to re-arrange files.