New Dell running xp 5.1 with sp2 very slow.

[Guest]

Thanks to all for this wonderful newsgroup. I have taken many good
suggestions from here since my recent discovery of the site. I have a new
Dell laptop running xp 5.1 Home Edition, 512 MB physical memory. I also have
a destop, a VAIO with the same OS, same version, same physical memory,
different processor. The desktop has a slower modem, the laptop has a 56K
modem. My dialup speed is slow, 28.8 kps on the desktop and 38.8 on the
laptop. With that taken into consideration, the Vaio is about 2x faster than
the Dell on the Net. I read all the posts under "slow" anything, and I see
quite a few people complaining about XP with service pack 2, but the Vaio is
doing fine on those. I ran the spyware detector recommended in another post
here and it found nothing. I regularely do "disk cleanup". I don't keep a lot
of history, 1 day. I don't use Outlook Express, so no deleted files there. I
have Norton Anti-Virus and my provider is PeoplePC. They provide acceleration
software (same on both computers). I don't expect miracles out of a slow
dialup connection, but I would like this Dell to work as fast as the VAIO, at
least. Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[Wesley Vogel]

provider is PeoplePC. They provide acceleration software (same on both

computers).

Acceleration software to accelerate what?

Slow Computer
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm

Restore Your Computer's Performance
http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/expertzone/columns/northrup/restoreperf.asp

STARTUP PROGRAM LOADING Where do things load from? How do you stop them?
http://www.aumha.org/a/loads.htm

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

 

[Guest]

Hi Cardinal
I think you should discount service pack 2 as the route cause. Laptops are
generally better at connecting to services such as the Internet due to higher
quality component. When you say the Desktop is faster than the laptop on the
net do you mean general browsing ie checking your email or when downloading
files. Also do you regularily clean the Temp files from both machines as
having these still on a har disk will massively improve access to websites.
Just check that the port speed for each device are set as high as possible to
allow as much data through.
Let me know how you get on.

 

[Guest]

Hi, and thank you for your suggestions. I tried them all and the two that
helped the most were: Disable the accelerator (you didn't say that, but asked
what it was accelerating which got me thinking about it. And: I did a defrag.
I hadn't thought of that because the computer is only about 8 weeks old. I
guess that is plenty of time to fragment your files.
The answer to your question below is, according to the provider help files:
A. Compresses text and graphics to reduce size of web pages; B. Caches and
reuses web pages that you have used and; C. Persistant connection.
I couldn't see anything wrong with that but tried turning it off, and it
works a little better without it. Thanks again!

 

[Guest]

Thank you for your suggestions. I never thought it was the software, xp or
sp2, that was causing the problem because the desktop is doing well on those.
But, I was interested that you said to set the port speed as high as
possible. My ISP told me to use a lower speed when I complained that their
page was not opening. They have a little program called a "smart dialer" that
chooses one of your access numbers and dials it. This wasn't loading the main
web page when it finished dialing. I changed the values in Yahoo Messenger so
that it won't come up automatically and compete with the loading of that
page. It seems to be working allright now. I took your suggestion and changed
the port speed back to 115200. Thanks.

 

[Wesley Vogel]

I am leary of any software that an ISP provides.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In