Performance/upgrading 'retail' HP system

[ohaya]

Hi,

My son has an HP Pavilion 512n. According to what I've found, the specs
are:

- CPU: Celeron 1.4GHz
- Memory: 128MB (PC133 running at PC100)
- Drive: 60GB
- Onboard: LAN/Sound
- OS: Windows XP

From HP's website, the motherboard in this system is a "Trigem Lomita",
and it's suppose to be a microATX.


The system has been getting progressively slower , and so I'm trying
to help him improve it. I've done all the usual things so far,
including defragging the disk drive.

On a test basis, we also added an additional 128MB (total 256MB)
memory. The system did speed up 'a bit', but, to me, it still seems
very sluggish.

Regarding speed, I'm wondering, is the Celeron 1.4GHz really that slow?

I have an older PIII-450 system (Intel 440BX mobo) with a 5400RPM 15G
drive, 128MB RAM, and Win2K Server that seems to run rings around this
HP 512n.

Also, running a network speed test, I'm getting half the bandwidth that
I get with my other machines, so I'm wondering if the particular
on-board NIC on this mobo (Realtek) is just plain slow.

Does anyone know what speed the 'standard' hard drive on this system
is? I'm thinking that it might be a 4200RPM drive (were those even
available for desktops?).

I'm thinking that the next thing we might try is to put in a small
(30-40G) 7200 RPM and set that up as his C: drive, but I've read that
this machine has a weak 150W power supply, so the next thing I'm
thinking of is getting a cheap case/power supply to replace the HP
case/power supply at the same time.

I'd be interested in getting responses to the above questions/comments,
especially from anyone who's had experienced with this particular model
HP (I've posted in comp.sys.hp.hardware, but no responses yet).

Thanks in advance,
Jim

 

[Groove]

ohaya said this...

The system has been getting progressively slower , and so I'm trying
to help him improve it. I've done all the usual things so far,
including defragging the disk drive.

My experience with teenager's slow computers is that most of the time this
problems is caused by the multitude of spyware and browser hijacker rubbish
that is running in the background.
What cleaning/investigation have you actually done so far?

 

[ohaya]

ohaya said this...


My experience with teenager's slow computers is that most of the time this
problems is caused by the multitude of spyware and browser hijacker rubbish
that is running in the background.
What cleaning/investigation have you actually done so far?

Groove,

He has Mcafee Antivirus, and it's fully updated. I did a Windows Update
to bring his XP and IE, etc. to date. I also installed Ad-aware,
updated it, and ran that.

Then I did 'disk cleanup', emptied his "Temporary Internet Files",
deleted cookies, eliminated several objects in IE (View Objects), and
uninstalled several things (Add/remove programs). Finally, I defragged
the hard drive.

I've also checked the "Run" entries in regedit, and processes under Task
Manager, and there's not anything unusual there that I noted.

 

[Gary Tait]

Hi,

My son has an HP Pavilion 512n. According to what I've found, the specs
are:

- CPU: Celeron 1.4GHz
- Memory: 128MB (PC133 running at PC100)
- Drive: 60GB
- Onboard: LAN/Sound
- OS: Windows XP

From HP's website, the motherboard in this system is a "Trigem Lomita",
and it's suppose to be a microATX.


The system has been getting progressively slower , and so I'm trying
to help him improve it. I've done all the usual things so far,
including defragging the disk drive.

On a test basis, we also added an additional 128MB (total 256MB)
memory. The system did speed up 'a bit', but, to me, it still seems
very sluggish.

Regarding speed, I'm wondering, is the Celeron 1.4GHz really that slow?

It could deter things.

I have an older PIII-450 system (Intel 440BX mobo) with a 5400RPM 15G
drive, 128MB RAM, and Win2K Server that seems to run rings around this
HP 512n.

Maybe try turning off indexing and the themes, or at least go to
windows classic theme.

Also, running a network speed test, I'm getting half the bandwidth that
I get with my other machines, so I'm wondering if the particular
on-board NIC on this mobo (Realtek) is just plain slow.

It could be that your core system speed might have something to do
with that.

Does anyone know what speed the 'standard' hard drive on this system
is? I'm thinking that it might be a 4200RPM drive (were those even
available for desktops?).

I'm thinking that the next thing we might try is to put in a small
(30-40G) 7200 RPM and set that up as his C: drive, but I've read that
this machine has a weak 150W power supply, so the next thing I'm
thinking of is getting a cheap case/power supply to replace the HP
case/power supply at the same time.

Could help too.

 

[Wooducoodu]

if mcafee is set to constantly scan in the background i'd bet that's your
problem right there.

get rid of mcafee and try avg.

www.grisoft.com

 

[Dave C.]

Hi,

My son has an HP Pavilion 512n. According to what I've found, the specs
are:

- CPU: Celeron 1.4GHz
- Memory: 128MB (PC133 running at PC100)
- Drive: 60GB
- Onboard: LAN/Sound
- OS: Windows XP

From HP's website, the motherboard in this system is a "Trigem Lomita",
and it's suppose to be a microATX.


The system has been getting progressively slower , and so I'm trying
to help him improve it. I've done all the usual things so far,
including defragging the disk drive.

On a test basis, we also added an additional 128MB (total 256MB)
memory. The system did speed up 'a bit', but, to me, it still seems
very sluggish.

Regarding speed, I'm wondering, is the Celeron 1.4GHz really that slow?

I have an older PIII-450 system (Intel 440BX mobo) with a 5400RPM 15G
drive, 128MB RAM, and Win2K Server that seems to run rings around this
HP 512n.

Yup, that's about right; a P3/450 will run rings around a Celeron rated
three times as fast. There are two things slowing this system down. First
is CPU, second is RAM. I wouldn't recommend upgrading either as the rest of
the system isn't worth throwing money at. No matter how slow your hard
drive is, that is NOT the bottleneck in this particular system. In fact,
that's probably the only decent component, so don't waste money replacing
the hard drive.

If you want better performance, get a bare bone system with case/power
supply/mainboard/cpu/RAM, and start with minimum 512MB RAM at minimum DDR333
speed. You can use the hard drive, video card (hopefully NOT build in),
monitor and any optical drives from the HP. That's about all I'd try to
salvage from that unit. Oh, you might need a new copy of windows XP for the
new computer. The following system (note no OS in there though) will be
extremely fast compared to that celeron system (barebone from
www.mwave.com) -Dave

SKU Qty Item Unit Price Ext. Price
YB03-BA19688-BA19812-BA03069-BA13301-BA08582-BA08582-- AMD ATHLON XP
SYSTEMS (BLACK)
Details (ENERMAX 30881-B3A; EPOX 8RDA3I-MB; AMD XP 2600+(333Mhz); MWAVE
512MB DDR400(256MB X 2); NO FDD; NO CDROM, CDRW OR DVD) $301.00 $301.00
Sub Total $301.00

 

[Groove]

ohaya said this...

He has Mcafee Antivirus, and it's fully updated. I did a Windows Update
to bring his XP and IE, etc. to date. I also installed Ad-aware,
updated it, and ran that... <snipped>

That looks fairly comprehensive. What I would add to that is to install and
run Spybot S&D from Patric Kolla. This complements Ad-aware but sometimes
finds some stuff AA misses.
http://www.safer-networking.org
I manually check & clear windows/temp also manually check windows/downloaded
program files. Look at the properties for each object in there to make sure
you do not have any unwanted BHO objects.
I recommend you get Autostart Explorer here:
http://www.misec.net/products/
This shows a comprehensive list of all that can be started on the pc. You'd
be amazed how many places programs can be autostarted at boot.
Then as other posters have suggested, I would look at XP. Set it to classic
and turn off as many unnecessary services and styles as possible. We could
maybe help you deal with that when you are certain the pc is 'clean'

 

[ohaya]

Yup, that's about right; a P3/450 will run rings around a Celeron rated
three times as fast. There are two things slowing this system down. First
is CPU, second is RAM. I wouldn't recommend upgrading either as the rest of
the system isn't worth throwing money at. No matter how slow your hard
drive is, that is NOT the bottleneck in this particular system. In fact,
that's probably the only decent component, so don't waste money replacing
the hard drive.

Dave,

I don't mean to be argumentative, but that (speed of PIII-450 vs.
Celeron 1.4) doesn't seem to be indicated by:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-30.html

While the PIII-450 and Celeron 1.4 aren't exactly on it, that chart
shows:

PIII 500: 184 seconds
Celeron 1.3: 110 seconds
Celeron 1.2: 115 seconds

This seems to imply that the Celeron 1.4 should be almost twice as fast
as the PIII 450?

The "synthetic" chart at:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-27.html

seems to show similar results:

PIII 500: 1407
Celeron 1.2: 3056

Jim

 

[DaveW]

Yes, the Celeron really is a slow processor. The fact is that all of the
components that you've mentioned in the computer are of roughly the same
matched "speed range". You can change one or two components , but you won't
really see a noticeable increase in system speed. If you truly want to
speed things up, you're basically looking at getting a new system.

 

[Dave C.]

Dave,

I don't mean to be argumentative, but that (speed of PIII-450 vs.
Celeron 1.4) doesn't seem to be indicated by:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-30.html

While the PIII-450 and Celeron 1.4 aren't exactly on it, that chart
shows:

PIII 500: 184 seconds
Celeron 1.3: 110 seconds
Celeron 1.2: 115 seconds

Yup, that's the problem with artificial benchmarks. All they show is
numbers, not how the hardware performs in actual use. I've used Celerons
(not by choice). Even the Durons blow them right out of the water. Among
my various computers, I've got one system with a Celeron 1.2* and one system
with a PIII600. They are very similar, other than processor. Theoretically
at least, the Celeron system should be faster as it's clocked twice as fast.
Wanna guess which one leaves me waiting forever just to see XP start?
If the Celeron 1.4 is significantly faster than the 1.2, it must still be
painfully slow. -Dave

* Note that I didn't buy it, it was provided for me, and I never use it.

 

[Spajky]

Yes, the Celeron really is a slow processor.

Tualatins are NOT slow !!! (my machine is fast!)
.... there is another problem involved (DMA, disabled L2 Cpu cache in
the bios; spyware, worms viruses ; its time to check!

 

[Thunderchief]

I have an old eMachines 160 of similar spec, and after a few tweaks
have managed to get it running quite fast (certainly equal to my
Duron 600) and quite adequately for office work.

It started as:

Celeron 1.3
128 MB PC 133
40 GB Segate HDD
Onboard, i810 Video, ? LAN, AC 97 Sound
Unbranded DVD 8x Drive

The onboard LAN appears to be crap, transfer rates are terrible and it
seems to eat up system performance. I also have beefs about any
integrated components in a PC with this little RAM and a relatively
slow CPU. So I added a Linksys 10/100 NIC, an old TNT 2 Ultra, and a
Creative 128 PCI sound card. I also took out the RAM and replaced it
with a stick of 256MB CL2 PC133. The whole lot seems to run OK with
the original PSU in place and the extra parts cost about £40 (from
eBay mainly). I also ran XPlite over the install to take out some of
the crap themes, services and stuff and it is ticking over fine (and
boots very quickly).

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware troubleshooting newsgroups.

 

[Thunderchief]

I have an old eMachines 160 of similar spec, and after a few tweaks
have managed to get it running quite fast (certainly equal to my
Duron 600) and quite adequately for office work.

It started as:

Celeron 1.3
128 MB PC 133
40 GB Segate HDD
Onboard, i810 Video, ? LAN, AC 97 Sound
Unbranded DVD 8x Drive

The onboard LAN appears to be crap, transfer rates are terrible and it
seems to eat up system performance. I also have beefs about any
integrated components in a PC with this little RAM and a relatively
slow CPU. So I added a Linksys 10/100 NIC, an old TNT 2 Ultra, and a
Creative 128 PCI sound card. I also took out the RAM and replaced it
with a stick of 256MB CL2 PC133. The whole lot seems to run OK with
the original PSU in place and the extra parts cost about £40 (from
eBay mainly). I also ran XPlite over the install to take out some of
the crap themes, services and stuff and it is ticking over fine (and
boots very quickly). I would also reccomend Sophos anti virus, as it
cloggs everything up far less than McAfee or Norton.

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware troubleshooting newsgroups.