Slow PC, XP Home

[Bill Watt]

My friend has a 5 year old Dell PC that came with XP Home. It has
become painfully slow.

The Desktop comes up ok but then it takes a long time to bring up
programs like IE Explorer. He's on DSL and I tried it without DSL
connected and it made no difference. It's just generally slow no
matter what you do, on the net or not.

He has an 80 GB drive and 256 MB memory. I don't know the processor
speed yet. The swap file is managed by the system. The drive has
about 50 GB free.

The Startup Group is loaded with *.dll's. Both in Msconfig and
MSinfo32.

I searched the drive for *.tmp files and deleted them except for the
Windows\Temp folder which has 313 tmp files and 10 sub folders.

I'm planning to delete everything in the Windows\Temp folder hoping
that may speed it up. He has a Reg Cleaner he uses periodically,
don't know the name of it yet. He bought it.

Would appreciate any ideas.

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/

 

[R. McCarty]

Defrag the system volume. 256 Megabytes of RAM is marginal but
usable for basic things ( Email, Browsing ). You should review all of
the Startups & Watchdogs since the machine has no spare RAM to
allocate to all those items.

SysInternals AutoRuns is a good tool for doing this.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

 

[Jim]

My friend has a 5 year old Dell PC that came with XP Home. It has
become painfully slow.

The Desktop comes up ok but then it takes a long time to bring up
programs like IE Explorer. He's on DSL and I tried it without DSL
connected and it made no difference. It's just generally slow no
matter what you do, on the net or not.

He has an 80 GB drive and 256 MB memory. I don't know the processor
speed yet. The swap file is managed by the system. The drive has
about 50 GB free.

The Startup Group is loaded with *.dll's. Both in Msconfig and
MSinfo32.

I searched the drive for *.tmp files and deleted them except for the
Windows\Temp folder which has 313 tmp files and 10 sub folders.

I'm planning to delete everything in the Windows\Temp folder hoping
that may speed it up. He has a Reg Cleaner he uses periodically,
don't know the name of it yet. He bought it.

Would appreciate any ideas.

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/

When did he last cleanup and defrag ?

 

[Daave]

My friend has a 5 year old Dell PC that came with XP Home. It has
become painfully slow.

The Desktop comes up ok but then it takes a long time to bring up
programs like IE Explorer. He's on DSL and I tried it without DSL
connected and it made no difference. It's just generally slow no
matter what you do, on the net or not.

He has an 80 GB drive and 256 MB memory. I don't know the processor
speed yet. The swap file is managed by the system. The drive has
about 50 GB free.

The Startup Group is loaded with *.dll's. Both in Msconfig and
MSinfo32.

It's most likely malware and/or too many resource-hungry programs or
processes running (he has only 256MB of memory!). Why don't you
configure a clean boot to see what happens:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353

 

[Bill Watt]

Thanks for the replies, I hope to get over to his house tomorrow and
I'll post back.

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/
____________________________________________________

 

[Bill Watt]

When did he last cleanup and defrag ?

He defrags about every 10 days. Haven't run Disk Cleanup yet.

The disk runs all the time. I'll check memory when I get back over
there, it's like he has none at all.

We may add more memory as soon as I find out what kind to get. May
call Dell.

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/

 

[Bill Watt]

It's most likely malware and/or too many resource-hungry programs or
processes running (he has only 256MB of memory!). Why don't you
configure a clean boot to see what happens:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353

Thanks,

The URL is helpful, I did run a clean boot but I also disabled some
MS Services and It would not go on the Web. I'll do it again, it
made no difference. The disk runs all the time even when no programs
are running.. I'll check the CPU usage. We plan to install more
memory as soon as we find out what kind to get. I'll also check the
memory.

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/

 

[Daave]

Thanks,

The URL is helpful, I did run a clean boot but I also disabled some
MS Services and It would not go on the Web. I'll do it again, it
made no difference. The disk runs all the time even when no programs
are running.. I'll check the CPU usage. We plan to install more
memory as soon as we find out what kind to get. I'll also check the
memory.

Next I would try Safe Mode. If you still experience sluggishness, I
would suspect malware. Before adding memory (which is not a bad idea), I
would address the immediate problem. Again, I'm thinking malware. Boot
off a rescue disk like Bart PE, UBCD4Win, or Knoppix (any
sluggishness?). I think this page is a great resource with regard to
combatting malware:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Viruses_Malware

 

[Bill Watt]

SNIP

Next I would try Safe Mode. If you still experience sluggishness, I
would suspect malware. Before adding memory (which is not a bad idea), I
would address the immediate problem. Again, I'm thinking malware. Boot
off a rescue disk like Bart PE, UBCD4Win, or Knoppix (any
sluggishness?). I think this page is a great resource with regard to
combatting malware:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Viruses_Malware

More info.

it ran ok after a clean boot. Deleted the contents of Windows\Temp.

He has Outlook Express frequently checking and loading mail, then
AVG checks the Mail as it comes in. He's going to change the
frequency of that and see what happens. We will then go over the
start up group again and get rid of things like Google Tool Bar.
Then we'll check ADD\REMOVE and uninstall stuff he doesn't actually
need.

Thanks for all the replies and good information.

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/

 

[Daave]

SNIP



More info.

it ran ok after a clean boot. Deleted the contents of Windows\Temp.

He has Outlook Express frequently checking and loading mail, then
AVG checks the Mail as it comes in. He's going to change the
frequency of that and see what happens. We will then go over the
start up group again and get rid of things like Google Tool Bar.
Then we'll check ADD\REMOVE and uninstall stuff he doesn't actually
need.

Thanks for all the replies and good information.

You're welcome, Bill. It sounds like you're on the right track.

This is the method I use to determine whether or not one needs more RAM:

Open Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then
note the three values under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand
corner: Total, Limit, and Peak.

The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value of
Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM.

Another way to determine if you have enough RAM is to run Page File
Monitor for Windows XP:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

 

[Bill Watt]

SNIP

You're welcome, Bill. It sounds like you're on the right track.

This is the method I use to determine whether or not one needs more RAM:

Open Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then
note the three values under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand
corner: Total, Limit, and Peak.

The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value of
Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM.

Another way to determine if you have enough RAM is to run Page File
Monitor for Windows XP:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

Thanks, I'll look at that again. I did run MEM and MEM/Debug from
Dos and it reports all the memory. Need to try Safe Mode next.

Regards,

Bill Watt
Win98 Computer Help & Other Information http://home.ptd.net/~bwatt/