Slow running

[Guest]

Hi

I have had my computer for a couple of years. I scan it for viruses
regularly and it appears to be clear. It has an 80Gb hard drive of which
around 30Gb is still unused. I have run Disk Cleanup and got rid of
unnecessary files. Disk Defragmenter says there is no need to defragment. If
I open Task Manager, CPU Usage seems generally to stay below 20% or lower and
only hits the maximum momentarily when, for example, I open a new
application. And yet it seems to run (XP) slower and slower. It's begun to be
really inconvenient. How can I improve performance?

Thanks.

 

[Ed Metcalfe]

Hi

I have had my computer for a couple of years. I scan it for viruses
regularly and it appears to be clear. It has an 80Gb hard drive of which
around 30Gb is still unused. I have run Disk Cleanup and got rid of
unnecessary files. Disk Defragmenter says there is no need to defragment.
If
I open Task Manager, CPU Usage seems generally to stay below 20% or lower
and
only hits the maximum momentarily when, for example, I open a new
application. And yet it seems to run (XP) slower and slower. It's begun to
be
really inconvenient. How can I improve performance?

Thanks.

If you have no malware on your system and CPU usage is normal the next thing
I'd be looking for is RAM usage.

Have you noticed a lot of disk activity? Perhaps something is utilising
excessive RAM causing data to be moved to and from the swapfile? Check the
Performance tab in Task Manager to view your available physical RAM and also
the Mem Usage column in the Processes tab to see if this shows up any
potential problems.

Ed Metcalfe.

 

[Ed Metcalfe]

Hi

I have had my computer for a couple of years. I scan it for viruses
regularly and it appears to be clear. It has an 80Gb hard drive of which
around 30Gb is still unused. I have run Disk Cleanup and got rid of
unnecessary files. Disk Defragmenter says there is no need to defragment.
If
I open Task Manager, CPU Usage seems generally to stay below 20% or lower
and
only hits the maximum momentarily when, for example, I open a new
application. And yet it seems to run (XP) slower and slower. It's begun to
be
really inconvenient. How can I improve performance?

Thanks.

One other thing:

Check the number of applications you have running on startup. I'd recommend
Startup Inspector as an easy to use solution and AutoRuns as a more thorough
check.

Ed Metcalfe.

 

[Guest]

Ed is right check those things first, but MS has a new download called
Procexp.exe you can use with the Task Manager to identify system programs and
services from your background programs. As you know, Windows does not like
free disk under 20% and all but stops under 15%. I just plan for new HD if
you like your system.