Slow XP Pro

[Guest]

Hello,

I have an Dell Inspiron P4 and WIN XP pro installed. the machine is
extremely slow right from start up (>5minutes) to any activity - printing,
opening programs etc. I am not sure where the problems is. Also I see
extensive HDD activity - for eg to open adobe acrobat reader by clicking on a
pdf file it takes about 4 minutes and when I tried to print the 7 page(A4)
pdf document, the HDD went into a frenzied state of activity and for 10
minutes no printout came out. I shut down the machine and when I started the
machine 4-5 hours later - along with a much slower start -10-12 minutes, the
printer began to print the print que from the earlier session.

My questions are: 1) How to know what kind of HDD I have and whether drivers
and configurations are ok for the drive. 2) what is causing this overall slow
response of my laptop, 3) Is norton antivirus the problem as some of the
experts seem to allude to - How to remove Norton antivirus completely-
including references in the registry to try out this theory?

your help is appreciated.

 

[Guest]

mooooore ram

 

[skOOb]

1) How to know what kind of HDD I have and whether drivers
and configurations are ok for the drive.
- Control Panel, System, Hardware, Device Manager. You can find your
Driver information there too, check to see when it was last updated.
Search for the driver download on dell's website or just google the HDD
model id information.
- Could be a slew of things. Possibly RAM but probably not if you are
waiting 10 minutes. I suggest to update the drivers to see if thats
it. If nothing works, call dell support and let them know of your
problem. They are usually good with fixing your problems...if youre
under warranty that is
experts seem to allude to - How to remove Norton antivirus completely-
including references in the registry to try out this theory?
- You can remove to see if it helps -> Control Panel, Add/Remove
Software

hth

 

[C.Joseph Drayton]

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Hi,

How much RAM do you have? They say that you can run WinXPpe with
128MB of RAM. You can, but it will be a dog. Even with 512MB, I
occasionally noticed slow performance when working with 4 or more
open windows. You need to keep in mind that the less RAM you have
the more the pagefile (virtual memory) is accessed. That would
explain your 'frenzied' hard disk access.

One of things that you should keep in mind when you are looking at
RAM usage is that all those services that are running take up lots
of memory. I normally have 60+ processes running as well as 15+
resident programs sitting in the system tray. They all eat up
memory. When I did the math on my machine, processes & resident
programs were using 384MB (I only had 512MB of RAM). So when I
started working with large graphic files or opening a number of
windows, I was using the pagefile a lot.

I would recommend downloading Bill James' 'WinXP Pagefile Usage
Monitor'. That program will give you a good idea as to how much your
pagefile is being used. The higher your pagefile usage the more you
need to increase RAM.

Ciao . . . C.Joseph

That which a man buys too cheaply . . .
He esteems too lightly

Hello,

I have an Dell Inspiron P4 and WIN XP pro installed. the machine is
extremely slow right from start up (>5minutes) to any activity - printing,
opening programs etc. I am not sure where the problems is. Also I see
extensive HDD activity - for eg to open adobe acrobat reader by clicking on a
pdf file it takes about 4 minutes and when I tried to print the 7 page(A4)
pdf document, the HDD went into a frenzied state of activity and for 10
minutes no printout came out. I shut down the machine and when I started the
machine 4-5 hours later - along with a much slower start -10-12 minutes, the
printer began to print the print que from the earlier session.

My questions are: 1) How to know what kind of HDD I have and whether drivers
and configurations are ok for the drive. 2) what is causing this overall slow
response of my laptop, 3) Is norton antivirus the problem as some of the
experts seem to allude to - How to remove Norton antivirus completely-
including references in the registry to try out this theory?

your help is appreciated.

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[Guest]

Thank you all for the advice. I have 128 MB RAM ;-)

C. joseph wrote to download Bill James' 'WinXP Pagefile Usage
Monitor'. It would be helpful if you can give the web address.

Thanks

 

[C.Joseph Drayton]

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Hi imoorthy,

I did not save the link. You could just do a search of this group (I
originally got the link from here), or you can do a Google search.

Unless you are going to add more RAM, you should probably go to
BlackViper's web site and see what processes you can safely stop
from loading as well as only have 1 or 2 windows open at a time.

Ciao . . . C.Joseph

That which a man buys too cheaply . . .
He esteems too lightly

Thank you all for the advice. I have 128 MB RAM ;-)

C. joseph wrote to download Bill James' 'WinXP Pagefile Usage
Monitor'. It would be helpful if you can give the web address.

Thanks

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x-- Access to over 1 Terabyte per Day - $8.95/Month
x-- UNLIMITED DOWNLOAD