XP Home Edition Runs Slower Than Windows 98 On New Upgrade

[Dave]

I have just upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows XP Home
Edition. The computer loads and runs programs 20% slower
than it did with Windows 98.

I have a Dell Pent III with 384Mb memory, I do run Norton
Anti Virus 2004.

I have upgraded my hard drive with this installation and
copied over the installation but then installed Windows
XP Home Edition again in the manual mode and reinstalled
all the program again.

Why is Windows XP Home Edition running and loading
programs so slowly?

Thanks
David

 

[Gary Karasik]

Could be because you upgraded from W98 instead of wiping the disk and
installing XP from scratch. Not that I blame you; it's very tempting to
upgrade instead of installing and configuring everything new.

You could try attaching a different HD and iinstalling XP fresh and clean to
see if it loads/run any faster. If it does, you have your answer--something
left over from the W98 install is slowing things down.

You can also try this: Download XP/SP2 RC1 (it's almost 250mbs!) and install
it and see if that improves things. If it does, uninstall RC1 and live with
the slowness until SP2 is released in June(?).

GaryK

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Could be because you upgraded from W98 instead of wiping the disk and
installing XP from scratch. Not that I blame you; it's very tempting to
upgrade instead of installing and configuring everything new.

It's more than just "tempting," it's almost always the best
course of action. Unlike with previous versions of Windows, an
upgrade to XP replaces almost everything, and usually works very
well.

You could try attaching a different HD and iinstalling XP fresh and clean to
see if it loads/run any faster. If it does, you have your answer--something
left over from the W98 install is slowing things down.

It's *possible*, but highly unlikely, that that's Dave's problem.

It's very difficult to diagnose the problem with so little
information provided. He says he has a Pentium III, but he
doesn't say how fast it is. If it's one of the older slower ones,
that may well be the answer.

Another likely culprit is what he has running in the background.
There are many bckground programs that can take a severe toll on
performance.

 

[Gary Karasik]

Well, I guess your mileage may vary. My experience with upgrading from W98
has been spotty at best.

GaryK

 

[Ron Martell]

I have just upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows XP Home
Edition. The computer loads and runs programs 20% slower
than it did with Windows 98.

I have a Dell Pent III with 384Mb memory, I do run Norton
Anti Virus 2004.

I have upgraded my hard drive with this installation and
copied over the installation but then installed Windows
XP Home Edition again in the manual mode and reinstalled
all the program again.

Why is Windows XP Home Edition running and loading
programs so slowly?

#1 suspect: Norton 2004. That causes so many problems for so many
people it should be classified as a virus.

#2 suspect: Only 384 mb of RAM. This may not be enough, especially
with Norton installed, and you could be encountering substantial
actual usage of the paging file to compensate for the RAM shortage.
Actual usage means the movement of active memory pages from RAM to the
page file so as to allow that RAM to be used for other, currently more
important, tasks.

Unfortunately Windows XP does not contain a reporting tool that
reports this actual usage in a meaningful way. MVP Bill James has
developed a utility that provides this information. I can be
downloaded from http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm or
from http://billsway.com/notes_public/WinXP_Tweaks/

If that reports actual page file usage as 50 mb or more on a regular
basis then this is indicative of significant actual paging activity,
and in that circumstance adding more RAM will reduce or perhaps
eliminate the paging activity thereby improving overall performance.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

[Alex Nichol]

It's *possible*, but highly unlikely, that that's Dave's problem.

One thing after an upgrade (and after major operations like installing a
service pack) is that the disk needs to be defragmented as soon as
maybe. Not that that is any reason for doing a clean install rather
than upgrade - it is unfortunate that what was fair advice to install
clean when going from Win95 to Win98 has become a shibboleth to some.

It's very difficult to diagnose the problem with so little
information provided. He says he has a Pentium III, but he
doesn't say how fast it is. If it's one of the older slower ones,
that may well be the answer.

One thing that will probably help is to turn off a lot of eye-candy
visual effects - at Control Panel - System - Advanced - Performance
Click Settings and uncheck the top ten items in the Custom panel
Some of these - especially shadows under menus and related animations -
soak a lot of CPU power

 

[Alex Nichol]

#2 suspect: Only 384 mb of RAM. This may not be enough, especially
with Norton installed, and you could be encountering substantial
actual usage of the paging file to compensate for the RAM shortage.

I really doubt it. I ran XP on a 384 machine until quite recently (when
I upgraded in advance of possible tests of Longhorn) and found my actual
page file use was rarely pushing the file above its initial 50 MB.
Other people's work patterns will vary of course, but I doubt if this
should be seen as a basic point. At my page
www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm in the 'How big a page file' there is a
link to Bill James's tool for reporting actual use of page file - only
if that shows as substantial would I advise adding RAM

 

[Gary Karasik]

Shibboleth? A literate poster. How nice.

Actually I speak from experience. When XP came out we did
many--hundreds--updates over W98se. Sometimes they worked; sometimes they
didn't. If there were a problem in the W98 configuration--and what W98
configurations don't have problems?--it can carryover. It doesn't have to be
a W98 problem: It can be a problem with the antivirus or some other software
that loads on startup; it can be a driver issue.

When upgrades didn't go well, the only practical choice will be to install
XP fresh; and because we never knew how an upgrade was going to turn out,
and because we were wasting a lot of time doing double installs, we created
a standard XP image, wiped the disk, and installed the image. We can track
these machines through or helpdesk software, and in every case the
fresh-install machines have worked better, performed better, had fewer
problems than the upgraded machines.

So it's not superstition when I say that a clean install works better. Now
perhaps my experience is uncommon. But I think if you look around you'll
find others.

GaryK