XP just gets SLOWER AND SLOWER

S

SuperX

Hi all,
I remember when I first booted up my P4 2 ghz system 256 mb DDR, with XP
Home...wow, I thought, that's fast! Neat! Beats the pants off my old PII
266!

Well, that was a year ago.

Now, XP just seems to run slower and slower...apps that used to flash open
now take several seconds to load. Multi-tasking is a joke....the apps just
bump into each other, cutting each other off...nothing high-power, lets say,
MS Word with Media Player with IE...

Thought it was a RAM thing, so I added another 512 mb in there...no big
difference. Read about the slowdown issue from one of the updates,
downloaded and installed the fix for it--well, okay, that did help.

But not as much as it should! This machine still crawls--compared to what it
should be able to do! In fact, my old PII 266 win98 system now boots faster
and launches apps faster (it doesn't have the CPU power, but that's
something else). Hell, even my 8-year-old Pentium 133 laptop and its measly
32 mB of RAM boots faster!

So what's making this machine so damn slow? Is it the security updates?
Should I ditch them?

Is it ICS? Is it an inherent problem with XP? Is this OS going to explode?
 
B

BrokenLink

Try delleting all the temp files and temp internet files
manually. You'll have to activate the option to see all
files, even hidden or system ones. Your temp and internet
temp folders are inside 'Documents and Settings\User\',
where user is your user name under windows.

:)
 
P

Paul Robson

SuperX said:
Hi all,
I remember when I first booted up my P4 2 ghz system 256 mb DDR, with XP
Home...wow, I thought, that's fast! Neat! Beats the pants off my old PII
266!

Well, that was a year ago.

Now, XP just seems to run slower and slower...apps that used to flash open
now take several seconds to load. Multi-tasking is a joke....the apps just
bump into each other, cutting each other off...nothing high-power, lets say,
MS Word with Media Player with IE...

Thought it was a RAM thing, so I added another 512 mb in there...no big
difference. Read about the slowdown issue from one of the updates,
downloaded and installed the fix for it--well, okay, that did help.

But not as much as it should! This machine still crawls--compared to what it
should be able to do! In fact, my old PII 266 win98 system now boots faster
and launches apps faster (it doesn't have the CPU power, but that's
something else). Hell, even my 8-year-old Pentium 133 laptop and its measly
32 mB of RAM boots faster!

So what's making this machine so damn slow? Is it the security updates?
Should I ditch them?

Is it ICS? Is it an inherent problem with XP? Is this OS going to explode?
Click to expand...
It's Windows Rot. Every MS OS does it. Unrequired junk, data from
crashes etc etc, it just gets slower and slower. And, yes, the Service
Packs do slow it down as well.
 
J

Jeff Clark

just spend an hour and reload and move on

Paul Robson said:
It's Windows Rot. Every MS OS does it. Unrequired junk, data from
crashes etc etc, it just gets slower and slower. And, yes, the Service
Packs do slow it down as well.
Click to expand...
 
B

B.Al.Zeebub

Hi all,
I remember when I first booted up my P4 2 ghz system 256 mb DDR, with XP
Home...wow, I thought, that's fast! Neat! Beats the pants off my old PII
266!

Well, that was a year ago.

Now, XP just seems to run slower and slower...
Click to expand...

And here's my grizzle. I've just finished building a new PC. P4 2.8C
processor, thats the one with the 800Mghz FSB, 1Ghz PC 3200 DDR SDRAM,
2X40Gb ATA100 HDDs, yadda yadda. Re-install Win XP on disc one. Get to
"hit F8", nothing. Scratch head. Check keyboard plug 'n' lead. Start
install again. Same thing. Sctatch head again. Logitech KB, no F8, OK.
Heave out KB circa 1997 and plug in. Installs OK in about 35 minutes,
reboot, and guess what...the fresh, clean, out of the box Win XP
installation with nothing added but what MS dumped on that one
mean little installation disc is still slower than a full MDK 9.2
install,with KDE 3.1.3 and all its bells and whistles booting off the same
hardware. Tommorrow I'll start slapping the bastard around and getting it
into shape...
 
J

jren57

SuperX said:
Hi all,
I remember when I first booted up my P4 2 ghz system 256 mb DDR, with XP
Home...wow, I thought, that's fast! Neat! Beats the pants off my old PII
266!

Well, that was a year ago.

Now, XP just seems to run slower and slower...apps that used to flash open
now take several seconds to load. Multi-tasking is a joke....the apps just
bump into each other, cutting each other off...nothing high-power, lets say,
MS Word with Media Player with IE...

Thought it was a RAM thing, so I added another 512 mb in there...no big
difference. Read about the slowdown issue from one of the updates,
downloaded and installed the fix for it--well, okay, that did help.

But not as much as it should! This machine still crawls--compared to what it
should be able to do! In fact, my old PII 266 win98 system now boots faster
and launches apps faster (it doesn't have the CPU power, but that's
something else). Hell, even my 8-year-old Pentium 133 laptop and its measly
32 mB of RAM boots faster!

So what's making this machine so damn slow? Is it the security updates?
Should I ditch them?

Is it ICS? Is it an inherent problem with XP? Is this OS going to
Click to expand...
explode?

Try running Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter from system tools
Also go to System Properties > System Restore and reduce the disk space for
restore points
 
J

John B

What are "restore points"?
Could this factor cause a gradual slowing? Seems not to me, because it
stands to reason that the "disk space for restore points" was fixed from the
beginning...? I don't know...please clarify.
 
M

m

Paul said:
Also worth cleaning the registry.
Click to expand...
And call up msconfig and check the startup tab.
A lot of programs that get installed think they
have the Dobbs-given right to run all the time. You might
have dozens of programs running in the background that you never
use.
 
P

purplehaz

Alot of the time this is due to lack of regular maintenance and installing
of crapware. First start here, most "slow" running xps that I fix usually
just have spyware or viruses on them. 90% of the time, in my experience, it
isn't xp. And of you ever had Kazaa or Aol on your system, these are always
problem causing software, that usually only a format will truely clean up.
Sounds like spyware or a home page hijacker.

Run these tools:
spybot -- http://www.safer-networking.org/
ad-aware -- http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
 
S

SuperX

Hi,I've checked a lot of these suspects...I'd love to clean up the registry,
but is there a 'regclean' for XP? Another tool?
And call up msconfig and check the startup tab.
Click to expand...

I do this pretty regularly. Can't seem to get rid of Real player's eventsvc
thingy...even though that's been disabled in the services section. (And
uninstalled!)
 
N

Nick

How can you have DDR SDRAM?

--
Nick
-----------
B.Al.Zeebub said:
And here's my grizzle. I've just finished building a new PC. P4 2.8C
processor, thats the one with the 800Mghz FSB, 1Ghz PC 3200 DDR SDRAM,
2X40Gb ATA100 HDDs, yadda yadda. Re-install Win XP on disc one. Get to
"hit F8", nothing. Scratch head. Check keyboard plug 'n' lead. Start
install again. Same thing. Sctatch head again. Logitech KB, no F8, OK.
Heave out KB circa 1997 and plug in. Installs OK in about 35 minutes,
reboot, and guess what...the fresh, clean, out of the box Win XP
installation with nothing added but what MS dumped on that one
mean little installation disc is still slower than a full MDK 9.2
install,with KDE 3.1.3 and all its bells and whistles booting off the same
hardware. Tommorrow I'll start slapping the bastard around and getting it
into shape...
Click to expand...
 
G

Guest

Yeah. I just installed xp service pack1a. Quite a few
things stopped working. Those that still work, work
slowly.

Microsoft. The world's large paperweight manufacturer.
Give us your computer, we'll give you back a paperweight.

or 2.8 gig process, 512 meg ram, 80 gig HD.

Add XP.

congratulations. You now have a night light with a fan.
 
S

SamD

While this may be true in some cases, it is not generally
true.

I run behind a solid firewill and read my connection
logs. I have no spyware. The machine is used for
development and I have no "crapware" (good phrase for this
os). My virus package is current and my system is clean.

XP service pack 1a nailed me to a wall. My own fault. I
had read the warnings.

XP is eXtremely Profiable for MS and eXtremely Pathetic
for users.
 
P

Paul Robson

John said:
What are "restore points"?
Could this factor cause a gradual slowing? Seems not to me, because it
stands to reason that the "disk space for restore points" was fixed from the
beginning...? I don't know...please clarify.
Click to expand...

When you install a new fix or similar the system creates a restore point
so you can undo the fix if it doesn't work or makes the system crawl.
 
P

Paul Robson

John said:
What are "MDK 9.2" and "KDE 3.1.3"?
Click to expand...

MDK9.2 is Mandrake Linux v9.2 (the most recent one) KDE 3.1.3 is the
Kool Desktop Environment (current stable is 3.1.4) which is one of the
most popular "GUI" environments for Linux (the other being Gnome).

An kunfortunate kside keffect kis kthat kall kthe kprogram knames kbegin
kwith 'k'.
 

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