XP majorly slow

  • Thread starter Thread starter MICHAEL STRAUTMANN
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MICHAEL STRAUTMANN

Hopefully someone can assist me with this issue.

I recently upgraded Win2k to XP Pro. I upgraded over the top of Win2k because I have like 30GB worth of apps and data I didn't want to deal with backing up and reinstalling.

However, after upgrading, I installed SP1a, all the other hot fixes, and XP runs like a dog. It takes about five minutes to bott up (on a P4-2.4, 256MB RAM). If I try to type an address in IE, it doesn't even try to open the site, I have to use the Google Bar and type an address in that to get IE to work.

It takes about 5 minutes to find all my mapped drives in My Computer (all servers are local).

This thing is just majorly slow. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
Mike
 
There are many things that will slow XP down considerably. Defrag level. Temp files. Disk errors and so on. There are tons of things you can do to improve the speed of XP. Remember though XP stands for eXPeriance and was aimed at those more familiar with things like registry editor. Run your tools. Error-checking (chkdisk), Defragmenter, and disk cleanup. Keep the firewall on. Clean out the prefetch file. Have an up to date anti-virus program. Get AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy. Use programs like SpywareBlaster and SpywareGuard. HijackThis is another excellent program. all of these are free. Now once your system is as clean of junk as you can get it then download and install SpeedXP. This is an excellent tool that will tweak XP for best performance along with your network connection. I don't recommend the "clear pagefile on shutdown" option as this overwrites your pagefile with 0's before shutting down and if you have a large pagefile this can add many minutes to your shutdown. There is much much more you can do. Since getting XP over 2-1\2 yrs ago I have tweaked the DSL and XP to the point where I now get throughput speeds 3\4 as fast as a T1 connection. So there is a lot that can be done. It just takes time. I almost forgot. Never load unecessary programs at startup. These are programs you aren't using right away. Never download or load any files or application to the desktop. That is for shortcuts only. Have at least 512MB of RAM. Go into control panel\ system\advanced tab\performance section-settings button\advanced tab and put a dot in adjust for best perfomance. Turn off the useless system restore and indexing. The list simply goes on and on. Good luck. {:~)
 
Because Windows 2000 and XP have the same basic architecture, the upgrade should have been a non-issue. But, sometimes things don't go as planned, and the install over an existing operating system can get screwed up. You may have to back up your data and try a clean install of XP.

In the meantime, while you are considering the trauma of a clean installation, check for the usual worms, viruses, Trojans and other malware on your machine. Some of these can have a huge impact on system performance. Also check out what you have running on start up. Get rid of anything you don't absolutely have to have running on boot-up.

Finally, with just 256MB of RAM you should seriously consider going to 512MB or higher. Windows XP will run on 256MB, but that is the bare minimum required by the operating system to function. RAM is cheap, so think about getting a stick or two.

Hopefully someone can assist me with this issue.

I recently upgraded Win2k to XP Pro. I upgraded over the top of Win2k because I have like 30GB worth of apps and data I didn't want to deal with backing up and reinstalling.

However, after upgrading, I installed SP1a, all the other hot fixes, and XP runs like a dog. It takes about five minutes to bott up (on a P4-2.4, 256MB RAM). If I try to type an address in IE, it doesn't even try to open the site, I have to use the Google Bar and type an address in that to get IE to work.

It takes about 5 minutes to find all my mapped drives in My Computer (all servers are local).

This thing is just majorly slow. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
Mike
 
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