XP Pro w/SP2 loads in slow motion

[aRKay]

My wife's Dell D-600 with XP Pro and SP3 seems to take forever to boot
and shut down. She is not a heavy duty user IE and Outlook most of the
time but she is really getting tired of the machine being so slow.

I would appreciate some tips on how turn up the crank on boot time.

The two utilities are Norton Ghost for backup and Symantec for anti
virus. Neither are in automatic mode.

arkay

 

[Jim]

My wife's Dell D-600 with XP Pro and SP3 seems to take forever to boot
and shut down. She is not a heavy duty user IE and Outlook most of the
time but she is really getting tired of the machine being so slow.

I would appreciate some tips on how turn up the crank on boot time.

The two utilities are Norton Ghost for backup and Symantec for anti
virus. Neither are in automatic mode.

arkay

Machine specs please.
Is that SP3 for Office or SP3 RC1 for XP? By itself SP3 is insufficient
information.

Jim

 

[aRKay]

Machine specs please.
Is that SP3 for Office or SP3 RC1 for XP? By itself SP3 is insufficient
information.

Jim

I thought it was going to be XP Pro SP3 but I checked and XP Pro still
says SP2. The download was for Office 2003 SP3. Sorry about not being
more specific. The processor is a 1.8 GHz and it has 512 memory.

It is my understanding that more memory will not help the boot time.

 

[Malke]

I thought it was going to be XP Pro SP3 but I checked and XP Pro still
says SP2. The download was for Office 2003 SP3. Sorry about not being
more specific. The processor is a 1.8 GHz and it has 512 memory.

It is my understanding that more memory will not help the boot time.

Norton products are pretty dreadful as far as being invasive. I can't
speak about the latest Ghost since I prefer Acronis True Image, but
Ghost may be running a service in the background. If you are using it as
a backup, then of course it needs to run.

At the least, I'd uninstall the Norton antivirus and put on something
less bloated; recommended programs are NOD32, Avast (free), and
Kaspersky. The built-in Windows Firewall is adequate for most people.

The most common reasons for Windows machines being slow are 1) infection
by malware; 2) too many unnecessary programs/processes running at startup.

To make sure the computer is clean:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware

If the machine is clean, you can do clean-boot troubleshooting to
identify the culprit(s):

Clean boot in Windows XP - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310353
Clean-boot advanced troubleshooting in Windows XP -
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316434
How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP -
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310560

Also see:

Slow or Sluggish Computer:
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm
http://aumha.org/a/health.htm - Take Out the Trash


Malke

 

[Jim]

I thought it was going to be XP Pro SP3 but I checked and XP Pro still
says SP2. The download was for Office 2003 SP3. Sorry about not being
more specific. The processor is a 1.8 GHz and it has 512 memory.

It is my understanding that more memory will not help the boot time.

That machine will never be blazingly fast. I don't agree that more memory
will not help the boot time. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.
As cheap as memory is these days, it is false economy not to have more
than just enough.

Jim