XP running too slow suddenly.

[Guest]

Hi,
I had installed XP-SP2 on my Dell lattitude (500Mhz) laptop and since then
my computer is running too slow. It wasn't slow to this extent before the
reinstallation owing to the fact the 500Mhz is definitely not the right
processor for XP. It almost takes 30 seconds to open up the notepad. Every
time I click or open any application the hard disk light keeps glowing for
very long and the application opens up very very slowly. I dont know if it
has something to do with the hard disk getting old or what, but certainly it
has become too irritating and really tests anyone's patience who's working on
it.
Does any one has any clue to what could be a possible bottleneck and methods
to resolve this issue. Any help would be appreciated.

TIA
Shishir

 

[philo]

Hi,
I had installed XP-SP2 on my Dell lattitude (500Mhz) laptop and since then
my computer is running too slow. It wasn't slow to this extent before the
reinstallation owing to the fact the 500Mhz is definitely not the right
processor for XP. It almost takes 30 seconds to open up the notepad. Every
time I click or open any application the hard disk light keeps glowing for
very long and the application opens up very very slowly. I dont know if it
has something to do with the hard disk getting old or what, but certainly
it
has become too irritating and really tests anyone's patience who's working
on
it.
Does any one has any clue to what could be a possible bottleneck and
methods
to resolve this issue. Any help would be appreciated.

How much RAM do you have?
XP should have at least 256 megs.

To get better performance be sure to turn off animations
and take unneeded apps out of startup...

Also check to see if the HD is in PIO mode (rather than DMA)
you may need to install the specific chipset drivers for your machine

 

[Guest]

How much RAM do you have?
XP should have at least 256 megs.

To get better performance be sure to turn off animations
and take unneeded apps out of startup...

Also check to see if the HD is in PIO mode (rather than DMA)
you may need to install the specific chipset drivers for your machine

Thanks for your prompt reply. Actually I have only 128 Mb of RAM and I know
that I have resource constraint for running XP. But the point is that XP was
running in a comfortable manner for long and only recently has this problem
of hard disk bottleneck come up. And I did switch to PIO mode as you
suggested but the problem still persists. Any other issue you can think of
which is killing my laptop?

-shishir

 

[Wesley Vogel]

Slow Computer
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

 

[philo]

Thanks for your prompt reply. Actually I have only 128 Mb of RAM and I
know
that I have resource constraint for running XP. But the point is that XP
was
running in a comfortable manner for long and only recently has this
problem
of hard disk bottleneck come up. And I did switch to PIO mode as you
suggested but the problem still persists. Any other issue you can think of
which is killing my laptop?

-shishir

That's not what I meant. I merely wanted to see if it was running in PIO...
it *should* be set to DMA.

well with only 128 megs of ram you really must turn off animations

go into the control panel...
system
advanced
performance


then set for "best performance"