Super Sluggish XP ~ Tips to Speed Up?

Hi gang - visiting my parents home and that means connecting to the world through mom's super sluggish XP computer

It is about 10 yrs old now and was so fast when we got it but even after upping the Ram, scanning for viruses, and formatting the drive every other year (most recently a few months ago) - it boots and runs so slowly.

CCleaner & ASC5 and defrags all applied...

There are really NO resource hog programs on here - its essentially an internet surfer. Download speed is about 2mb a sec, but it still takes losts of time opening programs and loading webpages...

Ok - maybe that is enough info as to what I have done to try and help it.

your additional ideas please?
how to find the bottleneck slowing this baby down?

Thanks!

(I thought I'd try here first instead of joining some techie site, because many here run PS or other demanding software)

Sometimes, just stripping it down to the bare metal and doing a clean reinstall is your best option. Did you do that, or just restore an image of the old install when you reformatted? It could be, after 10 years, that the drive is starting to go (correctable read errors will still slow things down as it re-tries).

It won't go down well but you could probably install Windows7 on it.
I have a similar age desktop with 2GB Ram which has got a new lease of life after becoming slow even with the original XP reloaded by the time it had got all the updates installed.

Jon wrote in post #14014632
Sometimes, just stripping it down to the bare metal and doing a clean reinstall is your best option.

That's exactly what I was going to say. Plug in an external HDD, transfer over your mom's photo's, documents etc then do a clean re-install which is very simple if you haven't done one before, many step by step guides are online. In theory it will run just like it did when it was first purchased, if not you could assume there was a hardware issue.

Thanks for the replies...

Yes - that is exactly what we have done about every other year is back-up the personal stuff and wipe the drive, reinstall XP and all updates...

there is about 702 mb of Ram available (plus about 64mb system graphics) and there is 24GB free of the 37GB drive...

MesserschmittMan wrote in post #14016700
That's exactly what I was going to say. Plug in an external HDD, transfer over your mom's photo's, documents etc then do a clean re-install which is very simple if you haven't done one before, many step by step guides are online. In theory it will run just like it did when it was first purchased, if not you could assume there was a hardware issue.

Immaculens wrote in post #14014216
It is about 10 yrs old now and was so fast when we got it but even after upping the Ram, scanning for viruses, and formatting the drive every other year (most recently a few months ago) - it boots and runs so slowly.

The problem is very simple, 10 years ago the type of content on the internet was much simpler that it is today.
It required far less processing power to browse a webpage.

The current generation of browsers need faster computers than they did 10 years ago to run more sophisticated content.

You can re-install windows as many time as you want, but the only fix is a new computer.

Naturally the oodles of browser updates and technology advancements every year do tend to draw more and more of the computers resources including ram. But it does not explain the main issue of xp booting slowly, opening and closing winexporer windows slowly, context windows being slow, browser tabs closing slowly, and slow shutdown.

anyone aware of a program that identifies bottlenecks?

Moppie wrote in post #14017454
The problem is very simple, 10 years ago the type of content on the internet was much simpler that it is today.
It required far less processing power to browse a webpage.

The current generation of browsers need faster computers than they did 10 years ago to run more sophisticated content.

You can re-install windows as many time as you want, but the only fix is a new computer.

Well, first thing to do would be to build a slip-streamed install DVD, instead of loading the 10-year-old XP and then all the separate patches to get it up to current.

A new computer is the answer but if you don't want to do that, open up the case and clean it out. If there is a lot of dust build up inside the case it will get hot and run slow. Then reformat the hard drive. Whatever you do, don't put a newer version of Windows on it because that will only make it run slower.

Immaculens...coupola things to try...first, get stopwatch...you want to time from machine power on to when you can launch Task manager by right click on Taskbar and select.
Once you have this time, shutdown completely and restart in Safe Mode with Networking...This will give you the minimum start up time for your system.

If there is a great difference in the start times, look for multiple security programs running...you should only run 1 av, 1 as and 1 fw. A program like Norton AV (home version) is notorious for slowing the computer down all my itself...if you have this and another av program running, slow as molasses...

Create a new user. This removes issues with a damage user profile...not an uncommon problem in xp. Log in as the nedw user and time the start.

From the desktop, START, RUN and type in "msconfig" (without the quotes). Go to the Start up tab and uncheck items that are loading on start up. All tray items are unnecessary. Any item uncheck can be rechecked later.

A crowed desktop can greatly increase the load time if the graphic memory is limited. Icons in folders take less time to load. Only keep the icons you need with 1 click on your desktop.

Make sure you turn off all indexing!!! This is a great time waster.

Change your browser...the Last versions Of IE are slow. Try Firefox. Your connection to the net is what determines page loading, not your computer hardware, in general. If you have 2+ghz cpu, decent video ram, you should not see a great difference in page loading compared to your later store bought machines.

Another time killer is searching for wireless connections.

Microsoft said that you should boot xp in 45 seconds if all is right. I'd settle for 1min45...3min???? Everything you do with time slows the process down. You accumulate more errors with time.

Good luck, Paul

That's an old computer. What CPU is it using?