Reapply Thermal Paste?

[sicdeath]

I am referring about a Dell Dimension 5100 (Pentium 4 Processor)

About 5 months ago, I took off the heat sink from the processor and put it back on within 1-2 minutes. Then I stored the computer for 5 months and just took it out again. Now, I installed fresh copy of windows on it and I feel its lagging and not up top with the previous speeds.

Should i reapply the thermal paste? Would this speed up the PC?

 

[cracker2]

download one of these to watch your temps.
HWmonitor
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html
core temp
http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/
speccy
http://www.piriform.com/speccy
HWinfo
http://www.hwinfo.com/
AIDA64
http://www.lavalys.com/
Then run prime 95 30mins-1hr.
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/
If temps are ok,thermal paste isn't the problem

 

[mx344]

yea, when every you take off the heat sink, r apply a new set of paste.

 

[ice]

You should always reapply the thermal paste after removing the heatsinks, yes.

 

[strollin]

Yes, you should reapply thermal paste whenever you remove the heatsink but you should download and run one of the utils that cracker2 linked to to see if your your system is running high temps. If the temps are fine then the lagging probably won't be helped by applying new paste.