Sloooow! Give me your opinions please.

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Biff&Festus

New Member
Dell 2400 XP2
P4 2.4GHz
533fsb
40GB HD (26GB free space)
256MB ram (2GB ram on the way)
Hello everyone, thanks for the help in the past!
I would like some opinions with the current project.
Understandably over time a computer slows down but after removing virtually every personal thing from the hard drive and pretty much putting it back as new, running utilities....etc. still slow!
8Gb of music files were removed. Operation is nothing close to what it should be. The virtual memory kicks in a half hour or so after beginning simple tasks! Opening local files takes 10 seconds!!
The 2GB ram upgrade is prep for the project at hand of scanning what will likely be 400Gb of high resolution images.
My thoughts at this time...
(a) Will the memory upgrade be the key to restoring the performance?
(b) Should i wipe out the hard drive, re-load windows and start fresh?
You can see the cause for concern with this future project.
I plan to turn off System restore after the memory upgrade.
With the system very close to its original condition what is filling the memory so quickly after start up?
Thoughts of a new hard drive are coming into the picture but it shouldn't be needed as the final images will be stored externally.
I assume that the hard drive and memory are the only possible items responsible for the slower than new performance?
Will the memory do it?
New hard drive?
Wipe out the old one?
Let me know what you think.
Biff :D
 
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konsole

Member
deleting files on your system wont speed up your computer, unless the computer is constantly using those files in some background processes. 256mb is definately way too little to run a computer on. 512 minimum and even atleast 1 gb is recommended for basic computer stuff. The low ram is the reason your computer is constantly slow from accessing the page file. Doing anything other then browsing the web, checking email etc. you really should have 2gb memory or more.

I would first recommend considering getting a whole new system. That processor and ram and most likely almost everything else in your system are a bit too outdated to consider simply upgrading this or that. You will definately see a big improvement going from 256mb to 2gb of memory though. That would be the cheap short term fix. The better long term and much bigger fix is the build a new system. Remember you can keep everything outside of the computer box like the monitor, mouse, keyboard etc.
 
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Biff&Festus

New Member
Thanks!
I hope you are right about the memory, that seems to to be the answer from most and agree with you on all points. :)
The 2BG memory upgrade will hopefully get me through the image scanning and i will likely look at a new tower in a year or two.
Thanks for the info
 
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ronster667

Member
i have to tell pretty much all my firneds this with a slow computer they think its because of all there stuff, photos movies and music, its not its not useing any resorces unless its in use like your listening to it, if you want to speed up your computer the 2 gigs of ram is going to beast it up alot, but you should uninstall any programs you dont use, and go to start run and type in msn config to to start up and erase any startup programs you dont use, also go to services and disable any other programs that arnt from microsoft that you dont use

once you get that ram you dont really need to do any of this because it wont make a differnce
 
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Biff&Festus

New Member
LOL.
Thanks
Did some of that cleaning too. The crap sure builds up when the user isn't looking!
Can't wait for the ram to get here!
 
zakattack9

zakattack9

New Member
Hey. Looks like your running an out-dated machine. I'd say upgrade your RAM to 2 GB. Do a disc cleanup so all those programs running in the background aren't chowing up your RAM, and if you want to make this a gaming PC, get a decent graphics card (Nvidia 8000+ series). You'll need one 12cm fan for this. KEEP IT COOL!! lol
 
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Biff&Festus

New Member
Yep, looks that way!
These days outdated means four years i guess! :rolleyes::D
For now the old machine will be doing the image thing but maybe in the future some fun with it.
Thanks for all the info!
 
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