Windows Xp slowing down

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riseagainst4848

banned
my pc seems alot slower nowadays.i have no viruses or spyware,i have an 80(74.4) gb HD,with only about 30gb used..most of the files are in the users "my documents".i use window washer everyday but it just has been slower.my fan also runs loudly,it is set at performance over quiet though.ive also noticed in the pc's setup it recorded the fan temp "out of range".anyone know what could cause it to do this.the motherboard also makes that niose,like when the pc is loading alot of stuff,even when simply rightclicking on a desktop icon.i would try to reformat,but i cant find my windows xp disc.





its a dell 4700,80gb HD,512mb RAM,windows xp sp2 2002 HE,pentium 4(HT) 3.20 GHz.
 
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paratwa

New Member
When was the last time you opened your case and blew out all the dust? Dust= Heat= slowing system. Also, do you defrag your hard drive at least once a month?
 
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PC eye

banned
It sounds like a "case of neglect" in a figurative sense there. Besides the two things suggested by paratwa 1) blasting the case inside and out with a can of air cleaner 2) defragging the one hard drive used there Windows itself sees clutter over a period of time.

This is why registry cleaners, drive cleaning tools like CCleaner, and dsiabling the increasing amount of startup items found in the msconfig utility can be a great help at times before finding a need to wipe everything.
 
pc-tech

pc-tech

banned
the best things to do would be to
disk defrag.
disk cleanup
delete unnessery files
clean out dust from case
that should do it
 
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paratwa

New Member
Go to Start/run and type msconfig, then click the startup tab. Thats where you see what is in your actual startup.

I am betting you are looking under start programs to see what is starting up. That is a very misleading place to look.

You will probably be shocked with how much is starting up when you boot.

Unclick everything you know for certain you do not need starting up when you boot. If you have any problems with something not running afterwards, you can always go back and re click it.
 
jimkonow

jimkonow

New Member
i love msconfig...and riseagainst, dells like to kick the bucket at any random point in time...my sister's PSU died and i replaced that, even though she was gonna get another crappy dell PSU through the warranty. coolermaster saved her dell...i personally would have executed it...
 
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PC eye

banned
Noting that AVG is installed that will also have items found in the services group in the msconfig as well as the startup. For another program like Norton you would be in there to disable things while AVG can be left as is not being a resource hog.

The main item found in any Windows installation after a lengthy period of time is the crap that builds up in the system registry itself. Uninstallers for programs often leave entries that still try to load drivers that may still in folders no longer used on the drive. That's where a registry cleaner and manual deletion of folders saving personal settings, game saves, etc. are often needed.

CCleaner is one for cleaning a ton of loose temp folders to free up drive space as well as cleaning out the IE histtory and offline content. http://www.ccleaner.com/

For the less timid at editing the system registry the RegCleaner opens up to a main window to display the main registry keys all non MS programs installed in case you see one you thought was gone or something new found turns you "blue" like an adware. RegCleaner also sees an automatic registry cleanup tool in the tools menu on the top explorer bar. http://www.dewassoc.com/support/useful/regcleaner.htm
 
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PC eye

banned
Well you know I finally got around to defragging the XP drive here thanks to all the discussion since it had to be reinstalled when the first board on the new build quit after the first 3 days. To give you an idea of how that alone can help improve performance on any drive have a look at the image here.

 
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idn54321

New Member
my guess is that you do not have enough ram and your hard drive is being accessed too much because of this, it is using it as virtual memory in your page file and it is about 100 times slower than physical memory, get another 512mb for xp, as long as your not gaming it should be fine.
 
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oscaryu1

VIP Member
idn54321 said:
my guess is that you do not have enough ram and your hard drive is being accessed too much because of this, it is using it as virtual memory in your page file and it is about 100 times slower than physical memory, get another 512mb for xp, as long as your not gaming it should be fine.
Click to expand...

512Mb is fine! I have an 2.8GHz (OC'd to 3) running with DDR266 512MB, and it plays BF2 without lag!
 
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PC eye

banned
I would have to agree more with idn54321 on increasing memory for a start if any large programs or any good number of items are loading up along with Windows. Disabling the creation of the paging file wouldn't be necessary for the amount used there unless gaming is heavy.

With 512mb you see about 1.5gb of drive space while 2gb of memory installed sees over 4gb total. That uses up quite a bit more drive space seeing a much larger file created and still no lags due to the average amount of memory seen in custom builds over the basics prebuilds are known for.
 
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