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Windows XP Slow?

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15 replies

by bbsa

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I have an 800MHz Intel celeron with 128 MB Ram. This PC seems to be very slow when selection menu options from the Start Menu. It is almost as if the Video is unable to load and takes time to refresh the screen. I am also finding at times it slows down when launching a program. As I can remember it did not always seem this slow but seemed to slow down with time

15 replies

by dave.osborne

Windows XP is even more of a memory hog that previous versions. Microsoft says a minimum for XP is 64MB, but as a rule of thumb, always double what they say. That means you have the minimum RAM, 128 MB. You can check out the memory load by hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del and bring up task manager then clicking on the performance tab. With your processor, I assume you are running PC133 MHz RAM, right? As inexpensive as that is right now, I would suggest at least doubling your RAM, if not going up to 384 MB or even 512 MB.

Another cause could be some kind of hardware conflict. Right click on the my computer icon and click properties. Then click then hardware tab and the device manager button. Make sure there are no yellow exclamation points/question marks or red X's.

Currently, I am runing with 512 MB and would even upgrade from that if not for the fact that all of my RAM slots are full.

Hope this helps.

-Dave

by dave.osborne

one last thing, make sure all of your drivers are updated with ones that support XP at best or at least W2K (a good number of them will work in XP)

by scottdavis

Windows XP has a lot of services that run in the background. A few of these you do not use in a home environment. Check out http:www.tweakxp.com
there are several easily implemented tweaks, that will improve your system performance. Good luck

by jpbadger9

Are you on a network or set up for internet sharing? If you've mapped to any drives over the network, your system will search those drives along with any local drives. If the network is slow, or a mapped drive is on a system that is turned off, your system will search for it until it times out. You will really see this when opening windows explorer. Have you updated your video drivers lately? If not, try that. If you have, try installing the old one. Not every driver update works better on every system configuration.

by sab_arturo

A few easy answers...

1. Update video drivers(already mentioned)
2. Make your paging file larger(System Properties->Advanced->Performance Settings->Advanced->Set(?)
3. Turn off some of the visual settings(almost same as before System Properties->Advanced->Performance Settings)

Thats about all I can offer, but the last one should help you out heaps.

by otl

You may want to run disk defragmenter, although windows has gotten better at not fragmenting the files as badly, over time it will fragment them and slow down the PC.

Agree with upgrading the ram, will definitely speed up the PC.

by martin.hoer

Try changing you files setting in config.nt Do a search for config.nt, open it with notepad. At the bottom of the page you will find a line that says files=xx. (I had a slow system, when opening up my accounting prog (peachtree complete 2003) it would take virtually forever on the workstation machine 3-4 minutes). Change the files setting to files=199 and save. It now works fine. Changed the server to 250.

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