XP running slower and slower

Could be chip creep. Try reseating your memory. I had a similar problem on a Dell. After doing everything, including a clean install of XP I reseated the RAM and this took care of the issue.

hi it can be coz of several reasons...anyway you can try these..
running the defrag,cheking for disk errors,programming running and load on cpu,and if you enabled disk compression then it can be the cause..
I am assuming tht ur hardware is fine and the problem is with the OS or lack of maintainance as it worked for few months and thn its giving problem.so you can try the above...

Hi Jim,
I might or might not be on the right track here, but depending on where your living, you could be experiencing a problem with the powersupply into your premises.
Are you currently utilising a UPS or power stabiliser of some sort?

I have seen problems with my own computers when we have experienced brown-outs (or when the power drops by some 15-50Volts in one go, then comes back, this might only be a drop of 5v in your case, but enough to slow down the CPU and cause the computer to have problems..

Alternatively, I also had a problem where due to lack of HDD space I installed games, then removed them when I was bored, reinstalled them later to play again... thus cluttering the system with unused DLL's and Registry entries. You could try a system cleanup to sort this problem out.

I might also suggest a very good program that I have here (I use it often when I go to do checks on client computers, it does computer analysis in a very thorough way and will give you full reports of the analysis.

Sisoft Sandra (I have ver 2001 Professional) but they may have something more up-to-date on their website: (http://www.3bsoftware.com/sandra) also (http://www.sisoftware.demon.co.uk/sandra)
You can apparently download a 'shareware' (or standard) version of this software, or purchase the professional, my version is a little old (2 years) but it works fine, it's the professional version. Highly recommended for finding problems with the hardware or software, and will give you a good report of it in the end, can be very useful when you want to purchase second hand machines as well.

Let me know how it goes, and if you need any more help.
Simon

I recently helped someone fix a problem like this on their windows XP pc. He found out that the speed slowdowns was from his CPU jumping to 100% usage periodically. Later we found that it was his sound card drivers. As odd as it sounds the problem is completely fixed and no more issues. Just some FYI his card was a sound blaster Live. Hope this helps.

Woody

Hi Jim:

I have seen this problem on all the systems that are running XP Home / Pro.

Have you been running windows update and do you have all the patches installed? if so the patches are part of the problem.

Most of them are hotfixes and need to load everytime you start the computer, the problem with hotfixes is they increase boot time and use a lot more system resources to keep them running in the background.

When Microsoft puts out service pack 2 the problem should fix itself.

Also you need to do a full error check of the drive and run disk defrag two to three timesin a row. run msconfig and shut down everything you do not need that starts up with windows.

And last of all if you have AOL IM running on your system it is a huge resource hog.

Good luck

Woody/Jim,

Ok, got me! My machine at home is fitted with dual soundcards, one being onboard, the other being a SB 5.1 Live! Presumably one and the same as you mentioned Woody?

Jim,

What soundcard do you have fitted?
Perhaps we need to seek a patch from the creative website (www.creative.com) for this problem.

Regards,
Simon