Speed up extremely slow XP

[sedawk]

Hi,

My WinXP machine seems extremely slow. The hard drive light always blinking. It sometime would take 2 or 3 mins to load a page while only web browser is open. It wasn't like that before. I usually only use web browser and one or two applications, like VC6++. That should not slow the machine down that much.

Does anyone know how to speed it up?

Thanks

 

[cmeagan656]

Have you scanned for viruses and spyware?

If the hard drive light is always on that means that something is accessing your hard drive. Open task manager (right click on the task bar and select task manager) and see what processes are running and consuming your CPU and memory.

Cheers.

 

[LilBob]

Not much info to go on (XP SP, RAM, etc.). As cmeagan mentioned, run both AV & AS apps. Also, download & run CCleaner from:

http://www.ccleaner.com/

Take the checks out for Desktop shortcuts, recycle bin & Yahoo toolbar if you don't want them. After installing, place checks in the Advance section next to Old Prefetch data & Hotfix Uninstallers. Click Analyze then Run Cleaner.

A better option then M$'s Task Manager is Process Explorer. It gives more info & is a free download at:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Hope this helps!

LilBob

 

[linney]

FAQ779-4784 may help.

windows XP running very slow
thread779-796508


Disable, not uninstall, any unused network adapters

 

[PRPhx]

You should also run chkdsk c: from a command prompt. If it finds any errors, re-run chkdsk c: with the /r switch. Press the "Y" key when prompt. Reboot. Wait. Then defrag you hard drive. Running ccleaner is also good. I also run Glary Utilities (also free). Does much the same as ccleaner.

And you probably want to do some routine maint. Min. of at least once a month, depending on how much data you processes, or how many programs you install/uninstall.

 

[G0AOZ]

What percentage free space do you have on your hard drive? Less than 25% and it will start to get progressively slower as the drive fills up...

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[BadBigBen]

There is also a certain update from MS...

Windows Searcher, it starts indexing the PC as it is running and can slow down an aging system to a crawl...

the following article talks about version 3.01 which came out last year for SERVERS, but the one I am talking about is version 4 and got pushed last month over automatic updates...
(WindowsSearch-KB940157)

More gnashing of teeth after Microsoft update brings PCs to a standstill
Resource-hogging search app sprung on reluctant admins

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/25/windows_update_snafu/

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[sedawk]

I just used a free AV/AS software called AVG to scan. I found a lot of tracking cookies in Cookies direcotry. What should I do about them?

 

[sedawk]

i forgot: i used task manager to look at every process. nothing special.

 

[linney]

I wouldn't worry about Cookies too much, just ignore them, or delete them as is your want. Avg will delete them if you tell it to.