How did we used to run old machines with XP?

Combat squirrel

Combat squirrel

Combat squirrel

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Joined
7 Aug 2004
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As title, currently at home on parents Athlon 2400+ 1 gig ram, a perfectly good spec for a office/net machine, OMG its SO SLOW, when windows xp came out im sure machines were worse than that, how did we cope ? Got open firefox, msn and media player, it has to grind to switch between apps, and yes it is setup properly :p iv spent 2 days sorting it out, still its slow, HD is a 80 gb samsung drive so not that bad, really I dont know how id cope without me dual core opteron 2gb machine, at least I can skoot around in windows with no slow down :eek:
 
I've ran a 2600+ with a half gig of RAM and did so right up until last month, and it was slow at loading games but otherwise not too bad!
 
I'm posting this on an Athlon XP 2400+ with 512 MiB RAM (2x256 DDR333). It's running XP Home SP2 and has been on this installation since the machine was new. It's very fast. I've quite a few windows open and it's not struggling. Perhaps it's just that your parents' rig is bogged down with some crapware?
 
I used to run XP just fine with an Athlon 750, 256MB SDRAM and a 40GB IBM drive...even when the drive was nearly full it didnt take too long to boot up..
 
My XP has ran fine for the past 2 years without a format, its just some people decide to ruin their OS by throwing every last piece of crap at it cluttering the hdd(s), including apps, spyware and viruls without knowing exactly what they are doing.

XP is quick, it boots fast and loads apps just fine - it'll run on a Pentium 2 without kicking up a fuss.
 
BillytheImpaler said:
Perhaps it's just that your parents' rig is bogged down with some crapware?
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Thought that, checked for it, non, formatted, obviously non, running spyware blaster, firfox, PG2, avg free, windows all up to date now, its ok, but man its still slowwwwww
 
Combat squirrel said:
Thought that, checked for it, non, formatted, obviously non, running spyware blaster, firfox, PG2, avg free, windows all up to date now, its ok, but man its still slowwwwww
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Are you sure that the HDD is not just SLOW in terms of access times? Its amazing the difference an old HDD makes.
 
BillytheImpaler said:
I'm posting this on an Athlon XP 2400+ with 512 MiB RAM (2x256 DDR333). It's running XP Home SP2 and has been on this installation since the machine was new. It's very fast. I've quite a few windows open and it's not struggling. Perhaps it's just that your parents' rig is bogged down with some crapware?
Click to expand...

Almost exactly the same here, 60 windows open in total and the worst load I have is one second.

My Duron 800mhz, 512mb SDR and GF2 Ultra rig runs XP just fine for general use.

Could be something wrong with your system there, the 2400xp is still a very speedy old processor regardless of what snobbish ideas some people have. It could do the tasks quickly back then and it still can today. :)

God bless the Throroughbreds. :p
 
Replace the thermal gunk with something decent like AS5 then...I had a 1.6ghz Palomino that never went above 45C load (was about 33 idle).
 
GhostRider said:
by formatting them every month
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if you are a clean install every 1-12 months I can highly recommend using some backup software like Norton GHOST or Acronis TRUE-IMAGE.

Then you make an image of your system just after you have done a 'clean' install. Doing it this way means you can re-load a fresh copy of Windows in about 5-10mins! :cool:

You can make backups at various stages (just after drivers, just after drivers + apps etc).

This 'rewind' method it makes it soo much easier to experiment and drivers etc.
 
Yewen said:
Almost exactly the same here, 60 windows open in total and the worst load I have is one second.
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But for no. Why would you possibly need 60 windows open? I admit I'm struggling to comprehend simply because once I get over about 8-10 open I lose track of what I'm doing so I need to start closing down the unused ones. :o

I'm currently using a PIII 850mhz, 128mb Ram laptop that I gave my parents and I find it excruciatingly slow at times but that is almost purely down to the fact that it has 128mb Ram, if I could a) find the Ram slots because the maker has seen fit to properly hide them and b) find suitable Ram then it would still be a decent enough machine for most of the tasks I do every day other than gaming.
 
Big.Wayne said:
if you are a clean install every 1-12 months I can highly recommend using some backup software like Norton GHOST or Acronis TRUE-IMAGE.

Then you make an image of your system just after you have done a 'clean' install. Doing it this way means you can re-load a fresh copy of Windows in about 5-10mins! :cool:

You can make backups at various stages (just after drivers, just after drivers + apps etc).

This 'rewind' method it makes it soo much easier to experiment and drivers etc.
Click to expand...

I do that,what a brill idea.
 
I have XP SP2 installed on a dual p3 1000 with 512meg of RD RAM and it runs incredibly fast considering how old it is. Does everything the user asks of it and wont be upgrading it for years.

The slowest (lowest memory machine) ive installed XP on is a PIII 450 with 64 - 8mb graphics system. That took so long to install it was unreal but it got there and worked for 1/2 internet explorers and a copy of word open then it would slow down to being unusable...once upgraded to 320meg it was ok and when I overclocked it to 600MHz it was highly useable for office stuff.

I agree with the others - that PC must have loads of spyware on causing major slowdowns or the FSB has reverted back to 100MHz or the HDD is running in PIO mode. My old 2100+ Tbred B @ stock was fast enough to browse around in windows pretty quickly with 512meg.
 
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Isnt that slow at all, just dont fill it with rubbish ( with rubbish i mean 99% of all AV prog's and any prog that starts with windows ), dad works with winxp since it was out on his p3 800, 256 mb ram and s3 4mb vga card ( so im saying still using it now) , he says its more than fast enough for mail, office and internet...

Just a matter of not installing and crap, including anti virus, all he does is a scan every 3 months via another pc over lan and thats all, unsafe you say? he didnt have a virus for over a year now while hes on the net about 5 hrs a day also on unsafe pr0n sites etc...

Just enable the virus scanner on your mailbox from your isp ( so not on your pc but in your webmail settings ) and you dont need any anti virus stuff wich slows your pc down by 3000%
 
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