Making old laptop run faster

bushmins · 24 Jan 2009 at 14:34

Ive been looking for a new laptop in the wanted section but was wondering if in the mean time there is any standard things i can do to an old laptop to get it running faster.
Its a P3 590mhz with 4 meg of graphic memory and 256meg of RAM running XP home.

Im thinking maybe i can turn off some options on XP?

Craig321 · 24 Jan 2009 at 14:36

Main one would probably be more RAM, and turn XP indexing/special effects/themes etc. off

I've always turned off the special effects in XP and have noticed a difference on every PC.
Right click My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Settings (under performance) > Adjust for best performance

Play around with the settings in there if you want certain features on/off.

valerian · 24 Jan 2009 at 14:40

agreed

Craig321 said:
Main one would probably be more RAM, and turn XP indexing/special effects/themes etc. off

I've always turned off the special effects in XP and have noticed a difference on every PC.
Right click My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Settings (under performance) > Adjust for best performance

Play around with the settings in there if you want certain features on/off.

Craig321 · 24 Jan 2009 at 14:42

If you have some time you can also go through this website: http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm - it tells you which services can be turned off without losing functionality.

Services can be found by going to Start > Run > services.msc

Zero4000 · 24 Jan 2009 at 15:09

You can also minimise the amount of things running at start up, click on Start/Run and type in msconfig. You may well find all sorts of things in there, no one needs Adobe starting up, Real player, MSN, Quick time, Java scheduler, Office, or anything like that - do however leave your firewall and anti-virus running. Also look in Start/All programs/Startup to see what's in there.

Lots of software starts up when you boot the machine and it is not required - you will free up system resources and everything else will run better.

Defragmenting the drive helps to a point - Start/All programs/Accessories/System tools. Also and if you have hundreds of fonts installed, try and reduce the amount on the system.

Uninstall any software you don't use which will give you more disk space.

As said before, using eye candy / themes cost performance.

bushmins · 25 Jan 2009 at 07:08

Craig321 said:
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm -

Good stuff.

Craig321 said:
I've always turned off the special effects in XP and have noticed a difference on every PC.
Right click My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Settings (under performance) > Adjust for best performance

Never knew about that. Thanks

Zero4000 said:
snip

Yeh, good info but this is just a tiny old laptop no anti virus or firewall as nothing ever goes on it and it never goes on the net.

Thanks for the help, ill have a play when im of work.