Very Slow XP performance, help needed!

Lumeycom · 24 Mar 2008 at 23:18

My other halfs laptop is pig slow and it shouldn't be. Its not the best spec but its certainly reasonable - Celeron M and 256meg. I appreciate its not fantastic but the thing takes 6 minutes to boot to a usuable desktop and around 1minute to 'peel' an IE window open.

I've cleaned as much off it as I can as far as programs at startup etc and its now running the bare minimum. I used crapcleaner to get all the nonsense temp files etc out the way and I have defragged it twice.

Now aside from a full reinstall is there anything else that can be done to help it along some?

Oh, its winxp home that installed on it.

Thanks in advance

Lumey

Butters · 24 Mar 2008 at 23:54

Its purely a memory issue. I know the whole XP will run on 256 but it wont and MS should really never have specified that. I have trouble getting a slimmed version of XP running nicely on 256mb.

As an example, I had here tonight a laptop with AMD 2400 (I think) and 256Mb. It took as long as your example, if not longer. I shoved a spare 512 stick in and I was immediately able to whizz around no problem.

A re-install will help, although it will take ages to do and will soon just become slow again.

Witht he price of SO-DIMM laptop memory for that age of laptop, its worth the £18 to get a 512 stick.

doopydug · 24 Mar 2008 at 23:59

Agreed, get the ram up to a gig if you can and it will be useable

Lumeycom · 25 Mar 2008 at 04:06

Cool thanks

I've never opened a laptop though! I'm assuming that there should be some sort of panel or something on the bottom that I can open to check rather than taking the thing to bits?

TheVoice · 25 Mar 2008 at 04:14

Correct, there'll be a panel with a couple of screws. You can use a program like CPU-z or PC Wizard to find out exactly what RAM you need.

swinnie · 25 Mar 2008 at 14:42

Lumeycom said:
Cool thanks

I've never opened a laptop though! I'm assuming that there should be some sort of panel or something on the bottom that I can open to check rather than taking the thing to bits?

If you are worried about what panel is what you can google the make and model with RAM Fitting on the end and I am sure there will be a diagram.

I did this with an old Evesham Voyager, loads of flaps, and found the correct one from the net.

PhillyDee · 25 Mar 2008 at 14:52

Sometimes they have a little picture on the cover. Or just randomly open the covers

.

swinnie · 25 Mar 2008 at 14:56

PhillyDee said:
Sometimes they have a little picture on the cover. Or just randomly open the covers .

Yeah I have done that before. I find it easier to know where things are, so thats why i suggested searching for a diagram.

Rhys · 25 Mar 2008 at 15:50

Try running ccleaner too.

bledd · 25 Mar 2008 at 20:07

use firefox instead of ie, even ie6 is cack with low ram

dirtydog · 30 Mar 2008 at 07:14

Butters said:
Its purely a memory issue. I know the whole XP will run on 256 but it wont and MS should really never have specified that. I have trouble getting a slimmed version of XP running nicely on 256mb.

No it doesn't sound like a memory issue. XP runs just fine on 256 - the original minimum spec is 64MB...

I have used a laptop with a Pentium-M and 256MB. It was virtually as quick to boot and to open a browser window as my desktop with 1GB of RAM.

If this machine is taking SIX minutes to boot (?!) and a minute to open an IE window... it is not just a case of adding more RAM. If the window is 'peeling' open, not sure what that means but perhaps the graphics drivers aren't installed properly, or at all.

dirtydog · 30 Mar 2008 at 07:16

bledd. said:
use firefox instead of ie, even ie6 is cack with low ram

IE starts up quicker than Firefox because it is part of the OS. There might not be much in it, but it is still quicker.

The advice and info in this thread is strange, I'm surprised nobody has corrected it until now.

To the OP, one way of finding whether RAM is the problem is to open the task manager and see what the peak commit charge says. Windows shouldn't be using much more than half of your 256 just to boot and open an IE window.

dbmzk1 · 30 Mar 2008 at 08:04

I agree with dirtydog here. There is no way this is a memory issue. I used XP just fine on my old laptop which had a Duron 800MHz and 128MB PC100. Slow but it certainly didn't take 6 minutes to boot!

There is clearly an underlying issue here. It could well be something trivial like spyware, or something more sinister like graphics card driver issue or even the hard drive failing.

As dirtydog said also, check task manager and see what is eating away your performance. Try running all the virus and spyware stuff you can find. Running something like HijackThis might provide some insight into what is going on. Update all drivers. Make sure you have all the latest Windows updates.

dirtydog · 30 Mar 2008 at 08:16

Oh and running BootVis to analyse why your boot time is so slow, may be useful.

HangTime · 30 Mar 2008 at 09:54

Might be worth running a scan disk to check for disk errors as I've seen them cause similar issues (incredibly slow performance e.g. minutes to open a window).

Richdog · 30 Mar 2008 at 10:05

It may be more an issue that the OS install is just an old and crusty one (judging frmo the specs) and has so many processes running on startup due to the sheer clutter installed that the low processing power, RAM and low HD speed are just struggling to get it into order in any reasonable amount of time. Personally I would do just backup essential data and then do a reformat and start from fresh, and make more of an effort to keep the install clean.

Also definately get another 512MB of RAM... 256MB may be "functional", but another stick of memory in there would work wonders for it.

Munky1080 · 30 Mar 2008 at 10:21

I would suggest a backup of important files and a format and clean install of windows first...Sounds like XP is bloated to me. 265 should be fine for XP unless you're trying to game or something.

1) Clean install
2) update all drivers

should make a big difference unless there's a major hardware problem.