Why is my Celery 1.2Ghz so slow?

The weird thing is, this PC takes only a couple mins to boot, maybe 3mins MAX into windows.

3 minutes is along time should not take any more than 1 min max on less you have it full of bloatware Btw your ram is a bit low 512mb is the min to run xp smoothly.
 
I haven't ran memtest.

I am pretty sure its normal for a lot of PC's to boot taking more than one min, my main PC (in sig) boots into Vista and takes about 2.5 bars on the splash screen the messes on the welcome screen, at least 2 mins, no performance problem though in Windows with that.

People telling me to upgrade this PC?? It's junk!! I'd run Linux on it but since my dad needs to use this there is no point as he will NEVER get the hang of it, just the other day in Windows he was browsing the net and clicked in on when this pop up telling him he needed to install something came up, the installation almost got destroyed, he will never learn that so will never ever ever learn Linux. Even I find Linux complicated.

We just sold his PS3 and for 200 quid he could get a decent PC built, well the main parts but he decided to live with this, hopefully I'll get a laptop eventually as my main PC is all way down in Manchester.

All I use this PC for now is word processing, internet browsing and maybe watching BBCi Player now and again, for word processing I use word 2007 which seems fine, just as fast as Open Office or word 2003.

On the last install of Windows I went to Intel, got the GPU drivers for the Intel 810 chipset, but it was still buggy as hell after that and laggy, I since used to ghost CD with XP SP1 or pre SP1 and that was fine.

I should Nlite a copy of XP but tbh its not worth the effort at the moment, back on my main PC for 2 weeks in 2 days. I just use this as a downloader too since Manchester Uni has total lockdown on the internet where I live :\
 
Everything I can think of which may be an issue has already been mentioned. I'd get the proper drivers and Nlite it, if it still isn't fast enough I'd swap graphics, hard drive, memory, and motherboard if I could for free. Then I'd scrap it and build a new one if still no good, wouldn't waste too much time with it, if it's not fixed by one of those things it more then likely never will be.
 
Yup install proper chipset drivers and check the ide cable.

My old NF4 system used to run like a dog without the nVIDIA SW IDE driver installed(it was an optional install which may or may not cause problems.)
 
I was running XP for 3 years on:

CPU 467Mhz
RAM 256mb
Onboard Graphics 32mb

All was good. I don't know why there are people saying the OP's spec can't handle XP.
 
That PC should run XP fine.
Obviously there is a problem and the OP needs some help to diagnose it.

I will offer some suggestions.

1: Check your IDE devices.
The HD might be running in PIO mode.
That will slow things down a lot.
Also your HD could be on it's way out, i have had HD's that still work but get very slow.

1a
Your CDROM could be on the way out check that it can still read disks OK and is not in PIO mode.
If it has a didk in it that it is struggling to read it will slow your PC down a lot.

2: Remove any expansion cards, one of them could be hogging an interupt.

3:Get a spare HD from somewhere and do a clean install of XP.
See if this fixes the slowdown.
If it does add your software, one app at a time to see if any progs you add are causing issues.
 
I installed XP fresh on it and its still crap, I dont think I need to install loads of drivers like for mobo and graphics as XP SP2 installs them themselve.
Apart from the hardware not being particularly great, you will need to install the latest manufacturer drivers for all devices to get the best performance.
 
Right, first thing I would do is install chipset drivers, followed by drivers for everything else like gfx, sound, network etc. HD performance can be decimated by a lack of chipset drivers. Also check the drives are working at the correct speed (UDMA5 / ATA133 or whatever)

To the naysayers, 384meg RAM is fine for XP if you are not running many apps.

May as well get SP3 on there too.

Check in task manager to make sure nothing is hogging the cpu, I know my dad's machine had an issue with windows update a while back whereby it would cause svchost to max out 99% cpu for hours on end.

This

384mb is fine to run XP.. default install uses around 150mb RAM when clean..
 
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