I've got the slowest PC ever!

[Levo]

I was thinking about killing it with a cricket bat, or a fall from a great height, but then decided to ask the experts if they could help speed the bugger up first.

My PC is really dozy lately, OK its only an old 400mhz, and its running XP, but it used to be faster. It can take around 45 seconds to a minute just to load Firefox/Explorer. I've been through services.msc disabling everything I don't need, ran a virus check, removed all programs possible, ran Spybot & Ad-Aware. All I can think of doing next is a defrag, but I'm not convinced it will make much difference. Any ideas what I can try next short of a full format and reinstall Windows?

 

[3000GT_PILOT]

my laptop eventually got really slow, stuff just gathers up and theres fook all you can do about it! reformat it! thats what i did, quick as fook now!

 

[Griff]

Use it a Firewall or backup PC but thats about it. XP's just not designed/coded to run very well at all on such an old PC.

 

[Saner]

I have sorta the same problem, i have an old PII 333 with XP SP2. Its a clean install but i still need to speed it up.

Anyone any where I can find what services i don't need, and thin done the effects that XP use (i know thats possible)

Not meant to be a hijack! sorry!

 

[ViolentJ]

Saner, you could stop all the services you wanted but it will have very little impact on speed.

i had an AMD 1700+ with 512K ram in it that ran XP at an 'acceptable' level. The only way to see any decent speed in crease is to upgrade or buy a new pc.

 

[Saner]

I can't afford that, that PC is what I have and i'll have to make the most of it, it only has 128mb, so i guess 3 sticks of 256 might help

 

[ViolentJ]

you might be suprised at what you can afford. You can pick up a decent motherboard for £30 and less, AMD Sempron 2500+ for £43, 512MB memory for £31, Geforce FX 5200 256mb (not the best but will do) for £39

Use your exisitng hard drive if the size is ok and any CD or DVD drives,

 

[Aberclio182]

I can't afford that, that PC is what I have and i'll have to make the most of it, it only has 128mb, so i guess 3 sticks of 256 might help

mate go on to ebay and pick up a 1 ghz p3 chip as long as your motherboard supports it, you get them for about £30, and get some more ram should see improvement.

 

[ViolentJ]

if he's got a PII 333 on at the moment i can't see that board supporting a P3 1 Gig CPU.

 

[Aberclio182]

Also www.scan.co.uk do very good bundle, and today only specials worth a look.

 

[Saner]

I really can't afford it, lol.. I have looked into it.. I can just about afford.. oo £15?

Which i hope will get me some memory

 

[ViolentJ]

save up your £15's!!

 

[Aberclio182]

if he's got a PII 333 on at the moment i can't see that board supporting a P3 1 Gig CPU.

suppose it just depends on the board manufacture, never really used old boards, but i know my 939 board was one of the first made and it can support the newest dual core chips. so you never know.

 

[Saner]

the PII CPU was nothing like todays setups.. they share nothing in similer compared to CPU interfacing

 

[Aberclio182]

b****cks never read that sorry guys thought you had a p3 lol no your system won't hand a p3!! lol (read before you speak) lol

 

[Levo]

Cheers for the help, I've been toying with the idea of an upgrade - suppose thats the best way to boost my speed.

 

[Griff]

suppose it just depends on the board manufacture, never really used old boards, but i know my 939 board was one of the first made and it can support the newest dual core chips. so you never know.

P2's and P3's use different sockets..

 

[Martin_172]

have you disabled the blue and green colour scheme in windows? use the windows classic.

i used that on a pc i built for a mate who was short on cash, used spare parts (PII400MHz, 128MB Ram, 10GB Hdd etc etc) and it ran ok for internet, email, msn etc

 

[MattT]

Download 'crapcleaner' (http://www.ccleaner.com) and run that.
It clears out Windows temp files and empties your registry of junk as well.
It won't make a huge difference to be honest, but it frees up wasted space on your HD. I run it regularly and ran it on my mates laptop and it free'd up nearly a gig of HD space.

 

[Munson]

A defrag will obviously help, how much depends on how badly fragmented it already is.

Also as suggested, turn off all the fancy effects to reduce the memory useage. You could also empty the windows prefetch folder too, as ironically it slow the machine down over time.

 

[Aberclio182]

P2's and P3's use different sockets..

griff already noticed my mistake further up if you read, lol sorry

 

[The Big Yin]

Switch on
Go make yourself a really strong sweet cup of coffee
Pour gently onto laptop
Leave too dry naturally
Result one fried laptop that cannot be fixed
Phone home insurance and claim you knock the coffee over whilst surfing

 

[Mole]

stop running windows xp on pc's that are just slightly above the minimum required spec lol

I wouldnt dare install Windows XP on my 500mhz machine, stuck with Windows 98 SE on it, with all the security patches.

How about looking at running Windows 2000 perhaps, doesn't look as good as windows xp in terms of visual stuff, but it does the job

 

[Pauldredge]

yeah dont run xp on any machine lower than 600mhz imo. i work in schools so see alot of naff machines but some that are about the same spec as yours that run win98 are much much faster than one with below par spec running xp.

you could always increase the ram, that would speed it up a little.