Really OT, but I figure some computer types here might know …
Our Dell is about 2 yrs old, running Windows XP. It has progressively gotten slower and slower. Takes forever to boot up. Programs take a long time to load, etc. I’ve scanned for spyware and removed it regularly, and run all of the included Windows maintenance utilities, but to no avail.
How can I speed this machine up? BTW-- it’s a Pent 4, running at 1.8GHz, with 256 K memory. It ran very fast when we got it, but has gotten progressively slower.
I’ve considered several aftermarket maintenance software packages, but am not sure which would work best. If I get Norton Systemworks, can I NOT load the antivirus software? AOL now includes free, automatically updated McAfee. Thanks
PS-- I don’t want to hear about Macs, Bloomie 
PPS-- we also have a laptop running ME which could use some help, so any suggestion that would work on BOTH computers would be especially good
Paul, here’s a good site for a lot of XP tweaks: Black viper
Thought I’m not so sure it’s XP that’s the problem. My wife’s Dell laptop has started acting slow too. I spent a couple hours cleaning it up and experimenting with killing processes to get some speed. If you CTRL-ALT-Delete and check the CPU usage you may see it spiking to 100% and staying there. It should rarely stay at 100%. At least that’s what hers does. We’re nearly ready to call Dell and claim there’s something wrong with the computer.
Paul - our PC, a Compaq is a year old with an athalon chip at about the same speed and with the sam RAM. It’s also running XP, but it has not slowed down.
How full is your HD? I’ve seen folks with a ton of photos or music files and that seems to slow down the computer when the HD get up around the 75% full range.
Also, how many programs do you have that automatically start with “start-up”? I seem to recall having read that if you have a host of programs that start with your computer it’ll slow down things, too.
Keep us posted!
Eric
[quote=“Jayhawk”]Paul - our PC, a Compaq is a year old with an athalon chip at about the same speed and with the sam RAM. It’s also running XP, but it has not slowed down.
How full is your HD?
Only about 1/3 full
Also, how many programs do you have that automatically start with “start-up”?
No actual programs except for the McAfee. However, there are a lot of “processes” running and I have no idea what most of them are. Even with all that though, it looks like my CPU is usually only running at ,10% capactity
I have found this to usually be because of malware and spyware. Trying running a program like Adaware (free) or Pest Patrol (not free but more comprehensive). It may take several passes and reboots to clear all the junk off of a badly infected PC.
Also viruses can drastically slow a system; make sure you’re running an up-to-date antivirus program, and that you have the latest signature file updates. Do a full system scan overnight sometime while you sleep on all files just to be sure.
Another issue can be drive space, as mentioned, or even drive fragmentation on a drive that’s not full. If your computer scans clean of viruses and malware, defragmenting your Windows XP drive is well worth a try. This also helps reduce long bootup times.
Finally, yes, you may have a hardware problem. A drive that’s starting to fail, for instance, can really drag down a system. Have you gotten any warnings when booting about a SMART failure?
–James
You might want to clean out all your temporary files, caches etc., then do a hard drive disc defragmentation and put your hard drive in order, Norton Utilities does a good job on this.
At work, I run Disc Clean everyday, plus ADware which keeps all the temp files cleaned up.
MarkB
While you are at it clean out your Temp Internet files and history. Keep your cookies unless you suspect something is hogging time or if you don’t mind redoing all of your logins. I do this once in a while just to be sure.
With your processor running at 10% I am wondering if it really is rogue software slowing things down. Does sound like a hardware thing.
Good Luck.
Best way to speed up any version of Windows, and to improve stability, and save your immortal soul is to delete it and install Linux instead…
Paul - is this the Dimension 8300 per chance? Did you purchase one of those multi-year in-home service deals? It seems the faster machines (like the 8300) can go down more often actually. Could be the adware/spyware thing or a dying hard drive - I’ve had both. Dell replaced the 9 month old dead drive in two days - but you get a stripped down refurbished one; it’s still perfect but it’s a pain reloading all the discs. If not under that guarentee, you might try opening windows in DOS safe mode and clicking on the setting that allows you to revert to a prior period when the system was aok. You might want some help with that as well from Dell - they’re pretty good (but they take a long time; I haven’t hit many of the old time geeky experts I used to get at three in the morning - they all have to look every thing up now and go consult on anything a little complicated.)
It’s always a good idea to clear the desk top of all unnecessary and unused programs (they’re still available to you when needed) to get a quicker start up, but your problem sounds beyond that. (XP has a desk top clearing wizard actually which does that automatically).
The adware/spyware thing was also beyond McAfees limited skills; I had to get my credit card company to refund the $39 they charged me even with the complete coverage and a guarentee that they would fix the problem. Once you’ve got McAfee the tentacles spread into every part of your files and it’s almost impossible to get rid of them and install another. When I reloaded all the discs, I did not reload McAfee on the refurbished drive, but something else installed by a local kid who’s become our “computer angel.” It seems perhaps a dynamite pop-up blocker is really more important than virus protection (which generally adapts to the problem after you already have it); we’ve been fine since on my daughter’s computer.
Granted, my 8300 is still ok (although newer than the other) and has McAfee on it with whatever aol popup controls. My daughter also uses the computer for more than I do - generally IM, which are ok as long as you don’t click on any attachments.
I don’t know if this helps; maybe just commiserating.. Good luck.
Philo
We run AVG (anti virus) and Zone alarm (firewall) to keep the nasties out. Also behind a router. Wireless laptop and palm filtered by mac adress. No norton’s or mcaffies here anymore. Just AVG. (it isn’t the resource hog that mcaffie and norton’s have become ) And Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy every few weeks.
And still we wind up with some kind of trojan or other crap trying to sneak in a couple times a year.
New software is sorta rare for us too. We never EVER download anything that gives us cutsie emotocons, weather programs, or little dancers in the systray.
Last software we put on was foxfire, plus a very few plug in to go with it. Not counting a couple of upgraded programs.
I’m a little late on this, but have you considered wiping your hard drive? I just did that about 2 weeks ago (3 year old Toshiba laptop) and I’ve gone from waiting 5-6 minutes for start-up and bogging down with only two programs running at once, to a 30 second start-up and a much faster response. It’s a bit drastic, I admit. It took me a good month to finally get up the guts to do it, but I had tried everything else…defragmenting, scanning for viruses, clearing temporary files, etc. I just backed everything up (twice, in some cases) and double and triple checked to make sure I was ready…and I ended up with an almost new computer because of it.
Just an idea, if nothing else works.
-Robyn
Sometimes, Malware will be very insistant in not going away. There is a little utility called ‘hijackthis.exe’ that will allow things to be deleted. You must be careful in what you delete that it is isn’t part of the operating system.
Check out this site http://computercops.biz/forums.html - start reading through the “General Site”. There are links to some of the programs already mentioned in this thread.
-Disabling non-essential program extensions in your startup sequence
can speed up starts considerably. I don’t know if the PC does it like a Mac, but the iMac has an extension manager panel in which each extension can be toggled off or left on, customizing your startup.
Do a clean install of XP and all your essential software, than make a backup image with Norton Ghost or a similar program.
Restore this image once per month, and be sure to keep it updated with the latest patches from Microsoft… works for me.
I never cease to be amazed at how much clutter and ‘unwanted guests’ I pick up in the course of a month, no matter how careful I am or what preventative programs are running on my PC! 
Ha hahahaha hah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hahahahaha ha ha ha
Hohoho hoho ho ho ho
good one!
j.i.
It seems that most Microsoft Products can be made faster by installing more RAM memory. This usually works for a few weeks or months depending on your patience quotient and then it gets slow again.
Did you say your running aol? You’re running AOL and wondering why your computer is running slow? You know AOL is like 1 big gigantic Spyware program right? When is the last time you ran: Scandisk, Defrag? Check your System Cache and make sure it as at least twice that of your RAM. You might also want to run some memory testing programs to make sure you’re not having memory write problems. Also try to keep the amount of prgrams running in the system try down to a mininum. Always have runing: Antivirus, Firewall. Anything other than that is only sucking up resorces. Click start, Run, and type “msconfig” click on the startup tab a uncheck all the crap that you don’t want starting with windows. There is probably a lot of programs that have no business starting up with your system. Also make sure to run more than one Spyware removal tool. Spybot Search and Destroy removes spyware that Adaware doesn’t find, adaware removes spyware that Spybot Search and Destroy doesn’t find, and The Newest Norton Antivirus will get “most” of the rest. Also doesn’t dell offer free technical support for the life of the computer??
That’s usually because windows always grabs itself a big helping chunk of your ram wheather it needs it or not. That is very anoying but that is why the system feels faster. Even though eventually all that extra memory is just going to get filled up by useless programs running in the background.
msconfig sounds like a great idea, but when I ran it, I was confronted with a large list of stuff that I don’t recognize! How do you find out what all of those programs listed actually are? Most of them look like windows components and AOL items: I’m not sure which ones are essential and which are optional.