My system is a old Dell tower with 512 MB memory, 36 GB disk and a 1.6GHz Pentium 4 proc. I still have about 6GB free on the disk. I routinely clean off temp files, check for spyware with multiple products, etc. and defrag.
At startup, my CPU is frequently maxed and I have a lot of disk activity. Svchost and AVG are frequent hogs. Bringing up IE is very slow. Mouse and cursor response is slow. The system seems to take two passes before it completes the internet request.
My primary uses are email(Outlook) and internet (IE), with iTunes, Quickbooks and other assorted software also. My ISP is Comcast. AVG anti-virus software and Windows firewll are also running. I typically have about 45 processes running at startup and usually about 100+MB of free memory. Page file usage is typically about 400MB.
I guess the easy response is to buy a new computer. However, I also saw on another posting a response saying a lot of disk activity may mean the disk is dying. I have also seen that wiping the disk clean and starting over is an option. Ugh!
Suggestions?
Thanks.
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4 responses so far ↓
1 Samuel Adams // Nov 19, 2008
There are several things you can do to increase the “speed” of your computer.
1) Clean up the disk. Uninstall unneeded programs (especially those that run at startup and/or put something in the system tray), run Disk Cleanup, and defragment the drive. This is a good first step that will almost always take a few seconds off boot time and application loads for any computer.
2) Stomp auto-starting programs. Click Start > Run and type “msconfig” at the prompt. Click the Startup tab and look at all that junk that loads when you launch your PC. Do you really need “Adobe Reader Speed Launch”? Probably not. Turn off anything else that looks useless, but be careful not to disable your anti-virus and important system components.
3) Run a full anti-virus and anti-spyware scan. I would recommend AVG Free anti-virus, Malwarebytes and SUPERAntiSpyware remover. These programs are all free.
4) Clean up the registry. CCleaner, available at http://www.ccleaner.com is free and worth running. It will also remove unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space.
Those are the easy and free things you can do. If your computer is still slow you need to move on to the bigger guns.
1) Upgrade RAM. This is the one killer trick that will make almost any computer run faster. With an older PC, you will rarely have enough RAM to run today’s memory-hogging operating systems and applications, and adding a high-capacity stick or two of quality RAM will give you a quick speed boost. Adding RAM is fairly simple, even for a novice, and you should be able to do the job in 5 or 10 minutes.You can run a free test at http://www.crucial.com and find out what kind of RAM (memory) your computer needs.
2) Reinstall Windows. If the above tricks haven’t helped, it may be time to wipe the slate clean and start again, reformatting your hard drive, reinstalling your applications, and restoring your data files from a backup. You’d be surprised how much more responsive a freshly reinstalled Windows system can be, as you’ve wiped out years of temp files, garbled registry entries, old versions of software programs that have been upgraded repeatedly, and all sorts of other electronic junk. Reinstalling is easy if you have the “recovery disk” that came with your PC, and only a bit more involved if you’re using a retail copy of Windows XP. Just be sure you back up everything you want to take with you before you pull the trigger!
3) Upgrade your hard drive. This is a more complicated solution, but if you’re reinstalling Windows (per the prior tip) you might consider upgrading to a bigger and possibly faster hard drive, too. Hard disk storage is a performance bottleneck on every machine, and magnetic disks degrade over time. Some performance issues could be caused by a failing hard drive, even, and upgrading to a new model could really put some zip back in your system. As a bonus, you can use the original hard drive for backups or occasional storage, if you put it in an enclosure.
2 lhi71t // Nov 19, 2008
I would start with a defrag of your hard drive. This will speed up the machine. It’s free, and can make a big difference in older machines.
Here is a free defrag guide.
http://www.zettalogix.com/DIY_Guide_Disk_Defrag.html
3 grandchampofallknowledge // Nov 19, 2008
Get all of your important files off of your hard drive…. now.
Once you do that, wipe it clean and install a fresh version of windows. Make sure you have access to the drivers for your motherboard, video, lan, ETC. If you don’t you can download them beforehand or just use a different pc.
If you want to run the latest antivirus software, you will need more ram…. how you get that is up to you. Odds are, with it being christmas time, you can buy a cheap pc that will work wonders. The cons will be it will most likely have Vista on it.
But, you can take your old pc and sell it for probably 75 bux to someone who truly needs it.
4 JayDax // Nov 19, 2008
Sounds like you are doing pretty well everything you can to keep this old computer going smoothly.
You could try different spyware checks to the ones you are using and archive Outlook messages.
Lots of hard drive activity can be caused by low RAM, spyware, a drive needing defragging and a virus. If it passes a scandisk/Chkdsk it’s probably OK. Drives often get noisy before they fail.
Maybe you should consider building a new PC yourself.
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