Slower than a turtle

If it has run better in the past there are some things that might help.

Go to your browser and find the options and dump the cache files. These are files that are stored for quick access when you are surfing the web.

Look in your windows directory for a temp directory - empty it.

Find the system tools and find Defrag and defrag the hard drive. This will take quite awhile, but may well be part of the problem.



Be sure to dump your recycle bin when all of this is done.

 

Go to www.pcpitstop.com and let it run diagnostic tests.

If you are running Norton's Antivirus or anything Norton's, it is a resource hog. Switch antivirus prog.

www.majorgeeks.com look for RegScrubXp. RegScrubXp will go through your system registry and clean trails that may be left behind from uninstalled programs.

I would also reccommend Webroot's Window Washer to clean system cache and other unnecessary files.

 

Ya see, I take a simpler approach. I know my Windows box will get slow over time, loading, unloading, installing, uninstalling.. It's just windows nature to over time slow down...

So I have two drives, one for the OS and the other one for everything and anything I save. From time to time, I just blow away the OS drive and start over. Mind you, you will need to reinstall any program you use, but to me, it's the easy way to keep your machine clean and running fine.

Of course, there are tons of programs out there that will help, but they can only do so much.

I know this won't work for your situation, but I thought I would let you know what works for me.

Jamie

 

Ccleaner ( http://ccleaner.com/ ) is a tool I often use to keep things clean. I am very weak at computer stuff - but I know it helps my old machines.

 

This works for me, but it may not be best for everyone:

1) Format and reinstall Windows, and all your needed applications.

2) Do not waste your time with firewalls, virus scanners, spyware blockers, etc... These will all slow your computer down because they are always running, always scanning. Instead, rely on external virus scanners. Get email accounts that are hosted on servers that scan your emails before they deliver them to your inbox. Also, have more faith in yourself. What you need to do is:

a. Learn some safe browsing habits (don't click every link your friends send you, don't download or open attachments unless you are expecting them, don't visit naughty sites, beware of warez, disable the preview pane in your email program if you are using one, get a good safe browser like FireFox).

b. Make backups (use removable media, external hard drive, or save the backups on another computer). This is probably the most important, but most often skipped step. But it's really not that hard. Ghost and TrueImage are two popular disk imaging programs that make complete backups of your hard drive into one compressed file that you can save anywhere.

3) Add RAM. It's cheap, available just about anywhere, is easy to install, and is the biggest performance booster you can get for your money. I ordered 2x 1GB sticks (for 2GB total) for my laptop for just $60 (keep and eye out for good deals) and it's amazing the performance boost I got going from 512MB to 2GB.

I have an old AMD desktop I built back in 2002 and I'm still using it today. I'm virus/spyware free too .

 

I do hear Ccleaner is good.
guys I work with like it but I think I only have installed it once.

For all of you guys that keep reinstalling windows (a good idea actually)
My moms iMac has not a had a reinstall in several years now and still works fine.
It was made in 2000 and had the current OS installation (which has been upgraded but not reinstalled) since 2003.
When you buy a Mac, you actually copy all of your file, folders and programs from your old Mac to the new one.
You are up and running with the essentially the same machine (only faster) in a matter of a few minutes.

BUt anyway..enough of the Mac rabbit trail.
Just another situation where getting a Mac solves a lot of problems

 

I built a P4 PC back in 02 and it still works fine. A buddy of mine at work uses it now.
He knows how to keep it maintained.

The sad truth is though that Windows service packs really slow a machine down. I had a 1.1 GHZ PIII laptop that ran great with XP until I put SP2 on it...it was terribly slow after that.

 

I had a similar problem. I notice this problem on SP2 upgrades, never on SP2 slipstreamed fresh installs.

 

Thank you for the heads up on Norton.
Faithgirl

 

We may have to check C cleaner out ourselves
Faithgirl

 

Try using msconfig to drop a lot of background programs that may be slowing you down.

Give that a shot and see if it doesn't help a lot.