PC and laptop help as I'm a bit lost - please

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PC and laptop help as I'm a bit lost - please

10 posts & 7 voices | Started 1 year ago by DickBarton | Latest reply from Cougar

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DickBarton - Member

Hi,

Got a desktop and a laptop - both running Windows XP SP3 - for the last 3 months both have taken an age to start up - once up they seem fine but starting programs seems to take a bit longer than normal.

I've run registry cleaners and freed up as much space as I can on the systems but they both seem to be very slow.

Desktop has 1Gb of RAM, Athlon 64-bit process and is 8 years old. Laptop is about 4 years old - 1.6Ghz 533 Mhz processor (Intel Core Duo T2050) - I've just upped the RAM to 2GB but it still takes an age to boot up.

What else can I check/do to improve the speed of the machines - ideally not spending more money.

Thanks.

Posted 1 year ago #
j_me - Member

Have you done the obligatory Malware Bytes Scan ?

Posted 1 year ago #
neilsonwheels - Member

Have you got many programs starting up in the background when windows is booted up.?

What anti virus are you running.? Norton and the like can really slow a machine up.

Posted 1 year ago #
Mounty_73 - Member

Check for malware etc.

As above norton etc is resource hungry. Also check what other programs are running in the background.

Also when was the last time the OS was re-installed ?

Posted 1 year ago #
Cougar - Member

Yeah.

As others have said; make sure you've not got an infection, uninstall anything you're not using, run one and only one AV product.

Take control of your startup programs. There are various ways of doing this, but I'd suggest starting with looking at your System Tray. If there's thirty icons in there, check each in turn and see if you can uninstall it or stop it loading on startup.

Run TFC, chkdsk, defrag.

Check Task Manager to see if something's battering resources.

I've run registry cleaners

Was your registry dirty, then?

Posted 1 year ago #
TuckerUK - Member

You can't beat a fresh install to give your PC a new lease of life.

Posted 1 year ago #
Bimbler - Member

ctrl+alt+del get task manager running and see how many processes you've got at start up. I've got my relatively ancient, sclerotic pc down to under 40. I use winpatrol to find out what they all do but I'm sure there must be newer programs ou there.

Posted 1 year ago #
Mounty_73 - Member

You can't beat a fresh install to give your PC a new lease of life.

Thats why I asked about the last re-install. Removing programs etc will only make a small difference, the OS will gradually run slower and slower over time.

We always suggest re-installing a new copy of the OS and it does breathe new life into the PC.

Just make sure you back everything up and that you have the XP/recovery CD etc, then off you go.

Posted 1 year ago #
Cougar - Member

ctrl+alt+del get task manager running

Crtl-Shift-Esc.

and see how many processes you've got at start up

... in Task Manager? No. Start / Run / msconfig, I think you mean.

Posted 1 year ago #
Cougar - Member

Thats why I asked about the last re-install. Removing programs etc will only make a small difference, the OS will gradually run slower and slower over time.

<FX: QI sirens>

Posted 1 year ago #

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