Hi, its me again. I have been a good boy, taken the advice given and had 2 new crucial 1gb ram memory's added today. Unfortunately I still have a REALLY slow startup and the same freezing on search engine pages etc, internet explorer is faster than my usual Aol browser. I have removed quite a few unwanted programmes on startup to no avail. The guy who fitted the ram suggested making back-up and reloading Windows, which I will do if you agree. However out of 60gb hard drive I still have 22gb free so I dont know if my problems are because of lack of space. I have used CCcleaner and I dont seem to have any problems. I am wondering if there is a fault with my Norton security, loading on start up and slowing pages with scanning. I have an old anti-virus programme(2004) that I pay online to renew yearly. Any ideas please. Thank you.

Doing a Repair or "In Place" reinstall should maintain your data and settings as well as programs.

It simply reloads XP itself and you will need to apply SP3 afterwards.

Repair Install XP
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1) Boot with the Windows XP CD and at the Setup Screen press the Enter key

2) You will be taken to the Windows XP Licensing Agreement. After reading the agreement press F8 to proceed

3) The next screen gives you the option to do a fresh (clean) install or to "Repair the selected Windows XP installation." Press "R".

4) Windows XP will copy the necessary files to your Hard Drive to begin the installation and will then reboot. You will see the message that informs you to "Press any key to boot the CD". Do Not press any keys this time just wait a few seconds and the Windows Startup Screen will be displayed. Following this you will be greeted by the Windows XP Setup Screens.

5) When Setup has completed you should find all of your previously installed applications and settings are intact.

If you don't want to go there yet you can try:

Go to Start Run... (Start Search in Vista) & type in:

msconfig

Click OK (hit Enter in Vista).

Click on the Startup tab:

Click: "Disable all"

Click on the Services tab:

Put checkmark in "Hide all Microsoft services"

Then click: "Disable all"

Click OK.

Restart computer in Normal Mode.

You will be told you are in diagnostic mode. Click: "Don't show me this again"

See how it goes but note this will also stop Norton from starting so just test it and get out of IE.

As to Norton I hate that software and would never use it.

AVG Free or Avast Free are preferable.

AV Free
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AVG Free

Avast Free

COMODO

This is just my opinion...

I am not a Symantec (Norton) AV fan. I did use it many years ago but I found it to be a resource hog and yes slow startups. I do not recommend it to anybody who asks me what AV they should get. If their willing to "pay" I tell them NOD32, which is what I use, and if they want free I tell them AVG or Comodo.

Do you "defrag" your PC at all? A badly fragmented drive will run slower than a drive that is defragged on a regular basis. I would run a "chkdsk" then a defrag (info is in the"defrag" link).

Also a large profile, the name of your account on your PC, will cause a slow startup. Doe you have lots of files on your Desktop? Do you have iTunes installed? From my experience a clean profile is a fast profile. I'll give you an example...I was doing some work on my work Laptop and had a few folders with approx 5 GB's of data in them. It would take approx 5 mins to start after logging in but once I cleaned up those folders and reduced my profile from 5.7GB to approx 50MB it only took a few secs after logging in.

With that being said it looks like, according to the D-A-L scan, your WinXP Home install was back in 2003 (03/24/2003), almost 6 years ago. The suggestion by the guy who installed your RAM is a vaild one. Windows XP over a period of time does start to slow down.

Hi, me again, yawn....it would seem that you 2 are my fairy godfathers now. just a couple of questions please as I am a little nervous, especially after studying my new memory sticks, this is science fiction to me. However I feel so secure in your advice (plus lack of current funds)that I may well have at go at the repair instal xp myself. I do defrag often but I will look at running CHKDSK for a laugh. I did try disabling everything on start-up but I managed to end up with all the programmes I had previously removed, back on again, plus being nervous of not having norton running, however much I hate it. On that subject, whenever I start up I get a red shield windows warning that the firewall is turned off which eventually clears itself, but it never used to happen, also when I look at quarantine it tells me to reload Norton, which I dont think I can do as I renew online. If I install AVG free will my firewall be ok, do you think?I am still getting faults on event viewer(error - service control and windows update) and I have checked history of windows updates and noticed past failures to load back in October, possibly when I started to s l o w d o w n. The ram fitter also suggested that I request the latest drivers from AOL, for my voyager 105 modem. Please could you just explain that after reloading xp that I will need to apply SP3.....der....what is that??? Just think, there will come a time when I stop bothering you and your lives will seem better for it, so in a way its me whose doing you a favour, thanxxxx ps yes I do have ipod and itunes stuff, that I think I will remove, it could be doing naughty things....Just ran chkdsk and says warning F parameter not specified, then runs through the 3 stages of verifying indexes and then shuts off and dissapears, is that correct??

plus being nervous of not having norton running, however much I hate it. On that subject, whenever I start up I get a red shield windows warning that the firewall is turned off which eventually clears itself, but it never used to happen, also when I look at quarantine it tells me to reload Norton, which I dont think I can do as I renew online.

First things first...is your Norton running or not? It sounds by your last post that its got issues. Are you running NIS (Norton Internet Security) 2004 or just Norton AntiVirus 2004? One version comes with a Firewall and the other does not. The "Red Shield" is from Windows telling you that the Firewall is not running but when it disappears it means that the Firewall started. IF the "Red Shield" stayed visible that would mean that the Firewall is not runing.

If I install AVG free will my firewall be ok, do you think?

That depends if your running NIS 2004 or NAV 2004 as one has a Firewall and the other does not. Don't forget that Windows XP has its own Firewall. If you have NIS 2004 it would disable the WinXP Firewall so it can run the NIS Firewall. If you just have NAV 2004 then your probably just running WinXP Firewall which can be turned off and on from Windows Firewall in the Windows Control Panel. If you want to run AVG then you need to fully uninstall Norton first as running 2 AV's is counter productive and never recommended. If you want to run a Firewall other than Windows Firewall then I would recommend Comodo Internet Security instead of AVG as it has an Antivirus and a Firewall combo.

Please could you just explain that after reloading xp that I will need to apply SP3.....der....what is that???

Service Pack 3 (SP3) is a free update for Windows XP. SP3 includes all previously released Windows XP updates, including security updates, and hotfixes. Installing Service Packs (SP1, SP1a, SP2, SP3) saves you from installing all the patches and updates individually that MS released since WinXP was released. The nice thing is after you install Windows then install SP3 you will only have to install the updates that have been released since SP3 came out and that is not too many.

Just ran chkdsk and says warning F parameter not specified, then runs through the 3 stages of verifying indexes and then shuts off and dissapears, is that correct??

Yes and No...You needed to add the "/F" switch for chkdsk to fix any errors it finds. In the "defrag" link in my previous post it shows you how to run error checking (chkdsk) within WinXP.

Before running a defragmentation, it's a good idea to instruct Windows to scan the hard drive for errors that can cause problems for the defrag process. To scan drives in WinXP, first close any open programs and then open My Computer, right-click the icon representing the drive you want to scan, and click Properties. Choose the Tools tab, click Check Now in the Error Checking section, select the Automatically Fix File System Errors option, and click Start.

THey don't mention that after clicking the Start button you will be asked "The disk check could not be performed because the check utility needs exclusive access to some Windows files on the disk. These files can be accessed only by restarting Windows. Do you want to schedule this disk check to occur the next time you restart the computer?". Click the "Yes" button then restart your PC...during boot up you will see chkdsk run.

Hiya. Thank you so much again. I will be attempting these changes, bit by bit, probably with the help of valium or similar for the nerves, and will come back to you,just a warning. I wanted to find out if you both were, in fact, machines, but I guess that would be classified info, so I wont push it.. I want you to know that I have donated a miniscule amount to the good cause, its pretty sad but at present work is slack, hence mucking about on computers as opposed to out and working. However, from little acorns.......and I do the lottery..........

Thanks for the donation Steve...it's greatly appreciated...every little bit helps...

Just keep replying to this post...jephree and I will get e-mail notification when you post. Good luck...

A couple points. I recommend running chkdsk /r instead of /f. The /r is more thorough, and assumes /f.

Also, you should always clean the clutter from your drives before defragging - it is counter productive to defrag with potentially 1000s of temporary files scattered all over the place. I am not a proponent of "regular" defragging on NTFS drives that have lots of free disk space - unless you are in the habit of installing and uninstalling major applications frequently. I defrag a couple times a year - whether it needs it or not!

Hi again y'all, thanks again and I'm pleased to say that I do believe I'm getting somewhere. I phoned AOL and they increased my modem speed from 288/568 to 488/2016 kbps fluctuating... I've done everything you have suggested apart from repair/instal xp (bit daunting for a beginner). Comodo is great, nice one. Just a couple of little things if possible please ( I'll be saying this forever!). On checking event viewer I am getting persistant red cross errors W32Time, on start-up I think, maybe I have caused this, I dont know. I have checked services and it is listed as Windows Time, I assume, and showing started-automatic, which is correct. I have tried restarting it, to see if that would help and then restarted the computer but no go, any ideas. ps still getting sticking/freezing on AOL searches, maybe its just crap but I'm used to it and have many other options but I cant start internet explorer without starting AOL and I dont like it beating me. Thank you Godfathers 3...... the family grows.........