Hi There
my PC had significally slowed recently and i put it down to being cluttered. Its been 3 years since a reinstall and the hdd was 4 gig short of being full so i thought its time to format and reinstall.

However it is still slow in comparison how it used to perform. granted its not an up to date machine but it has never been a problem. With windows alone it still struggled and to be honest installing all the usual programs hasn't made it any worse.

a good example is that if i try to launch IE it can take 20 seconds before anything happens then IE takes a further 10 secnds to load then a further 10-20 seconds to load a simple website. I have some off line content and that takes some loading too.

Also sometimes coming out of screensaver the screen takes a while to refresh with no applications running.

The HDD activity light is on constantly while try to do even the simplest of tasks.

No dodgey p2p etc etc - i dont believe in rubbish like that.

System spec
P4 1500mhz
256 MB Ram
Win Xp sp2
Nvidia graphics (not sure what model but nothing spectacular and no other drivers installed)

I said it was a bit ancient but as i said it used to work ok.

As always any advice is gratefully recieved

cheers
Dave

Forgot to say that booting to desktop is relatively quick but once it gets there it seems to sit for ages doing something

cheers

Further update. I see from the task manager the processor is hitting 30-40% on occasions while no applications are running.

Maybe this should be a hardware thread and i should be removing the graphics and soundcard, using the onboard to see if this helps as a starting point.

What means are there to test the processor, ram and hdd for performance?

I turned off windows update for a day or two as i noticed that downloading/installing updates practically ground the system to a halt and considering the age of my phyisical disc there were a lot of updates. SP3 took a very long time to install.


Regards
Dave

"... and i should be removing the graphics ..."

If you remove the graphics card, more system memory will be used, giving you less to work with.

256Mb of RAM is pretty small. XP will run, but it will be slow.

Look at what is being "loaded" at Startup. AV and a Firewall is basically manditory if the machine goes online to the Net. Other things which start are basically optional.

For example, if you have MS Office loading, and you only use Word or Excel once a day, remove Office from starting. (Remove it from Start, All Programs, Startup.)

I agree with Dan Penny. 256 mb might have been enough when xp came out (which is a big if) but 3rd party programs are needing increasingly more resources and a lot of them like to run small programs all the time even if you aren't actually using the program. So although 256 mb exceeds XP recommended resources today it isn't enough. It probably seems slower now than earlier but that is because of today's 3d party programs. Everyone that I have known that has too little ram has complained that their computer is slow. This applies to every computer that I have worked on with so little. That is because if you don't have as much ram as what your computer needs the OS is forced to resort to virtual memory which is much slower than ram. For today's programs on XP you really need at least 512 mb of ram and 1 gb is preferable. Turning off unnecessary programs should help but it will still seem slow until you get more ram to take you to at least twice what you have. Unfortunately manufacturers used to be really bad at just providing the bare minimum but back then parts were more expensive. Such computers are now dinosaurs. As for your processor, you have a more than adequate one for most "light" uses such as internet, email, small games, office, etc.

Try to disable some services.

Thanks for the replies, really appreciate that. After initial re installation (xp only no updates etc) it was still very very sluggish and to be honest is no slower with everything installed. I will increase the ram to start with and look at cutting back on unnecessary services.

It is just the general web surfing/letter writing household pc and we dont game etc otherwise i would just ditch it for something newer.

Thanks again
Dave