I'm stumped. Out of options?

[Lothair]

I've been working on my fathers old laptop. Hp Pavilion ZV5000. It's incredibly slow. Like nearly unusable. It's 512mb DDR, but it's still pretty slow even for that.

He doesn't have the restore disc. Hp doesn't sell the restore disc anymore, nor do they offer the downloadable software, nor does the computer even have any of the restore software. The pressing of F[any] button doesn't do anything. The earliest restore point isn't early enough/wont do anything noteworthy. As far as I can tell, there isn't even any viruses?

Even just simply restarting the PC takes a good 2 minutes or so.

I've gone through msconfig and found nothing unusual or noteworthy and also disabled non-essential services and startup options.

He ran some software he just bought called fix-it utilities 11. I don't know the results, but it's still slow so apparently that didn't help either way.

We've backed up all important info. Looking for a restore to factory settings primarily, but there doesn't seem to be any options?? Advice? Help? Etc.

I'm truly stumped on what to do now. :/

[slaveofconvention]

Your only options are to find someone with the same model who DOES have a disk (good luck with that one) or the soul destroying wipe and reinstall with a standard OEM Windows Disk followed by a hunt for drivers made for different machines which WILL work on yours.

On the positive side, if you get an up-to-date OEM disk the native driver support will be much better off of the install - with only 512MB of ram you MIGHT want to forego SP3 (assuming its XP) as that's a real RAM hog....

Before you do anything else though, I'd install and run Advanced System Care by iObit, and Malwarebytes antimalware - I've seen that work wonders on super-slow machines.....

[Lothair]

Neither my father nor I have the extra cash for a windows disc, plus I'm not sure if they even make/sell XP discs anymore?

At the moment I decided to throw into safe mode with networking. It's now running as it should. It's actually faster than my netbook now... Lol

[Drum Thumper]

Sounds like it is time to embrace the Tux.

[AmEv]

XP Home from HP?

I have a restore disc.

Best part is, no HP bloatware installed.

[Lothair]

Sounds like it is time to embrace the Tux.

I have a difficult time with Linux, my father wouldn't have a chance. Lol


XP Home from HP?

I have a restore disc.

Best part is, no HP bloatware installed.

Would that work? I'm wondering if it's model specific perhaps? And is it the restore disc to reset windows to factory (out of the box) settings or is it the drivers restore disc?

[AmEv]

Windows XP Home Reinstall disc.

Not model specific; heck, it's not even HP specific.


Coming to you from a Toshiba lappy.


I may be able to put it privately online so you can download the ISO, then, when you're done, I delete from online.


Moderators, would it be legal for me to do this?

[jdbnsn]

Hmmmm, I think that technically violates some set of extravagant EULA on some legal page somewhere since you can't share kleenex these days without violating the rights of our master control. I'm not really sure if it is totally legit or not, but the way I see it is you are giving it away to someone else so I'm not going to look for a problem where I don't already see one. If one of the other admins or mods disagrees then he will have the last word. PM might be a better route of communication though.

[Beta-brain]

Put another 512 meg of RAM in it and it will probably make the world of difference, I did that for a friends old laptop that she no longer used because it was so slow she hated it now she uses it all the time, only cost about £10, you can often find XP home edition on ebay for a reasonable price.

[AmEv]

Lothair, be expecting a PM from me soon.


And XP definitely works best with 1gb+ RAM.

[xr4man]

i'd say, add in another 512mb of ram like everyone else has said. then run ccleaner and pc-decrapifier. after that, i'd say run some antimalwarebytes and superantispyware just to be on the safe side. there's really no reason xp should be running very slow once you do all that. unless there is a hardware problem. but it sounds like you just need to clean the cobwebs out and get rid of some windows cruft.

[RogueOpportunist]

To be honest reformatting is your only real option, things like ccleaner and pc decrapifier only go so far, much of what they do are placebo's and while some of what they do will make a difference that difference is never going mean having a "clean" system... Odds are the system is full of junk software, spyware, adware, malware, underwear and who knows what else.

I can't help you with where to buy/get Windows XP, in this day and age it isn't hard though, everybody knows somebody with a copy... As for your drivers you can go here (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=385149&prodTypeId=321957&prodSeriesId=376999&swLang=8&taskId=135&swEnvOID=1098).

[slaveofconvention]

Post Edited - problem fixed by OP - thanks man

[RogueOpportunist]

Be careful what you post please - I'm not trying to be a pain in the butt, but we have to be careful what we allow to be published here....

I edited it out, sorry for any trouble, didn't think it was a big deal.

[slaveofconvention]

Thanks for understanding man - last thing we need is MS (or anyone else) claiming we encourage or support piracy in any form :)