Xp speed tweaks

[luciusad2004]

Hey guys. I was wondering if any of you had some good links or good tips to help speed up windows XP. My girlfriends parents have an old dell dimension 2400 and it runs really slow.

Stats:

Intel Pentium 4 2.20 GHz
128 MB (yes i said MB) of ram.
Onboard Graphics (Don't really know what it is, whatever comes in the budget dells.)


If you need any more information on the PC let me know.

I try to keep it free of adware and viruses. I also run CCleaner.
I went through a bunch of the processes and disabled whatever wasn't needed.

Any other idea's? They can't really afford to add ram so thats not a viable option.

Thanks for any help.

[MaxOC]

uhm the only tweak i can think of is the trash can, i mean the trashcan not the recycle bin lol, cpu's decent but if you want it to run decent you HAVE to upgrade ram, and a separate gpu could help

[slytherock]

What about GOOGLE (http://www.google.ca/search?q=speed+up+xp&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a) ;)

[luciusad2004]

What about GOOGLE (http://www.google.ca/search?q=speed+up+xp&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a) ;)

Sorry. I did try that already and found a couple of websites, i just thought i would ask here and see if anyone had any advice.

Sorry, ill close the thread if its inappropriate.

@ MaxOC - lol yeah, If i can afford it once i get a job ill probably see what i can do hardware wise, but they cant really afford it (much less a new pc.) I did tell them a while ago that more ram would help. To be honest if i could get another 512 in their it would probably be fine for them, i mean all they really use it for is browsing the web. Maybe once i get a job.

[SgtM]

1. RAM
2. Better GPU.
3. Sata HDD (if it supports it)

[luciusad2004]

Hmmm, Looks like the common consensus is going to be leaning towards hardware updates. I guess when i get a job ill see if i can scope out some ram for them. Also, as for the GPU, they don't game so would a relatively low end GPU do? Also I think the motherboard has an AGP slot and a couple PCI slots. No PCIe. On the hard drive note, Im pretty sure the motherboard doesn't support SATA.

Im not trying to make a dream machine for them or anything. They don't need that. I just want to get it to a point were its not aggravatingly slow.

In the mean time would switching the theme to windows classic make less work for the GPU? Any other ideas? Like i said i went through the list of processes and whatnot and tried to stop everything that i know isn't going to be used. A lot of stuff i didn't touch though. I didn't want to stop an important process. Maybe tomorrow ill put some more work in to shutting down unnecessary processes. I think there is currently thirty-sumthing running when i open up the task manager.

So here's my list so far.
1. Try to keep the PC in generally good health.
2.Stopped a bunch of apps from opening on startup
3.Vanquish unnecessary processes.

Future plans
1. More ram
2. Dedicated GPU.

Thanks for all of the input guys. : )

[jdbnsn]

I found this site to have some great tips that work well for boosting XP performance.

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1590

[a.Bird]

512MB PC2700 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820144202), and perhaps a fresh OS install. Your current processor and mobo should be just fine for what I assume you generally use it for. I was in your boots when I had just a stick of 512MB DDR 400MHz so I bought two more sticks of it to gain a total of 1.5GB of memory. It makes a huge difference and gives your apps more room to breathe. Your motherboard apparently handles Pentium 4's up to 2.8 GHz so upgrading to this is an option but for being on a budget, I wouldn't recommend it.

[luciusad2004]

512MB PC2700 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820144202), and perhaps a fresh OS install. Your current processor and mobo should be just fine for what I assume you generally use it for. I was in your boots when I had just a stick of 512MB DDR 400MHz so I bought two more sticks of it to gain a total of 1.5GB of memory. It makes a huge difference and gives your apps more room to breathe. Your motherboard apparently handles Pentium 4's up to 2.8 GHz so upgrading to this is an option but for being on a budget, I wouldn't recommend it.

Ill probably end up doing that when i get the money. I did a fresh OS install not to long ago and it went a bit faster for a week or two then started to slow right on down. I think im also going to check and see what the minimum requirements are for some of the antivirus software. Im not going to take any of it off unless i find an alternative but i was thinking that might be part of the problem having that stuff running all the time. It sort of necessary though... The first time i laid my hands on this PC it was ungodly slow and virus ridden. Its actually better than it used to be.

Thanks for the continued help. :bunny:

[SgtM]

1. Try to keep the PC in generally good health.
2.Stopped a bunch of apps from opening on startup
3.Vanquish unnecessary processes.

Good start right there. As far as the budget, the cheapest and easiest thing to do would definitely be to upgrade the RAM. With 128MB, you have just enough to run XP. I have a gig in my system, and a 2.66 Ghz P4. There was a drastic improvement going from 256MB to 1024. I would recommend going with at least 512 immediately and then double that when you can.

[a.Bird]

His motherboard can only support 1GB max. luciusad, check to see how many memory slots you have. It might be worth your while to toss the old stick and get two new ones that max out your memory capacity, e.g., if you have two slots, take out your 128MB stick and get two new sticks of 512MB. Of course, it all depends on your budget. You could start with just adding 512MB for now and benchmarking it for about a week to see if you're satisfied or not.

In my personal experience, I've found Avast! to be an absolutely free, effective and low profile anti-virus program. Link (http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html). Many have also had good things to say about AVG. Personally, I can't tell you much about it.