Slow Computer 2

[hwmueller]

Hi

I am running Windows XP on a laptop with a PIII 850Mhz processor and 128MB Ram. Despite this the computer takes ages to start and all my programmes such as Word (also XP) takes much longer than it does on a mates computer. How can I improve the performance?

Hans

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Add more RAM. 128Mb is a very small amount for Windows XP.

Defragging the hard disk may also help.

There are many other possibilities, but these two should give immediate performance benefits.

I hope this helps CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[jasonwichman]

You need to have a minimum of 256 MB ram for XP or it doesn't run good at all. Upgrade ram to at least 256 MB and you should be fine. Jason Wichman

http://jasonwichman.ath.cx:81

ftp://jwichman.ath.cx:22

 

[hwmueller]

Is it worth the effort to upgrade RAM on a laptop?

Hans

 

[jasonwichman]

Yes. You can upgrade RAM on a laptop easily enough and it will improve the performace of your laptop as well. Jason Wichman

http://jasonwichman.ath.cx:81

ftp://jwichman.ath.cx:22

 

[linney]

HOW TO: Set Performance Options (Q308417)

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...757&iterationID=1&sessionID=anonymous|7475999

Try disabling any unrequired services that are running in background.

http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

 

[hwmueller]

Concerning the upgrade: will I lose information stored on the harddrive / conduct a reformat?

Hans

 

[linney]

If you mean by adding more memory will you have to reformat or lose any information. The answer is No. Ofcourse anything is possible while inside your computer. If you are not confident enough to do it yourself get some help.

 

[konrad]

Have a look at

http://www.tek-tips.com/gviewthread.cfm/lev2/67/lev3/70/pid/779/qid/232970

I had the same problem and it turned out to be a setting in the BIOS that needed changing.

 

[hwmueller]

Konrad

Your advice is very interesting, however my BIOS doesnt have such a setting (ASUS laptop with Phoenxi BIOS). Any other ideas. Do you think that upgrading the RAM is the answer?

Hans

 

[BeckahC]

I run 192mbRAM and I have XP Pro on a machine which I also always have Outlook running and several proprietary programs and at least 1 or 2 instances of the web and I have noticed nothing slow about it. We also have people here who have 64mb RAM and they don't run any slower (that I know of) than they did when they had 2KPro... I personally believe in cleaning up temp files and folders, temporary Internet files, and defrag the dard drive. It never hurts to have more RAM, but getting it doesn't always solve this type of problem as far as I have seen and heard. (*JMHO, others may and do feel differently) BeckahC

 

[MaxNero]

My question is how old is your laptop? unless other wise stated! If fairly old i would just get a new laptop an then spend the extra money on ram and such?

 

[cdogg]

hwmueller,

Did you do a clean install of WinXP on your laptop, or did you upgrade from a previous version of Windows without formatting first?

I agree that 128MB of RAM is a tad on the small side, but it won't significantly boost performance for you to add RAM if it's running very slow. I need to know if you upgraded or did a clean install before I can make any real suggestions...

 

[hwmueller]

The install was clean. I split my harddrive into 2 i.e. one for programmes and one for documents. The laptop is only 8 months old. Here the specifications again: PIII 850Mhz, 128MB Ram, 10GB hardrive, 8MB graphic card.

When I say slow, I just get the feeling that it should be quicker! If that makes sense! Outlook express for example takes about 40 seconds to load up fully so that I can begin working with it.

Hans

 

[cdogg]

I've worked with XP on a PIII 900MHz 384MB PC133 SDRAM for a short time now and it consistenly takes less than 10 seconds to open Outlook 2000 which is a much larger program than Express. I'm guessing that adding RAM might help your time slightly, but I doubt it will bring your time down much or even close to what I'm experiencing.

What's in your startup folder? Do you have a lot of processes starting up with XP? Is your taskbar loaded? Chances are, your resources are being eaten up at bootup. Try and disable some apps from starting with WinXP. Also make sure "Office Startup" or "Fast Find" aren't loading.

 

[hwmueller]

Hi

I have upgraded my RAM to 256MB. There has been a marked improvement but I just want to run the following figures by someone to tell me if they are ok:

Total physical memory: 256MB
Available physical memory: 101.22MB
Total virtual memory: 682.49MB
Available virtual memory: 407.98MB
Page file space: 427MB

Are these figures ok? Especially the first 2 seem strange to me.

Thanks

Hans

 

[Guest_imported]

There are some nasty as well as nice things about Windows XP. Speed is definitely not * not * not impressive. XP may not break every hour or so like 98 did - in fact some days I was lucky if I got an hour out of 98, it couldn't take a licking and keep on ticking - but I would liken XP to a tank. It's big, it's got a big ass, and 40+ tons of metal just doesn't move very fast. I'm running XP Pro. I just installed it a couple of days ago so I'm not that familiar with it yet. I am impressed with the stability of XP, and it seems to manage memory much better. Music even sounds better. But I've already seen some specific areas where XP is as slow as a tank mired in deep mud.

One of them is in dealing with UNC, universal naming convention. That means as many of you will know that you can reference a drive as \\computer\label instead of with a drive letter. XP just flat refuses to acknowledge that a RAM disk exists when I reference it with UNC, but it has no problem with it if I reference the drive with a letter. And now it takes the Winbatch DirExist() function about 15 seconds just to determine whether 4 UNC-referenced directories exist. On a 1.2+ GHz computer that's appalling. On a LAN, it's important to be able to use UNC, and those drives should be accessible as quickly as when you use a drive letter.

Some of you were suggesting: add more RAM. I have a full GB of 133 MHz RAM in this machine, on an Asus A7V133 mainboard. It's not memory, or the board.

Another example. It took XP nearly *two hours* to create just over 300 shortcuts to folders, which are *not* UNC-referenced. (The shortcut includes the size of the directory in MB.) Win 98 did the same task in about 2 minutes. Now it takes nearly 2 hours??? 1 hour 50 minutes. The other 3 machines on my LAN are still running 98, so that *may* be a contributing factor. Still, Microsoft should have ensured compatibility.

There are obviously some very serious flaws in XP. The speed issue - which I consider to be a major problem - makes me wonder if my "upgrade" wasn't actually a downgrade.

But like a slow-moving tank, XP won't break! It'll just get stuck.

 

[pvrrev]

Yes XP does have some rather disturbing networking issues that NEED to be addressed in a service pack. I administer a Novell network and using XP has not been a very pleasant experience. Copying files from a network drive to another location can take hours to complete whereas the same transfer of files on a Win98 box may take half and hour. Still have not been able to figure out what exactly is happening. But I did talk with a friend of mine (who is a MS beta-tester) and he stated there are some issues with XP that are being ironed out.

Some things that may work for you on your laptop:

1. Go to display propeties and set the fancy dancy desktop options from look awesome to performance.

2. Remove any unnecessary services and network protocols.

3. If you laptop is hooked to a network, go to My Network, click Advanced, than Advanced again and make sure the correct protocol is being used for each type of network you attach to. You can correct the binding order here as well.

Other than that I am not sure what else to say. I know that XP has what people are calling a DECAY issue, where the longer the OS is running the slower it becomes. I am not sure what is causing this problem but I do have my theory.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

I have not seen such netwrok latency issues.

Remember that XP is merely Windows 2000 with a pretty interface. In fact, it it NT version 5.1 (type ver at a cmd prompt for proof!).

I have had XP running on my networked desktop for three weeks without rebooting, and it does not appear to have slowed down.

I did, however, note a degradation when using a 10Mb/sec hub instead of my usual 100Mb/sec hub.

All networking is done via the card/driver/protocol setup anyway. Maybe if other devices are sharing the NICs resources this would have an impact. It always used to, so I make a habit of not sharing the NICs IRQ. If the modem and NIC are both using DHCP, maybe this causes issues - try disabling the modem and see if performance is better.

The earlier post which noted that with 256Mb RAM installed, 101Mb was available after booting just serves to underline the fact that you cannot feed too much RAM to Windows XP, and that 128Mb is not enough.

I hope this is helpful. CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[devendrap]

I have 800mhz Sony vaio and After installing XP it is working as 650mhz.