Need help making a computer run faster.

[Jesta]

My roomates computer is slower then my old 486 was.

It was 68 seconds from when i clicked on mozilla to when it actually showed up.

The easy solution would to format the primary HD and start over fresh. But he has alot of things he is not willing to lose. And the secondary HD is not large enough to back it up. And, he doesnt have the cd to reinstall his OS.

It is a dell, The cpu is 2.8 ghz (single core) 512 ram.

So while not a top notch gaming computer, it should still be able to handle windows xp and basic software easily.


I have ran spybot search and destroy, adaware, and mcaffee. But its still slow.

I have hijack this, but i dont know whats safe to remove and whats not.

Is there anything else i should try to get it going faster?

[drew and not u]

Run CCleaner, defragment the hard drive, check the startup items under msconfig for starters. Also uninstall any un-needed programs.

[oldman_gamer]

Has a defrag,disc cleaner,or registry cleaner been run?
Sorry dude,posted at same time.;)

[Jesta]

Originally Posted by oldman_gamer

Has a defrag,disc cleaner,or registry cleaner been run?
Sorry dude,posted at same time.;)

i havnt done a defrag yet, ill run one after i run ccleaner.

[gvblake22]

Unfortunately, McAfee is possibly one of the things making it run slower than necessary. That and Norton are two antivirus programs that are notorious for being resource intensive. If you hit the infamous Ctrl + Alt + Del, how many processes does it say are running (this number can be found in the far lower left hand corner of the window that pops up). A bare machine has about 25 processes running in Windows XP and my computer now has 29 processes with all drivers enabled, Firefox open, an instant messenger program running, and Winamp playing music.

If you've got an obscene amount of running processes (like 40 or 50), then it might be time to go through the Add/Remove programs and get rid of things you don't need or don't know what they are. You can also go to Start, Run, type msconfig and hit enter. Then go to the "Startup" tab and uncheck anything that you know you can disable on startup. If you don't know what the startup process is, do a google search or search on your computer for the file and see where it is located and what it does (or post back here with the name and we'll decipher it for you).

[oldman_gamer]

Originally Posted by gvblake22

Unfortunately, McAfee is possibly one of the things making it run slower than necessary. That and Norton are two antivirus programs that are notorious for being resource intensive. If you hit the infamous Ctrl + Alt + Del, how many processes does it say are running (this number can be found in the far lower left hand corner of the window that pops up). A bare machine has about 25 processes running in Windows XP and my computer now has 29 processes with all drivers enabled, Firefox open, an instant messenger program running, and Winamp playing music.

If you've got an obscene amount of running processes (like 40 or 50), then it might be time to go through the Add/Remove programs and get rid of things you don't need or don't know what they are. You can also go to Start, Run, type msconfig and hit enter. Then go to the "Startup" tab and uncheck anything that you know you can disable on startup. If you don't know what the startup process is, do a google search or search on your computer for the file and see where it is located and what it does (or post back here with the name and we'll decipher it for you).

I have 58 running....checked to see what they were,and it looks like most all are normal.I do have McAfee site advisor running in the back ground.To me the other programs are normal internet related.Physical mem. is 28%.

[Tech Geek Deluxe]

Oldman_gamer ... I only have 5 startup programs running and 37 services ... of those 1 is video, 2 are sound, 1 is an antivirus and 1 is a printer control program. [Which I would remove if it didn't mess up my network printer]

When I load Comodo and spybot S&D it goes up 3 or 4 startups.

Having tons of services and startup items will surely slow a PC down a ton.

It is wise to skinny down startup as much as possible as they spin processor time and use memory resources unnecessarily. Same goes with services that aren't needed.

Site that has some decent stuff to Optimize XP

Their assessment regarding larger I/O as "not beneficial" is inaccurate though. At least for me since I do large file transfers regularly.

[Capper]

Dtich McAffee and grab Avast or AVG, much less bloat.......also run CCleaner and a Defrag program....that should help quite a bit...other than that, some more memory couldn't hurt.

[Tech Geek Deluxe]

McAaffee is a real hog and loads tons of junk and processes. It takes skill to completely remove every trace of it.

I made the mistake of using the free program offered as a Comcast Customer.

Had to boot from a Variation of Bart PE to clean all the stuff McAffee left in my registry.

Researched pretty intensively on Antivirus Programs a while back ... at the time [2 years ago] Avast was the winner as far as protection and ease with a small footprint.
I still use them today.

[gvblake22]

Originally Posted by oldman_gamer

I have 58 running....checked to see what they were,and it looks like most all are normal.I do have McAfee site advisor running in the back ground.To me the other programs are normal internet related.Physical mem. is 28%.

But aren't you also on Vista? I don't know how many processes that OS usually has going, I'm just referring to Windows XP Professional with SP2...