Pc is sluggish

[beansontoast]

Pc is slowing down. Things seem to run ok when they're open but apps such as outlook, IE etc. are opening very slowly. When switching between multi-tasking IE windows the tabs sometimes both stay selected & I just have to sit & wait until it sorts itself out & decides to carry on. When it does so all of the impatient commands I've put in while it has been frozen - up/down/up/down/minimise/max/min/max you get the idea) - get carried out in a split second.

Basic specs are 1800+XP running xp pro with 512MB memory & 80GB maxtor 7200 hdd, the graphics card is a geforce 4 Ti & the mainboard is an asus a7m266 (I think it's a 266!).

The hdd has about 6.7G free out of a total storage size of 74.5G, thing is the drive is full of silly stuff & has been for ages, I think I've been using the last 10G over & over because I haven't really had a clean-up in ages.

Does the problem lie with the hdd, should I clear loads of it up & what good would a "de-frag" do..? I started a defragmentation on my old pc which had an 8GB drive & I could see it was going to take hours & hours & hours to complete so I cancelled it. How long would it take for my 80GB drive to defrag, with about 50GB free after I back some of this filler up onto cdr's..?

The system used to be really fast & besides filling the hdd up all I've really added is mcafee viruscan & while I know that can be very intrusive; if I disable it temporarily I still have the same sluggish window swapping/app opening.

Thanks for any advice, beans p.s. the hdd is 1 partition.

[Violator]

First recommendation is have a clean up of that drive and then a decent defrag (length of time depends entirely on how badly defragmented the drive is, drive/pc speed and size of the drive). If you want to keep your drive performing at its best, it should never be more than 85% full. A good virus-sweep would be an idea too.

Might be an idea to check system usage (presuming you're using 2000/XP) in task manager, just to make sure nothing is hogging resources it shouldn't.

Finally, if that drive is one partition (I'd have it in 2 personally), I hope it's formatted to NTFS.

[tom999]

I would echo that, you can always see a slowdown in systems once the hard drive starts to fill up

cheers, t

[beansontoast]

Thanks very much for the adive there

[Mr.James]

Switch your virus scanner off while defragging and it'll finish shit loads quicker.

[Leeum]

Depends how full it is. Normally If i get too much crap on and it slows my computer down I back up my stuff and format. If you've got valuable work and stuff on beyond a CD size etc. then you can't go far wrong with a disk clean-up. Another thing, do you clear your temporary internet files every so often?

Leeum

[beansontoast]

Another thing, do you clear your temporary internet files every so often?

Leeum

No mate never, I just plod on regardless. I've started backing up some movie & music archives & stripped out a bit of unused crap & I've already noticed a difference. Hdd seems to be churning over less too. This might sound like basic stuff to some people but for me it's the 1st time I've had to do it.

[TwoPlAnKs]

could be one other thing

is it a p4? when they overheat they slow down, which you normally wouldnt notice, but in theory this means they could run without any cooling whatsoever but they would be so slow they would be totally useless (and probably still break)

is the pc quieter than normal? if so then it is probably a broken fan.

if the pc isnt quieter then you can just forget this suggestion cos it is fairly unlikely.

[Hippie on hill]

It might be unwanted trash running in the background slowing U down.
To see what's running start > run > msconfig -> startup tab across the top.
The items with ticks next to them load on startup, this PC I'm on now has 5 items in there but I've found 80 on other peoples before!
How to : h**p://netsquirrel.com/msconfig/
What the entries refer to : h**p://www.geocities.com/greyknight17/startup_list.htm

HTH

[beansontoast]

Hookerman I always wanted to know how to choose what is loaded on startup, cheers. I'm down to 4 things now from 24. I didn't look at those sites though I just dived in both feet 1st. I did stop ms messenger from starting up but when I open outlook ms messenger decides to start itself up. Bloody thing.

Would you believe I had around 5Gig of temporary internet files & deleting them took over 5 minutes! I'm now up to 17.8G free, where is the other 60G hiding..!

[danthescan]

Then go to Outlook in tools and settings and tell it not to start messenger not that it always listens bl**dy microsoft lol

[beansontoast]

Done

[beansontoast]

I've started the defrag (virus checker disabled) it is taking a very very long time. It says it is moving an mp3 file, just the one, for the last half an hour. I don't think it's working properly. When the defrag does the 'analyse' thing the bar is mostly red (fragmented).

[TwoPlAnKs]

yeah if it is very fragmented it will take days - just leave it and when it is done it will be much faster

the status bar in the defragmenter is rubbish - it doesnt move for ages then it suddenly jumps to the end

[beansontoast]

Yeppers I noticed the status bar was slow. It's going great guns now & I noticed I can run stuff at the same time

[beansontoast]

Done! That was quick & painless after all. Zoom zoom zoom now