Sluggish

[evdok]

Hi all,

Lately my PC takes ages to load & feels like memory is low, I've scanned for spy ware & viruses all clear and have defragged, any ideas as to what i can do to improve the load up and general usage? eg: if I'm downloading i might as well watch TV until it finishes downloading! (8mb line)

[danthescan]

Have a look in your config file and see what is starting with windows, and clear the cache out as well.If you dont use the find very much try turning off indexing services as well.

[Mickey]

Have a look in your config file and see what is starting with windows, and clear the cache out as well.If you dont use the find very much try turning off indexing services as well.

press the start button
then run
type in
msconfig
and look at all them dlls and exe being executed
depending on your setup there are a few you need in there such as your graphics driver firewall msn messeng@R
but you can diable them all and fingers crosssed once you restart
it ll work

[blacksheep]

as well as all the above how big is your page file and do you have loads of stuff on your desktop?

[Mickey]

I can reccomend 2 good programs for clearing cleaning up you computer
1 is Regcure as it says it clears it and also removes unwanted startup files
the other is winxp Manager - this is an all round cleaner/optimizer

if you need a link plz pm me
Hope this helps

[evdok]

Thanks for the replies guys, but theres nothing major on my desktop & startup is at its minimal.

[BertRoot]

Try having a look at your Services by running services.msc. Disable what you don't need. google the ones you aren't sure about. ;-)

[Over Carl]

I find that the only way to keep my personal pc fast(loads of progs installed/crap of the net/etc) is to wipe the hd fresh every so often.

Had work pc's that were terribly slow that appeared to not have much s/w but also locked down so I couldn't investigate anything, never thought about complaining, as that would mean more work for me

[blaggard]

Lots of questions about software and none at all about hardware, maybe it's an old DX66?

[danthescan]

Lots of questions about software and none at all about hardware, maybe it's an old DX66?

LOL More likely its AOL.

[blacksheep]

Lots of questions about software and none at all about hardware, maybe it's an old DX66?

maybe, or it could be the fact that he stated

Lately my PC takes ages to load

which seems to imply it wasn't always this way

[evdok]

Its a Dell 1.7GHz with 768mb of memory,

On my bros PC he had a prog that allowed him to revert back to factory settings PC ANGEL i think, is there any kind of prog i could use once i format so i can go back if shit happens? (don't bother mentioning system restore! its crap)

[inspectercoley]

have you tried turning it off and on again?

How many processes do you have running?

Use hijackthis then remove everything it finds and the reinstall anything that it breaks and you need to use

Regedit is good also, but not free

Or backup and format the machine using the disk you probably got with it (and probably lost).

Format fixes all problems.

Norton Ghost creates a disk image that you can then use but has to be split into several 2gb files to work if you have lots of stuff installed

[blaggard]

maybe, or it could be the fact that he stated



which seems to imply it wasn't always this way

Still doesn't mean it's not hardware does it? even an old dx66 would load quickly if it only had software from the same era. Also, and on a less flippant note, if a piece of hardware is failing (ram, HDD) wouldn't this cause the same problem?

[evdok]

About this many

[inspectercoley]

As someone else said aol can be a bit of a killer to pc speed, dont use it its rubbish.

Other than that looks ok, the avg services might slow it down also so maybe you could have that setup to only scan when periodically then you can slow the machine down once a month when you get it to look for visus'.

Generally the longer you have had the system the slower it will be. You tried any registry cleaner software?

[evdok]

I often use tuneup utilities 7, pc is about 4.5 yrs old. with a 40g HD (17g left)

[inspectercoley]

If you have had xp on that machine for that long its bound to have created lots of problems for itself, I would recommend formatting the drive, or getting a new hard drive and install a fresh copy of xp on that, then you can have a dual boot system with the old hard drive available only if you need to access the programs or settings on that.

Other than that just try and remove as many programs as possible and only keep the ones you need.

[evdok]

Something on my wish list! Thanks all for helping

[rIKmAN]

I would recommend CCleaner
Make sure you run the first test and then select "Issues" and fix all the problems it finds.

I`ve run this on a PC and it removed over 4Gb of stuff from the first test and over 1000 issues were fixed - PC seemed brand new afterwards, but its an extreme example.

Also wouldn`t hurt to close down all processes etc one night before bed and leave it defragging overnight.