Legit Reviews

I have a neighbor’s computer that is running really slow. I have defragged it, disable unneeded services, run tunexp, and run bootvis. The computer is a P3 900mhz with either 256 mb or 512 mb ram with windows xp home. He doesn’t have any viruses or spyware. He doesn’t want to reformat it. Is their any other tweaks or anything else that I can do to speed it up.

Right click on my computer, go to properties, advanced, enter performance settings, and select "best performance". It disables all the Windows XP eye candy, and speeds up old systems quite a bit.

There are various other small tweaks like disabling indexing service, disabling customized folder settings, disabling the computer from recording history of recently opened documents/programs.

Check out this Windows XP tweak guide for more.

http://tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks1.htm

cyberneticimplant wrote:http://tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks1.htm

Hey, that tweak guide is pretty good, a lot of tweak guides floating around have bad information. Like the stuff covered under the "Bad Tweaks" part.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html

That's a link to an excellent guide, I almost follow it exactly on any new XP install.

add more memory

tweaks can only go so far.

I would also thorw in to change the windows setup back the the windows calssic style. All those crappy looking buttons and stuff waste resources!

Mike

Thanks guys

If anyone knows any other ways do please add

Zelig wrote:

cyberneticimplant wrote:http://tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks1.htm

Hey, that tweak guide is pretty good, a lot of tweak guides floating around have bad information. Like the stuff covered under the "Bad Tweaks" part.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html

That's a link to an excellent guide, I almost follow it exactly on any new XP install.

Wow, they really hate Firefox don't they? They are right on many of the issues, however I think they are wrong on security. IE6 is a joke.

I've tested the GNA's infamous script that causes popups, and displays nasty pictures on Opera, and Firefox. Firefox stopped the popups, but Opera didn't. Also, since Opera remembers what page you visited last, I had to uninstall the browser because it kept going back to the GN page.

I had the guy change his theme from windows xp to classic and that helped.

When I worked on it a few weeks ago, it took 5 minutes to boot, pretty slow. Now he said he timed it and it took 14 minutes to boot and since switching to classic it takes 10 minutes to boot.

It is almost like his cpu could being throwing errors or messing up with data and having to reinput it multiple times. If you know how to check this.

Any other ideas of what I could do. Thanks

Even on a 900mhz machine 10 minutes is way too long.

amdme127 wrote:I had the guy change his theme from windows xp to classic and that helped.

When I worked on it a few weeks ago, it took 5 minutes to boot, pretty slow. Now he said he timed it and it took 14 minutes to boot and since switching to classic it takes 10 minutes to boot.

It is almost like his cpu could being throwing errors or messing up with data and having to reinput it multiple times. If you know how to check this.

Any other ideas of what I could do. Thanks

If its taking that long just to boot up you have too much trying to start up at boot.
Figure out what you dont need to run at startup and disable those programs.
That should shorten your boot time and let your computer run faster!

start - run - type MSCONFIG - press enter

thn you can select the startup tab and unselect the things that do not need to be started with windows.

I would also suggest - http://www.spybot.com - downlaod, UPDATE, then run it and see if it has tons of problems - FIX them of course, and see if it helps.

Mike

cyberneticimplant wrote:Wow, they really hate Firefox don't they? They are right on many of the issues, however I think they are wrong on security. IE6 is a joke.

How are they wrong? They've got sources for every point they make. Even with this, I don't really see the point of comparing IE6 to FF2, the latest non-beta versions of either should be being compared.

cyberneticimplant wrote:I've tested the GNA's infamous script that causes popups, and displays nasty pictures on Opera, and Firefox. Firefox stopped the popups, but Opera didn't. Also, since Opera remembers what page you visited last, I had to uninstall the browser because it kept going back to the GN page.

Although I don't use browser-based pop-up blocking, do you have a link to this? It should never be necessary to uninstall any browser because it's stuck doing something because of a site.

Steps to help clean your computer and make it a little faster (windows XP/2000)

1.double click my computer
2.double click c:
3.double click "Documents and settings"
4. Double click the folder that has your login name on it (you can also do these steps with other accounts on your computer)
5.at the top click tools, then folder options, then the view tab,(look for "hidden files and folders" and make sure "show hidden files and folders" is selected...press apply/ok to close that window
6.Local settings is now shown transparently, double click on that
7.double click the TEMP folder
8.at the top click edit, select all
9. edit delete **NOTE** some files may not delete, this is ok
10. Follow steps 7-9 but with the "temporary internet files" folder, back one page

If you haven't done so recently (within a month) this would be a good time to defragment.

STEPS:
1.starts
2.programs
3.accessories
4.system tools
5.disk defragmenter
6.defragment

I make my XP run faster with TuneUp Utilities 2007. It can modify , monitor and clean registers and etc.

Although I don't use browser-based pop-up blocking, do you have a link to this? It should never be necessary to uninstall any browser because it's stuck doing something because of a site.

Well, technically you don't have to uninstall the browser. Just delete your user settings or somehow change them.

I am at school ring now wasting time before study week. I tried making this post using IE7 but it didn't work. It wouldn't send it through for some reason. FF 1.5 worked fine though.

I will try Dragon_Cooler steps, but everything else you guys have suggest, I have done including msconfig and defragment

KnightRid wrote:start - run - type MSCONFIG - press enter

thn you can select the startup tab and unselect the things that do not need to be started with windows.

Mike

I second that. unneeded programs not running in the background is the biggest boost to a computer you can do and should allways be the 1st step.

cyberneticimplant wrote:Right click on my computer, go to properties, advanced, enter performance settings, and select "best performance". It disables all the Windows XP eye candy, and speeds up old systems quite a bit.

this is the second step I allways make. if you want the fancy XP look back- just: right click desktop, choose properties, appearance and choose windows XP style...

As stated before.. there are two easy ways to increase performance
1. Stop all programs from starting up when windows is lunching.. you can manually start them.. Time taken for windows to load will increase.. :D

2. Change the setting from looks best to best performance, hence performance; Your window might not look good but it will be faster :D

I've worked with older machines that were upgraded to XP and the hard drive was just not cutting it (poor performance) or are just having massive errors and about to crap out. Identify the manufacturer of the disk and pick up its diagnositics disk, or someone may suggest a good linux LiveCD to test the disk. Perhaps a network card is installed and eating up a min or so trying to get a dhcp address when the machine isn't even on a network.

I'm keen to adding memory (at least to 512MB min) on systems that check out on disk performance/health and other bottlenecks/drains to boot time or general responsiveness.