Joe & Anna said:
Running a bogg standard Dell with Windows XP (Home Edition) 2002(srv pk 1). The Dell has a 1.69Ghz Pent 4 (1700Mhz) with 256 ram. Start-up is slow and program initiation is slow. I have tried to use the system performance monitors which I believe shows that I ma using 100% of the CPU most of the time. What is wrong?
Many possibilities.
1. McAfee products have a well-deserved reputation for slowing down
pretty much any computer they are installed on so if you are using any
of these then that may be at least part of the explanation.
Norton/Symantec products also tend to be bloated and demanding.
2. Check the list of items that are being loaded at startup. Use
Start - Run - MSCONFIG and go to the Startup tab. Compare the list of
items that are loading at startup with the following checklist web
sites to see what can be safely dispensed with:
http://www2.whidbey.com/djdenham/Uncheck.htm
http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.htm
http://www.3feetunder.com/krick/startup/list.html - has trojan related
items listed
Note: Please ensure that you fully understand the purpose of a
startup item, how and why it was put into the startup, and the
consequences (if any) of removing it before you make any changes.
Some items are very important for the proper and safe functioning of
your computer.
Disabling an item by unchecking it in MSCONFIG should only be done for
testing purposes or as a "last resort" when no other way of getting
rid of the unwanted item can be found.
Also you can check out the items that are loading in the services tab
of MSCONFIG. See
http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm for
information and advice about changing or eliminating these items.
3. Check your computer for possible spyware (cleaning up the Startup
items will eliminate some but not all of this type of crud). See MVP
Jim Eshelman's web page at
http://www.aumha.org/a/parasite.htm for
information and tools to remove this.
4. If you are still experiencing slow operations after all of the
above items then it is possible that you need additional RAM for the
computer. Download the free page file usage reporting utility from
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm or from
http://billsway.com/notes_public/WinXP_Tweaks/ and use it to check on
actual usage of the page file by Windows XP. This utility reports the
actual amount of memory content that has been moved from RAM to the
page file so as to allow that RAM to be used for other, currently more
important, purposes. If the reported usage figure is more than 50 mb
on a regular basis then adding more RAM is very likely going to have a
beneficial effect on overall performance.
Hope this is of some assistance.
Good luck
Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
