Is reloading windows really necessary?

  • Thread starter Thread starter David
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David

I have XP home edition factory installed on a Dell. The
help & support function didn't open at all; everything
else seemed to work ok, except performance on the
internet was quite slow. Dell tech support had me reload
XP from the CD in November. That fixed the help &
support problem, & speed on the internet was much better
in December. I was out of town the whole month of
January & left the computer off. When I turned it on
February 1st, operation had slowed to a crawl. It might,
for example, take a minute to open Word, & 5 minutes to
open help & support. Internet pages take a minute or two
to open (on broadband). A virus scan comes up empty, &
diagnostics on the hard drive says it's ok. I ran
msconfig & selected the diagnostic startup instead of the
standard startup. When I do that, the speed problem goes
away. I don't understand the significance of a
diagnostic startup vs the selective or standard options,
but it makes me wonder if just the quantity of stuff
opening on a standard startup is slowing things down
drastically. Dell tech support is telling me no, I need
to reload the operating system again, which of course is
a major pain. Are they right, or is there something else
I should try?
 
More importantly, is your computer up to date? Do you have all the MS updates?
Also if you run a regcleaner you can damage the path for help and support
which can be restored easily. Have you/do you run disk clean? Defrag? .
 
I think the computer is up to date. I installed service
pack 1 after reloading windows, & have kept the automatic
update feature turned on. I download & install those
whenever they show up. Not sure what regcleaner is.
Haven't run that. Have not run diskclean or defrag. I
can try that. Thanks for input.
 
David said:
I have XP home edition factory installed on a Dell. The
help & support function didn't open at all; everything
else seemed to work ok, except performance on the
internet was quite slow. Dell tech support had me reload
XP from the CD in November. That fixed the help &
support problem, & speed on the internet was much better
in December. I was out of town the whole month of
January & left the computer off. When I turned it on
February 1st, operation had slowed to a crawl. It might,
for example, take a minute to open Word, & 5 minutes to
open help & support. Internet pages take a minute or two
to open (on broadband). A virus scan comes up empty, &
diagnostics on the hard drive says it's ok. I ran
msconfig & selected the diagnostic startup instead of the
standard startup. When I do that, the speed problem goes
away. I don't understand the significance of a
diagnostic startup vs the selective or standard options,
but it makes me wonder if just the quantity of stuff
opening on a standard startup is slowing things down
drastically. Dell tech support is telling me no, I need
to reload the operating system again, which of course is
a major pain. Are they right, or is there something else
I should try?
Click to expand...

You've probably got too much running at startup. Or more likely, one or a
few select things that are slowing the computer down. You can try turning
things on one at a time and see if one thing in particular slows you down.
Start off by going to MSCONFIG and turning off everything so that it matches
the diagnostic startup. Then reboot, turn something on, reboot...If you know
certain things work together, like a bunch of files for your antivirus, for
example, you can turn them all on at once. Keep rebooting until you find
out what's slowing you down. Then you can figure out if it's something you
need or not. It's amazing how many programs and peripherals put things into
startup that you don't need. And a lot of the oems add in things like help &
support utilities that do little but take you to a web site. You don't need
something running in the background to do that.

If you don't know what all the programs and services do, this can be a
pretty tedious exercise, but when you're done you'll have a better idea
what's on your computer and what you need and what you don't.

Dell tech support probably isn't going to be willing to help you out with
things like this, since it's not a warranty issue and it's a lot easier to
tell you to reload everything than it is to help you troubleshoot a problem.
 
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