XP is getting to excruciatingly slow !!

[Penang]

Even on cold boot it takes more than 5 minutes for XP to get
everything back in shape, ready to be used.

I have tried everything, from defragmenting the HD to "cleaning" the
registry to even defragmenting the registry, and it's STILL so slow.

Software wise, I don't use too many. Just the typical office thingy,
that's all.

What else should I do to speed up my XP machine --- a 4-core CPU with
4GB of RAM ?

 

[Daave]

Even on cold boot it takes more than 5 minutes for XP to get
everything back in shape, ready to be used.

I have tried everything, from defragmenting the HD to "cleaning" the
registry to even defragmenting the registry, and it's STILL so slow.

Software wise, I don't use too many. Just the typical office thingy,
that's all.

What else should I do to speed up my XP machine --- a 4-core CPU with
4GB of RAM ?

How much RAM do you currently have?

How large is your hard drive and how much free space is on it?

XP Home, Pro, or MCE? Service Pack level?

Once the five minutes pass and "everything [is] back in shape," how is
the performance?

What antivirus program or suite do you use? Do you have it automatically
update and perhaps scan your drive each time you boot up?

FWIW, "cleaning" and "defragmenting" the registry won't boost your
performance. And you need to be careful; there have been numerous people
who have used these registry "cleaning" products only to find they are
left with a PC that doesn't boot!

Here are the typical causes of sluggishness:

1. Malicious software (malware). You need to rule this out first! This
page has excellent information:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Viruses_Malware

2. Certain programs that are designed to combat malware (e.g., Norton
and McAfee). Ironically, they can slow things down because they simply
use way too many resources. Sometime they cause conflicts with other
programs. And their default mode is to scan your entire hard drive each
time you boot up. Fortunately, there are other antimalware programs
available that use far fewer resources (e.g., NOD32, Avast, and Avira).

3. Too many of certain types of programs always running in the
background -- with or without your knowledge. (Then again, many programs
that run in the background have trivial consequences.)

To determine every program and process you are currently running, use
the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Processes tab. You should
be able to sort by CPU usage or Memory usage to get a good ideas which
ones are the resource/memory hogs. You should write down the names of
all the processes for future detective work (or take a snapshot and
print it out).

Use these sites to determine what these programs are and to learn how to
configure them not to always run at startup:

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php#THE_PROGRAMS
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm

Sometimes it is recommended to use msconfig to configure the programs to
not run at startup. A better, more thorough program is Autoruns:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

But before you do this, you should use the preference settings of the
program in question. Otherwise, for some programs, they will return to
the startup list anyway!

If you do wish to use msconfig, it may be accessed this way:

Start | Run | type "msconfig" (without the quotation marks) | Enter (or
OK)

4. Not enough RAM, which causes the PC to overly rely on the pagefile. A
quick way to determine if this is happening is to open Task Manager
(Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then note the three values
under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit,
and Peak.

The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value of
Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM.
In case you want to explore this further, you may run Page File Monitor
for Windows XP:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

5. You might also want to check that your hard drive's access mode
didn't change from DMA to PIO:

http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/is-your-hard-disk-cddvd-drives-too-slow-while-copying/

and

http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/itserviceduck/udma_fix/

 

[SC Tom]

Even on cold boot it takes more than 5 minutes for XP to get
everything back in shape, ready to be used.

I have tried everything, from defragmenting the HD to "cleaning" the
registry to even defragmenting the registry, and it's STILL so slow.

Software wise, I don't use too many. Just the typical office thingy,
that's all.

What else should I do to speed up my XP machine --- a 4-core CPU with
4GB of RAM ?

When's the last time you ran a scan for viruses and other malware?

SC Tom

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Penang:

Even on cold boot it takes more than 5 minutes for XP to get
everything back in shape, ready to be used.

What else should I do to speed up my XP machine --- a 4-core CPU with
4GB of RAM ?

Speaking as one who doesn't know a lot about operating systems -
buy who has a teenager beating on their PCs every day after
school for a couple hours....

I have become comfortable with imaging my systems right after a
build. This takes about 20 minutes - but presupposes the
discipline of not ever keeping "data" on C:. I keep "data" on
a separate "D:" drive always.

There are dozens of utilities that do this. Mine is called
Terabyte and cost about 20 bucks.

I write the image to a USB2 drive and keep a little notebook
where I write down any changes I make to the system post-image.

When things get flaky - which maybe as often as every couple of
weeks, here's what I do:

1) I restore the last image I took.

2) I re-make whatever changes to the system I made since.

3) I take another image with those changes in it.


This takes maybe 30 minutes at the most - depending on how many
changes I've made and how diligent I've been about keeping track
of them.

Works for me, and also is a hedge against physical drive failure
- although I've only had a couple of those in my whole life.

 

[JS]

Even on cold boot it takes more than 5 minutes for XP to get
everything back in shape, ready to be used.

I have tried everything, from defragmenting the HD to "cleaning" the
registry to even defragmenting the registry, and it's STILL so slow.

Software wise, I don't use too many. Just the typical office thingy,
that's all.

What else should I do to speed up my XP machine --- a 4-core CPU with
4GB of RAM ?

If the problem of being slow happened within a quick
period of time then as others have already mentioned
it could be one or more Viruses.

Hard drive free space again as mentioned could also be the cause
and or badly fragmented drive.

One other thing is that you have over a period of time installed
to many apps or mini apps that load when you first boot.

Multiple AV software programs that are both in 'Active Scan' mode
can cause the slowdown.

A useful tool to see what loads during the boot and login steps
if you want to dig deeper is AutoRuns from the MS Windows SysInternals site:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

AutoRuns will show/list all apps/etc. that load/run when you first boot ...
(the 'Boot Execute' tab),
when you logon (the 'Logon' tab) and other programs that load
(grouped by labeled tabs) for easy viewing.

It also provides the ability to selectively allows you to stop
(use with care) any program that you don't want to load.
You can undo any changes you have made.

Note: To get additional details on an item in the list you can't
readily identify you may need to highlight the item (right click) and use
the 'Search Online' option to get the details,
especially useful for the more obscure items in the list.

Probably one of the most noticeable slowdowns when
booting can be caused by AV software. Some products
now include "Boot Scans" and "Quick Scans"
(when you log on), compound this with other programs
that load when you first log on and you can see a noticeable
slowdown from a PC that you just re-installed XP to the
same PC after one or more AV products are installed on.

 

[Penang]

RAM = 4GB

HD 1 = 640GB
HD 2 = 1TB

HD mostly empty, though.

XP Pro.

Once the 5 minutes it takes to get past the cold boot (and get
everything ready), performance is okay.

Malware wise, I've scanned and re-scanned the computer with all types
of malware scanners. So I think all the malware (at least most of
them) have been eliminated.

Even on cold boot it takes more than 5 minutes for XP to get
everything back in shape, ready to be used.

I have tried everything, from defragmenting the HD to "cleaning" the
registry to even defragmenting the registry, and it's STILL so slow.

Software wise, I don't use too many. Just the typical office thingy,
that's all.

What else should I do to speed up my XP machine --- a 4-core CPU with
4GB of RAM ?

How much RAM do you currently have?

How large is your hard drive and how much free space is on it?

XP Home, Pro, or MCE? Service Pack level?

Once the five minutes pass and "everything [is] back in shape," how is
the performance?

What antivirus program or suite do you use? Do you have it automatically
update and perhaps scan your drive each time you boot up?

FWIW, "cleaning" and "defragmenting" the registry won't boost your
performance. And you need to be careful; there have been numerous people
who have used these registry "cleaning" products only to find they are
left with a PC that doesn't boot!

Here are the typical causes of sluggishness:

1. Malicious software (malware). You need to rule this out first! This
page has excellent information:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Viruses_Malware

2. Certain programs that are designed to combat malware (e.g., Norton
and McAfee). Ironically, they can slow things down because they simply
use way too many resources. Sometime they cause conflicts with other
programs. And their default mode is to scan your entire hard drive each
time you boot up. Fortunately, there are other antimalware programs
available that use far fewer resources (e.g., NOD32, Avast, and Avira).

3. Too many of certain types of programs always running in the
background -- with or without your knowledge. (Then again, many programs
that run in the background have trivial consequences.)

To determine every program and process you are currently running, use
the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Processes tab. You should
be able to sort by CPU usage or Memory usage to get a good ideas which
ones are the resource/memory hogs. You should write down the names of
all the processes for future detective work (or take a snapshot and
print it out).

Use these sites to determine what these programs are and to learn how to
configure them not to always run at startup:

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startu...swersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm

Sometimes it is recommended to use msconfig to configure the programs to
not run at startup. A better, more thorough program is Autoruns:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

But before you do this, you should use the preference settings of the
program in question. Otherwise, for some programs, they will return to
the startup list anyway!

If you do wish to use msconfig, it may be accessed this way:

Start | Run | type "msconfig" (without the quotation marks) | Enter (or
OK)

4. Not enough RAM, which causes the PC to overly rely on the pagefile. A
quick way to determine if this is happening is to open Task Manager
(Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then note the three values
under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit,
and Peak.

The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value of
Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM.
In case you want to explore this further, you may run Page File Monitor
for Windows XP:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

5. You might also want to check that your hard drive's access mode
didn't change from DMA to PIO:

http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/is-your-hard-disk-cddvd-drives-too...

and

http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/itserviceduck/udma_fix/

 

[BillW50]

(PeteCresswell) wrote on Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:59:21 -0400:

Speaking as one who doesn't know a lot about operating systems -
buy who has a teenager beating on their PCs every day after
school for a couple hours....

I have become comfortable with imaging my systems right after a
build. This takes about 20 minutes - but presupposes the
discipline of not ever keeping "data" on C:. I keep "data" on
a separate "D:" drive always.

There are dozens of utilities that do this. Mine is called
Terabyte and cost about 20 bucks...

You can do this for free. Lots of them actually.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Even on cold boot it takes more than 5 minutes for XP to get
everything back in shape, ready to be used.

Are you talking about how long it takes to boot, rather than its speed
in doing things after booting?

I have tried everything, from defragmenting the HD to "cleaning" the
registry

Ugh! That's much more likely to exacerbate the problem than to fix it.
Here's my standard post on the subject:

Registry cleaning programs are *all* snake oil. Cleaning of the
registry isn't needed and is dangerous. Leave the registry alone and
don't use any registry cleaner. Despite what many people think, and
what vendors of registry cleaning software try to convince you of,
having unused registry entries doesn't really hurt you.

The risk of a serious problem caused by a registry cleaner erroneously
removing an entry you need is far greater than any potential benefit
it may have.

Read http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000643.html

to even defragmenting the registry, and it's STILL so slow.

Software wise, I don't use too many. Just the typical office thingy,
that's all.

What else should I do to speed up my XP machine --- a 4-core CPU with
4GB of RAM ?

First reply to my question above and tell us whether the machine is
slow, or just slow in booting.

Also, what anti-virus and anti-spyware programs do you run? Are they
up date? Have they ever found infections? When? What infections did
they find? How many infections did you have?

 

[Bob Knowlden]

Here's a semi-random suggestion:

Does anything of interest appear in Even Viewer? Sometimes a process or
service that isn't loading properly can lead to a long boot time.

 

[Daave]

You didn't answer this part:

Assuming you have no malware and since your performance is fine (other
than the first five minutes), it seems likely that your antivirus
program/suite is configured to automatically update and perhaps scan
your drive each time you boot up.

Is this something you can live with?

RAM = 4GB

HD 1 = 640GB
HD 2 = 1TB

HD mostly empty, though.

XP Pro.

Once the 5 minutes it takes to get past the cold boot (and get
everything ready), performance is okay.

Malware wise, I've scanned and re-scanned the computer with all types
of malware scanners. So I think all the malware (at least most of
them) have been eliminated.

Even on cold boot it takes more than 5 minutes for XP to get
everything back in shape, ready to be used.

I have tried everything, from defragmenting the HD to "cleaning" the
registry to even defragmenting the registry, and it's STILL so slow.

Software wise, I don't use too many. Just the typical office thingy,
that's all.

What else should I do to speed up my XP machine --- a 4-core CPU
with 4GB of RAM ?

How much RAM do you currently have?

How large is your hard drive and how much free space is on it?

XP Home, Pro, or MCE? Service Pack level?

Once the five minutes pass and "everything [is] back in shape," how
is the performance?

What antivirus program or suite do you use? Do you have it
automatically update and perhaps scan your drive each time you boot
up?

FWIW, "cleaning" and "defragmenting" the registry won't boost your
performance. And you need to be careful; there have been numerous
people who have used these registry "cleaning" products only to find
they are left with a PC that doesn't boot!

Here are the typical causes of sluggishness:

1. Malicious software (malware). You need to rule this out first!
This page has excellent information:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Viruses_Malware

2. Certain programs that are designed to combat malware (e.g., Norton
and McAfee). Ironically, they can slow things down because they
simply use way too many resources. Sometime they cause conflicts
with other programs. And their default mode is to scan your entire
hard drive each time you boot up. Fortunately, there are other
antimalware programs available that use far fewer resources (e.g.,
NOD32, Avast, and Avira).

3. Too many of certain types of programs always running in the
background -- with or without your knowledge. (Then again, many
programs that run in the background have trivial consequences.)

To determine every program and process you are currently running, use
the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Processes tab. You
should be able to sort by CPU usage or Memory usage to get a good
ideas which ones are the resource/memory hogs. You should write down
the names of all the processes for future detective work (or take a
snapshot and print it out).

Use these sites to determine what these programs are and to learn
how to configure them not to always run at startup:

http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startu...swersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm

Sometimes it is recommended to use msconfig to configure the
programs to not run at startup. A better, more thorough program is
Autoruns:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

But before you do this, you should use the preference settings of the
program in question. Otherwise, for some programs, they will return
to the startup list anyway!

If you do wish to use msconfig, it may be accessed this way:

Start | Run | type "msconfig" (without the quotation marks) | Enter
(or OK)

4. Not enough RAM, which causes the PC to overly rely on the
pagefile. A quick way to determine if this is happening is to open
Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then note
the three values under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand
corner: Total, Limit, and Peak.

The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at
that very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of
memory you used since last bootup. If both these figures are below
the value of Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have
plenty of RAM.
In case you want to explore this further, you may run Page File
Monitor for Windows XP:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

5. You might also want to check that your hard drive's access mode
didn't change from DMA to PIO:

http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/is-your-hard-disk-cddvd-drives-too...

and

http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/itserviceduck/udma_fix/

 

[relic]

Even on cold boot it takes more than 5 minutes for XP to get
everything back in shape, ready to be used.

I have tried everything, from defragmenting the HD to "cleaning" the
registry to even defragmenting the registry, and it's STILL so slow.

Software wise, I don't use too many. Just the typical office thingy,
that's all.

What else should I do to speed up my XP machine --- a 4-core CPU with
4GB of RAM ?

Format and do a clean install, or spend the next 6 or 7 months trying
everyones' suggestions.

 

[Pennywise]

You can do this for free. Lots of them actually.

Ya, just by copying them where you want them, I have nothing in My
Documents, Pictures, Music and so on, I save everything mostly to my
F:\ Drive

Heck, Tweak UI will change the directories "My Documents, Pictures,
Music and so on" to anywhere you want your stuff saved.
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/Downloads/powertoys/Xppowertoys.mspx

-If your not running XP, each Windows OS has it's own powertoys, and
version of Tweak UI-

 

[Pennywise]

Even on cold boot it takes more than 5 minutes for XP to get
everything back in shape, ready to be used.

I have tried everything, from defragmenting the HD to "cleaning" the
registry to even defragmenting the registry, and it's STILL so slow.

Software wise, I don't use too many. Just the typical office thingy,
that's all.

What else should I do to speed up my XP machine --- a 4-core CPU with
4GB of RAM ?

Know your system well, and what should be running and what you have
disabled?

While I follow all the advice given above, Autoruns is what I use to
disable what didn't get the word it wasn't suppose to load.

You'll also find a lot of programs that can't be found - you find
them or delete the entry. Some files (Dll's) can be seen loading
several time, only need one.

It's a great program, you just have to remember to check it first if a
program, service or device doesn't work.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

 

[Boris]

Even on cold boot it takes more than 5 minutes for XP to get
everything back in shape, ready to be used.

I have tried everything, from defragmenting the HD to "cleaning" the
registry to even defragmenting the registry, and it's STILL so slow.

Software wise, I don't use too many. Just the typical office thingy,
that's all.

What else should I do to speed up my XP machine --- a 4-core CPU with
4GB of RAM ?

I once had that problem. It turned out that my OS was looking for an
orphaned network drive that once existed, but no longer did. I used
regscanner:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/regscanner.html

to find all instances in the registry of that particular network drive,
and deleted them. All was fine.

 

[HeyBub]

Even on cold boot it takes more than 5 minutes for XP to get
everything back in shape, ready to be used.

I have tried everything, from defragmenting the HD to "cleaning" the
registry to even defragmenting the registry, and it's STILL so slow.

Software wise, I don't use too many. Just the typical office thingy,
that's all.

What else should I do to speed up my XP machine --- a 4-core CPU with
4GB of RAM ?

Defragmenting the hard drive, even a heavily fragmented one, will not
improve efficiency. The NTFS system's "directory" and file layout is similar
to a relational database in that access time is virtually the same
irrespective of the data's location or fragmentation.

Likewise, registry "cleaning" or "compaction" has no detectable effect on
efficiency. The registry is not searched sequentially so its size is
irrelevant to proper or efficient operation of the computer.

Try "Hibernation" instead of "Shut down" to mitigate the slow start-up
symptom.

 

[M]

Defragmenting the hard drive, even a heavily fragmented one, will not
improve efficiency.

It makes XP boot faster.

The NTFS system's "directory" and file layout is similar

to a relational database in that access time is virtually the same
irrespective of the data's location or fragmentation.

Likewise, registry "cleaning" or "compaction" has no detectable effect on
efficiency. The registry is not searched sequentially so its size is
irrelevant to proper or efficient operation of the computer.

Try "Hibernation" instead of "Shut down" to mitigate the slow start-up
symptom.

Walk around instead of a fix. Boring. To the OP, reinstall Windows,
Windows rot has set in big time.

M

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per (e-mail address removed):

Ya, just by copying them where you want them, I have nothing in My
Documents, Pictures, Music and so on, I save everything mostly to my
F:\ Drive

Poor arrangement of words by Yours Truly.

The utilities I was trying to refer to are those that create disc
images.

 

[S??hW0?ƒ]

Per (e-mail address removed):

Poor arrangement of words by Yours Truly.

The utilities I was trying to refer to are those that create disc
images.

Norton Ghost not good enough fer yas? We used that all teh tiem at
school to reimage teh computer labs.

^_^

 

[db]

there are many reasons why a computer
can become slow.

one way to double check performance is
to boot into the safe modes.

if the system is zippy quick in the safe
modes,

then you have eliminated 50 percent of
the possible problems that are causing
poor system performance.

--
db·´¯`·...¸><)))º>
DatabaseBen, Retired Professional
- Systems Analyst
- Database Developer
- Accountancy
- Veteran of the Armed Forces
- @Hotmail.com
- nntp Postologist
~ "share the nirvana" - dbZen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[HeyBub]

It makes XP boot faster.

I don't think so. The second thing that has to load is NTFS and it, in turn,
then loads everything it needs for subsequent access. Everything.