Tips to speed up PC

D

damocci

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Hi fellas,

Recently my PC has slowed down drastically, it takes a good 5 to 10 min to boot up and get ready for use. I haven't installed any new programs except for Adobe Master Suite CS3 (which I'm now trying to uninstall, but it's taking HOURS to do).

Specs:
P4 3.0GHZ
1GB RAM
Windows XP

When I'm booting up, I bring up the task manager, and the CPU usage doesn't really go over 25%, and there's always about 600MB RAM available, but for literally 5 or 10 min I can't use the PC.

There're no viruses (scanned with AVG); no spyware / malware (scanned with Spyware Detector); no registry errors (fixed with RegCure). I'm at my wits end. I can't figure out how to make my PC as fast as it used to be. Any suggestions?
 
ok well first go to start run type msconfig

click on startup

untick anything u think is not worth loading, like all nvidia stuff all adobe stuff basically everything

things like mouse control panel you should keep

if that fails upgrade to 2 gig memory and reload your system

another thing get rid of spyware doctors and reg cure, use firefox with avg
 
I used to have a problem like this, just out of interest does your internet connection only come alive after this wait?

Basically it looks like it's loaded but nothing really works and internet is dead.
 
Check your drive speed with one of the many hard drive benchmarking tools. It may be on it's way out.
 
Get yourself TuneUp Utilities 2007.

I've got the same pc specs as yours & mine is flying with TuneUp, hey, I can even play Prey @ 1280 X 1024 with a Geforce 6600! I use the Registry Cleaner, Startup Manager, Registry Defrag & Disk Cleaner most. Works an absolute treat. ;-)
 
clean up your desktop & defrag

a few other solutions:
install Linux (my linux box boots in 1.5 minutes)
don't reboot :) (I suspend and resume my notebook, only reboot about once a month)
 
you need to do more than just defrag. u need to clean up your registry and remove programs you no longer need that's just taking up unnecessary space on ur pc and also bloating your registry. what i do is this...i clean up my registry and then defrag it; i defrag my partition with O&O Defrag 10 Professional; then i defrag my MFT and then i shrink my MFT with Paragon Total Defrag 2007. this all helps to speed up my/ur pc. also note that there are various modes to defrag ie: putting directories first or putting most recently accessed files first. you gotta find out how you use your pc and do the relevant type of defrag as your performance of ur pc will depend on ur mode of defrag ie: no sense in putting directories first if u copy more and more stuff to the pc everyday.
 
I'm using Diskeeper Pro, nice to be able to defrag all my hard drives (four) at once!
 
If you suspect a virus i suggest
AVG Free
&
Zone Alarm Pro
They have done wonders for me :) (I Recovered from multible win32.virut(s) in 5 days)
 
damocci said:
Hi fellas,

Recently my PC has slowed down drastically, it takes a good 5 to 10 min to boot up and get ready for use. I haven't installed any new programs except for Adobe Master Suite CS3 (which I'm now trying to uninstall, but it's taking HOURS to do).

Specs:
P4 3.0GHZ
1GB RAM
Windows XP

When I'm booting up, I bring up the task manager, and the CPU usage doesn't really go over 25%, and there's always about 600MB RAM available, but for literally 5 or 10 min I can't use the PC.

There're no viruses (scanned with AVG); no spyware / malware (scanned with Spyware Detector); no registry errors (fixed with RegCure). I'm at my wits end. I can't figure out how to make my PC as fast as it used to be. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

reinstall your windows or rebuild your user profile.
 
Start from scratch

halicon said:
reinstall your windows or rebuild your user profile.
Click to expand...

What he said. It's the best cure ever;).

When reinstalling, try to not install as many apps as you did before. if you do, and u do uninstalls, make sure it's fully uninstalled. Do regular windows updates (but read about 'em, as there's been lotsa spying by MS lately. But ofcourse their progs aren't illegal, cause it's by MS :mad: )

And last but not least, my good friend that I've been using for a year now, System Mechanic Pro. It's the 1st prog that works for me. :D ... It has lotsa tools in it. Even a start-up booster, and a speed optimizer etc. And no, this is not an advert. :D. I got the same specs as u, and my PC boots in less than 45secs (maybe even less than 30secs, I'll time it next time;)). So it must be working ;) and it's the only prog that didn't crash my pc, yet. Before that, I rebuilt my pc every month.

!!(I forgot to mention, if you have MS Office, remove that from ur startup. I think that's the biggest drag, and should cut ur 10minute bootup by 8 mins.)!!
 
gamad said:
What he said. It's the best cure ever;).

When reinstalling, try to not install as many apps as you did before. if you do, and u do uninstalls, make sure it's fully uninstalled. Do regular windows updates (but read about 'em, as there's been lotsa spying by MS lately. But ofcourse their progs aren't illegal, cause it's by MS :mad: )

And last but not least, my good friend that I've been using for a year now, System Mechanic Pro. It's the 1st prog that works for me. :D ... It has lotsa tools in it. Even a start-up booster, and a speed optimizer etc. And no, this is not an advert. :D. I got the same specs as u, and my PC boots in less than 45secs (maybe even less than 30secs, I'll time it next time;)). So it must be working ;) and it's the only prog that didn't crash my pc, yet. Before that, I rebuilt my pc every month.

!!(I forgot to mention, if you have MS Office, remove that from ur startup. I think that's the biggest drag, and should cut ur 10minute bootup by 8 mins.)!!
Click to expand...

System Mechanic is great, used it before, but found that TuneUp offers me more....

I'm too scared to do a reinstall right now, think I'll wait for Windows XP SP3 before I attempt that....don't want to waste all my bandwidth on Windows updates after a reinstall. SP3 should be out beginning of next year.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I defraged and it runs quicker now, but the start is still longer than I'm comfortable with (I can finish an entire cigarrette waiting for it to get ready).

I'll try some of the other tips and see if I can get anywhere. The thing that bugs me is that during starup I have at least 70% of my CPU available, and only about 400MB of my 1GB of RAM is being used up. That and I have 13GB free on my primary 40GB HD, and about 20GB on my 160GB slave.
 
Delete all the files in your windows\prefetch directory and reboot, those files will be replaced and should help with boot times.
The most sure fire way to fix it is to lob everything on your 160GB drive and format your primary and re-install. I re-install every 6 months regardless and it keeps things running nicely.
 
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