Windows XP Home Edition Slow Down

[ueci319]

I have two coworkers that have XP Home. They are experiencing a noticable slow down in their machines. Both machines are about 1 year old. They are 1.6 Ghz or higher with at least 256 mb ram. I haven't worked with XP to a great extent. Any suggestions on what to look for?

[KenKun]

I have a C2.4GHz laptop with 256MB RAM at work and it is SLOW compared to my P3 1GHz with 512MB RAM laptop..
I know that slipping another 256MB stick of RAM will speed things up very noticeably ...
So, upgrading the RAM is the way to go ..

You can also try disabling unnecessary tasks from running up at startup to save up your resources ....

Welcome to TechIMO

[ueci319]

Thanks!

[Patrick]

If they were running at X with 256Mb of RAM and now they're running at .5X with the same memory, then memory isn't the problem. If it's in a work environment I would suspect there hasn't been proper maintenance.

I would suggest:
Go to Add/Remove and remove any programs that have been added that aren't needed.
Go to MSConfig and stop programs loading at startup that aren't needed every time you start the machine.
If the computers are connected to the internet run Adaware and Spybot and clean out the spyware.
Defrag the hard drives.

See if that makes a difference.

[Dooin' it]

I will second the suggestion to "tweak XP"!!

I've run XP home (SP1 w/ all updates) using.............

256mb Kingston PC2100
512mb Kingston PC2100
256mb Dell (oooh....aaaahhh) PC2700
512mb Dell (oooh....mmmmm) PC2700
and (hold on to your butts)......
512mb Geil Golden Dragon PC3500 (2 x 256mb) (Chheeeyaaaa....excellent....<Mike Meyers inflection>)

and I haven't seen a single, solitary, bonified, absolutely, positively, 100% assured (pronounced assur-ed like an Englishman) difference whatsoever!!!

Unless you're running EQ *and* UT on a NIC purging several NSP's e-mailing the WFU whilst viewing TRL on the MTV via your TVI off the CAT5 thru the DSL on your DVI/VGA dongle then I don't think the whole (gotta be minimum 512mb ram) conspiracy theory don't hold a glass of H2O........

(Sorry guys, feelin' in rare form today........I'll be here all week..........don't forget to tip your waitress!!)