Windows XP forum: Windows XP computer still runs slow even after a clean install?!

High Desert Charlie- THIS IS A COMPLETE AND CLEARLY EXPLANATION OF WHY A FRESH XP INSTALLATION HAS FAILED , CONNGRATULATIONS FOR THIS ANSWER, THE BEST

My HP Pavilion a810n is 6-1/2 years old with "thousands" of hours on it. 2 weeks ago I got the ominous "Blue screen", after many crashes. I had been able to restart it myself in the past, but this time it refused to boot all the way. It would stop part way thru the boot and lock up. So I took it to Staples where they did a "Diagnostic" test to tell me what was wrong with it. They determined that all of my hardware was good and the problem was a glitch in a Windows "update". It took them 2 weeks, but they corrected the problem and it is now running well, possibly a tad faster than before. Because the machine is so old, I told them to install a new hard drive, but they talked me out of it! They said that because my machine was so old, a new hard drive MIGHT have some incompatablities with other hardware in my machine. They told me to just run it until it fails and get a new machine at that time. A new 500GB hard drive would have cost me $180 w/installation and moving everything on mine to the new one, and I could buy a NEW HP better than mine without a monitor for $400. Economically, it made sense to me so I'm going to run it till it quits.

For those old PCs that have old hard drives you want to get faster by upgrading to SATA, there does exist SATA controlers available on PCI boards (in fact those boards are mostly used for the case where you need more SATA controlers on new PCs that are frequently shipped with only 2 SATA connectors and a single SATA controler.

Many PCs, even the newest ones (excluding notebooks), have at least one PCI slot available for that sort of extension.

A conditional alternative is to use external hard drives (on USB2 port), but not all old PCs are able to boot from disks on USB, and use that reliable for running Windows. And if your USB connector is not at least USB2, the performance will be poorer than with existing IDE/PATA drives.

Here again, there also exists USB2 adapters for PCI slots. There even exists "combo" boards for PCI slots that include controlers and connectors for both USB2 and SATA extensions (sometime even with eSATA, because a lot of PCs sold today do not provide eSATA connectors). This may be valuable even if later you choose to upgrade to a newer PC (but warning: the standard PCI slot will probably be dying soon, because of USB3 which is more universal and offer now faster bandwidth : ther will probably never exist USB3 adapter for PCI slots because of that ; but may be I'm wrong and some peopel will need it for interoperability reasons).

Also at times some of the updates will contine to try loading and will always seem to fail one for me was frame.net. After it attempted to about 30 times. But it really does not matter since Microsft no longer supports XP for free that should tell you that it might be time to move on to Windows 7 seems many websites are switching over and XP have conflicts when going to these websites at least for me running xp is... slow to load and script errors when they worked fine prior...

With paying for support for XP they are trying to tell us something... at $49.00 an hour....

Only I have old machines that lack the hardware to run Windows 7 so buying a new computers is not in the budget... So I will be behind like I have been with many things like Office 2007 since my company has switched to get it emails are working maybe half the time among other issues...

Changes make it hard to keep up with older software...

1Mike 123

There are still too many variables here so a lot more information is needed:

1) 2 GB of RAM is a bit slow for a fast processor like yours. You should launch the Task Manager and look at performance info. Are you CPU-bound? Memory-bound? How idle is your CPU? Sort the processes by the CPU column and see what is running at the top of the list (most CPU).

2) Your disk: Have you tested it yet to see how fast it is compared to other drives? Are you getting any errors (even "soft errors" can really slow things down.

3) How big is your paging file? Is Windows managing it or are you? If it is too small or non-existent? That could be a big issue.

4) Are you running a GOOD anti-virus? The cheaper ones may run slower. Or you might not be on the latest and greatest. I'm assuming you did not overload the computer with a lot of different malware programs. Have one that does it all.

5) Big issue: Is your hard drive encrypted (should be if you have personal financial data or are running a laptop). Depending on the brand, this could slow things down. Certainly don't over-encrypt the drive. One encryption type (such as AES-256) should be enough. Is bi

6) Compression: If your files are compressed, that could be a good or bad thing. Compressed files take less I/O time to write to the disk or read from it, but take more CPU to handle the compression. Some files you should NOt compress, such as Windows System files or databases or anything that is going to be used a LOT!

7) How loaded is your hard drive. Ideally, you should have less than 50% of the disk full of stuff.

8) Network: How fast is your network running? Are you wireless, meaning slow network speeds (56K bps) or do you have 100+ mbps? How fast is your internet connection? Are you secure enough that your neighbors are not using your network?

9) Do you have a LOT of stuff running in the background? Are you downloading all the time? Watching movies?

10) Are you seeing errors in the Event Viewer? Is your system clock OK. Are you running Hi-Res graphics?

Some suggestions:

Start simple! Look through the event viewer for anything that doesn't seem right. Look at the tabs in the task manager to see if you are dealing with CPU, Memory, Network, or I/O. Sorting processes by CPU should help.

Run a full hardware check. There are probably a lot of hardware testers you can buy or download.

See if you have a friend who can lend you more memory, just to see if it improves anything. If you are running XP 32-bit (you'd know if it was 64-bit), then you are going to be limited to 3.something GB.

Have you done any "upgrades" such as memory or something else about the time this started? Maybe you got something that doesn't work together with the rest of your system.

Check cable connections (especially network). Are any cables damaged?

Good Luck!

Really take a loo

Actually, the way Windows XP manages its data caches can effectively become a problem when it constantly spreads files throughout the surface, in a highly fragmented way, including for NTFS index structures, and NTFS journaling logs. With 2GB of memory, the cache will frequently become inefficient in order to allocate space, or just to maintain and rered a highly fragmented allocation bitmap in memory: it causes excessive paging on any system partition larger than about 100GB, if the drive is filled at more than 50%.
Harddisks are not the source of the problem: whatever their technology, the NTFS driver in Windows XP performs poorly and incorectly manages its I/O priorities and flushes essential sector caches too often by not prioritizing them correctly.

OK, 2GB was OK for the memory when XP was initially released, but with today's harddisk sizes (and the explosion of the code size in applications, and even in the OS through service updates, notably in Microsoft .Net components, which are increasingly being used, and are often installed with multiple parallel versions, incliding for the OS components themselves), this is become very small.

This is even more critical if you use Windows builtin Search indexing engine (which is extremely poor in XP: prefer another solution such as Google Desktop on XP, which runs much more smoothly, or adjust the settings of the Windows Search engine so that it will not index eveything in your drive, or even in your user's documents (you may exclude some archival directories, notably those where you store photos, musics, videos, or even some games saved data which may be very complex and large in some games).

On the opposite, I don't think that other optional services and startp programs installed by default in XP are causing a major performance problem. If, when disabling them all with the MsConfig tool, you don't see any performance gain, it is more likely that you have hardware problems, or problems in the BIOS settings for our memory, CPU, hard disk interface or working mode, or in some temperature monitoring.

You may also need to look at the SMART status of your harddrive, to see if it's not declining. Try to also run CheckDisk to perform a full scan, and look at the reported bad sectors. A damaged or incorrectly mounted cable to your harddisk may also be an issue.

Look also in the BIOS screen for the PC Helath status, notably sensors of temperature and fans. And make sure that yyou have restored the hardware defaults in BIOS settings (most of these advanced settings are for tuning with legacy devices, but given your processor type, I don't thnk this is an issue). Beware of some tweaking tools that are trying to adjust some BIOS settings. Your PC should still run well with the defaults

Also check if you PC is still slow when you have unplugged all USB devices.

I too have a slow running XP machine that has only recently started to be so. Boot up time is terrible, all cleaned up etc. But my cynic's eye suspects MS themselves. The last thing they want would be a large XP legacy when they stop supporting the OS in a year or so. (Hardly any updates now anyway).
So why not slip in a little bit of code that just slows things up and encourage users to upgrade to 7 sooner rather than later?
MS (and Apple) make their money selling new software, not supporting old software. Cannot understand the need to keep updating OS anyway. 95 would probably still suffice for my purposes. Why is there not an annual fee option that secures ongoing support? (Cynic again - the markets see new sales as a barometer of corporate success or failure - silly me!) I'm seriously considering Linux.
RichardS

What you're talking about is called "paranoid delusional conspiracy theories."

Maybe while visiting Linux websites they slipped in a virus to slow down your Windows computer so that you'd switch to Linux.

Hi Richard,

I too am keen to learn Linux. Where can one start?


Thanks and best wishes,


Singh

Dear Verdyp,

I am going to try your suggestion first thing tomorrow morning.


In case I have difficulties understanding the stuff, when I try installing Linux, I will get back to you immediately.


If you have any other suggestions till then, do post them.


Thanks friend and best wishes,


Singh.

I did not catch you Hdd size..but first of all Does your Pc support 2Gb System memory?...run memory check...it reads 2 Gb..but could be using 1Gb..try using the C:/ Partition..don't make partitions..(After format it ask you)...DO ALL UPDADTES(maybe more than 110..all together..if use Sp2 Cd..jump to Sp3(doing the updates) DO NOT USE REGISTRY CLEANER..(some times do(Ccleaner) I expect you Xp Cd is original..Key # etc.....go for

Most OEM preinstallations of Windows include at least a licence of a commercial antivirus (generally a trial version, which means that you can use it for at least 3 months (most often Norton).
If this is enough to start using the PC safely and configure it like you want with security, this licence won't be valid when you later need to reinstall your PC using the manufacturer's system image saved on the restoration partition and/or the supplied DVD (or the DVD you must burn yourself as a backup of the hidden system restoration partition).
This means that you'll resintall the PC without a working antivirus (no more updates of the old database). But the same will be true if you reinstall Windows from a retail version of Windows from Microsoft.

OK, it's generally better to reinstall Windows without the many crapwares and trial softwares preinstalled by the manufacturer. But you'll still need to install early an antivirus, before installing anything else, except all the critical Windows Updates (all those that are preselected, including Service Packs)

I recommend not using the retail Windows DVD you have, and instead you reinstall Windows from the latest image of Windows downloaded from Microsoft as an ISO file, on another PC, and mount this ISO file in a virtual DVD, just to copy/paste all files contained in the image onto an USB drive that you'll use to reinstall your PC with all Service Packs included ; you may also burn this ISO on a DVD yourself (in both cases, you'll need the licence number : your OEM licence (with the "genuine Winfows" licence key printed on the sticker shipped with your PC) will be accepted by this cleaner Microsoft version of Windows.

A few non essntial devices may not work with the Retail Microsoft version of Windows alone, because some device drivers are not shipped by Microsoft. This is generally the case for some USB devices other than USB drives and most mice (for example a Flash card reader, or a webcam). And your graphics adapter will be supported but will not necessarily include the best display resolution (notably on notebooks with wide displays) :

Just go to the manufacturer site after finishing the installation to get the last version of the display driver, and possibly of some motherboard controlers, but only after you have finished installing Windows, all its system updates, and the antivirus of YOUR choice (I really recommend Avast, or Avira Antivir, which IMHO are the best free antivirus suites that are even better than many paid versions of other wellknown security suites).

If you still have used the OEM DVD to reintall Windows, avoid using any carpware included (don't even configure them if you are asked to !), fix immediately all Service Packs, then all the remaining Windows updates, then uninstall the trial antivirus, and install the new one. Then uninstall all the crapware you don't want.

And in all cases, after performing the above, defragment your disk completely. Miscrosoft's defragmenter is really poor : download "MyDefrag" from a safe site (as always, avoid searching random sites by searching on generic internet search sites, even on Google : if you don't know the manufaturer site, visit CNET, read the evaluations, and the adress of the original site that you'll visit to get the latest version) and use the "Monthly System Disk Defragment" option in the menu of MyDefrag ; then reboot Windows, and rerun the same option of this defragmenter.

Finally once the dis kis defragmented, setup a default minimum paging file on your disk, using the System control panel (advanced settings) : locate this paging file preferably on the first partition of the disk, because it wil be faster there (near the begining of the disk, i.e. within the first 30% of the total disk space), but if ou have a second **hardware** drive permanently installed (not an USB drive!), select the first partition of that disk to locate the paging file.

The paging file should have a minimum size at least twice your total RAM (with 2GB RAM, set the minimum paging filesize to 4GB, with 4GB RAM, in fact only 3.5GB on a 32-bit version of Windows, set the minimum paging filesize to 7GB), and set the maximum size to between 2 and 4 times of the minimum size (but this extra size will rarely be usd, except in rare conditions with some softwares which use a lot of working memory, such as video editing softwares, or some advanced painting sofwares allowing you to manage lots of unsaved images in work buffers, or some complex spradsheets with lots of data tables containing tens of thousands rows).

All "clean" installs of Windows, which immediately must be followed by a long series of Windows Updates installs and reboots as needed, will live your system installed but with a highly frgmented disk state.
In addition, Windows XP will not preinstall a static swap file for the memory manager, and the default dunamic file will also add to the constantly fragmenting disk.

Once you've finished the long setup and all recommended Windows updates, you'll immediately need an antivirus. Avoid Norton as the plague, not only it is expensive, but it will severely slow down your system. Even several Free antivirus tools will work better than Norton. Windows Live Antivirus is also really slow and very poor at detecting issues. Some of the best wellknown antivirus suites that I have used are AVG Antivirus and Avira Antivirus, but now their daily updates are quite slow to be performed and annoying, even though these programs are really low in resource usage and have quite good detection results (Avira Antivirus is probably better). But since about one year, I have found that Avast! Antivirus is also excellent (in terms of detection, and scanning speed, with low resource usage) but also now much better than the two previeous ones to perform its daily updates (and easier to manage when updates are installed as most of them will not require you to reboot too often). Make your choice within them. Give a try for your preference (you may change your mind later, but NEVER use multiple antivirus engines installed on the same machine: always uninstall the existing antivirus after installing the new one!)

(Note that if you ever wonder if you'd upgrade from XP to Vista, don't do that! Vista is really slow, even with the best performance tweaks; only Windows 7 is worth the vaue and will actually improve the performance, but before that you'll still need an upgrade to at least 4GB of memory where Windows 7 will be MUCH more performant than XP and even more than Windows Vista which is always the slowest one). Windows 7 is very worth the value for performance gain, stability and inscreased security (you can buy it online from Microsoft, where you can even download it for free to get a try with a FREE temporary licence key that will work for 3 months). Don't fear of not having a DVD for it, you can just keep your paid licence key and redownload Windows 7 free from Microsoft where it has the bonus that the downloaded image always contains the last released Service Pack built in (which will save you with a long series of Windows updates after the initial clean install).

You'll then immediately a ***safe*** registry cleaner to fix lots of registry errors left after even a clean installation of Windows and all its Windows updates. I really recommend using CCleaner, because it is iextremely simple and really safe to use, with just its default settings (you may learn later if you need to adjust some settings): just click the button first to perform hard disk cleanup of junk files (there are lots remaining thourhout the disk after any clean install). Then click on the button to scan registry errors. All of them can be applied safely. Many of users have used it (including myself and many people in my neighborhood) without finding any issue with the proposed fixes. I've constantly applied all the fixes without worrying, even if the program proposes you to crate a backup of settings that will be fixed (I've never had to get back using any one of theses backups). The program is safe in Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

Then you'll need another defragmenter than the one that comes with Windows. All tests made by independant testers on various configurations have show that the best performing one, which results in the best performance gains, is "MyDefrag". Here again, NEVER install multiple defragmenters, because each one will try to install its own daily defragmentation task, that will compete each other with their own file ordering rules. MyDefrag comes with a very basic interface, may be it's not very cute to look at, but I don't care about that, it works perfectly and produces one of the best results in the system boot time, with the smallest number of files remaining fragmented and the lowest number of gaps.

Then, after you've performed the first "Monthly System Disk defragmentation" (which will make some time to complete), reboot once. Rerun once again the CCleaner disk cleaner, and immediately again the Monthly System Disk defragmentation" with MyDefrag.

This done, open the System Control panel, and adjust he advanced Performance settings, and create a static swap file, which should be about 3GB in size for its minimum size (you may set the maximum size to about the double or triple of your RAM size, this size will be dynamically allocated if ever you need it). If you upgrade your RAM to 4GB instead of 3GB, you'll need to increase the swap file minmum size to at least this size, so may be it is worth creating the filesize immediately to 4GB minimum, 8GB maximum.

Note that if you want to adjust the size of the static swap file, you should only do that after you have run a pass of the defragmenter, and never change directly from a static file size to another static file size, otherwise this swpa file will be fragmented: first reset the setting to dynamic size, reboot as indicated, defragment wiht MyDefrag, and then apply the new static swap file size, and reboot as indicated.

And of course there are a few things that should be disabled in the default services installed: Windows Search in Windows XP is really slow and consuming too much space on disk; the newer Windows Live Search is not even better. On XP, I've found Google Desktop to be much better than equivalent products from Microsoft without being a performance hog.

There are a few other things to ckeck: re-registering the dll's used by IE is probably good (for strange reasons, when applying various Windows Updates, some of its settings often get corrupted). But anyway, IE is really slowand will not be realy better on XP where IE8 is a bit limited, and IE9 is may be good, but not really built to work well on XP, that Microsoft no longer supports with high-quality and high-performance system updates). In addition, it is a nightmare to maintain it updated as it requires rebooting too often. Live that for Windows Updates and change your browser for a trouble-free one that updates almost instantly.

Anyway, XP is dying. Microsoft no longer creates quality patches and Windows Updates for it, it just publishes a few basic Windows Updates without caring about keeping its performance or the comptibility with installed programs. Consider upgrading to Windows 7 after going with the 4GB RAM update. you should have absolutely no problem given the generation of your processor (and thus your motherboard).

It could be that your computer is out of date

With the size of your CPU and RAM, you shouldn't be having problems,best thing to try is a clean install on another HDD,or a possible BIOS update,you could also reset the CMOS and update date & time . boot priority etc; I've just performed a clean install of XP Pro and over 100 automatic updates were available,so MS is still offering support for this OS. XP is still one of the best systems,it will run happy on the minimum RAM and Graphics. So experiment before you spend any money. Good luck.