If a thread on this topic has been started elsewhere, apologies are offered in advance.

My Windows XP Home Edition runs slowly. Even after defragmenting, checking for removal of spyware, it can run at a crawl.

It would be a wonderful thing if there could be a "turbo" button to get XP to run in a "lean and mean" mode, meaning everything is turned off that is not necessary for me to be running.

Three questions:

1) what's the best way to find out what's slowing things down? Remember, the system is running at a crawl, so trying an extremely lengthy list of things following an extremely involved procedure is going to be time prohibitive.

2) what's the best way to configure XP so that it runs in a "lean" or "light" mode, where as few processes as possible are running?

3) are there any programs that anyone has tried that are commercially available and which can make XP really run?

Any and all help appreciated. I've been dealing with this problem for years, ever since XP first came out, and it would - really - be a great thing to get this figured out!

JAJansenJr
JAJansenJr@gmail.com
quickly?

What are the specs of your computer? how long has this been going on for?

It depends on your hardware. We need more information.

Usually reinstalling the OS is the only thing that will make a computer run faster.

ok first u need to system resources.memory howmuch u have, hdd space how big is it compare to your pagefiles. then u have to clean up autostart programs bot in msconfig and the registry. clean temp directories and temp internet files and dont forget the prefetch directory. defrag with a commercial program like diskeeper, as for service to stop and start follow this link
http://www.liutilities.com/products/...rocesslibrary/

give a break down off all processes that you might find on windows

Computer is a Pentium IV 1.3GHz 384 Meg RDRAM. Hard drive is 60 Gig. Has anyone tried all solid state flash drives as their main hard drive? The old slow hard drive has to be part of the problem. Processes show more than 2 pages - best way to share details would be to do a screen capture and post the image but can I post an image here? This has been going on since XP came out and I loaded it on my system. Would really like to avoid reloading the OS (and XP SP2) as this would take a bunch of time - and - I have no reason to think but that the problem would still be with me.

JAJansenJr
JAJansenJr@gmail.com

Your hardware is more than enough to run XP at a reasonable speed. No, flash drives cannot be used as main hard drives, at least not yet. Over 2 pages of processes? There's your problem, you have too many applications running, probably most you don't use or need.

There's two things I recommend doing. One is to back up your data and reinstall the operating system. Two is to go in a delete any unused files, uninstall unnecessary programs. Try killing some of those processes, that's way too many.

Yes you can post pictures here.

yeah, thats not an amazing spec but it should be able to run XP for general internet/word processing stuff

my guess if youve just got too much crap running.

Use add/remove to get rid of any stuff you dont need

at first glance ,i would say get a ram upgrade ,to at least 1 gig ,When do you notice the slowness the most ,If its the internet ,you have to remember that maybe you didn't update any of your software ,But todays internet software is a major upgrade for your computer Re: IE 7,Java and all the Flash type programs and flash s--it on the internet to-day,and you may have to consider upgrading you old P4, 1.3 to get the speed you are looking for.

Anyway with what you have i would use CCleaner to clean any unneeded temp file and other crap ,and regestry cleaning ,safe program i use all the time .
also a scan with Spybot 'search and destroy .
Also a scan with, Free fully working demo Trojan Hunter .

Trojan
hunter download .
http://www.soft82.com/download/Windows/TrojanHunter
Trojan hunter update ,do this before you scan.
http://www.misec.net/trojanhunter/updating/

Spybot an CCleaner can be found at www.filehippo.com

He cant. RAMBUS ram is ridiculusly expensive as they dont make it anymore. The cost of 1gb of RAMBUS would be the price of a new PC.

An unbloated XP can run on 384 just fine for websurfing asnd office tasks

I missed the Rambus ram sorry.im actually loading win98 on a p4 1.6 as wee speak that has 4 sticks of 128,meg of rambus ram.i just bough the tower for $68.00 CDN,

why windows 98?