1911 Beta

Ok, so I went to visit my dad and he asked me if I could take a look at his computer and figure out why it was running so slowly.

I obliged and did some normal computer maintenance, I uninstalled all the useless programs, ran a virus scan, ran a disk defrag and cleanup, cleaned up the start up programs, and downloaded a free registry error cleaner (Auslogics Registry Cleaner)

After all this the performance has hardly increased. It still takes a good minute or two for XP to get going after you log in. Then opening simple programs like IE or firefox takes a abnormally long time.

I would just reformat the computer, but we don't have any way to back up his files.

Any ideas?

did you clear all of the dust out of the case fans/heatsinks?

If you want, I have about 20 PATA hard drives laying around here. I can install xp on one and send it your way and you can just set the current drive to function as slave.

Start -> Run -> msconfig

On the services tab:
Anything that's unnecessary, set to manual and stop.

On the startup tab:
Uncheck anything that's unnecessary.

Basically, stop all the services and programs that aren't system-related from getting fired up when your user account logs in. See if this improves performance. If it doesn't, you know we're dealing with another issue.

Also, launch task manager before you open IE and look at memory and CPU usage while the computer lags.

Remember, Windows is a pretty expensive tool in terms of processor and memory usage. On older machines, booting just normally takes a long time. The best you can do is minimize the number of things it loads along with the operating system to cut down on that.

http://www.pchell.com/hardware/mastersl ... lect.shtml
changing your IDE HD role select jumpers can apparently reduce windows load time by up to 2 minutes.

Reduce the Number of Fonts installed
c:\windows\fonts
pull all the ones you think are unnecessary out to a backup folder and see how this affects boot time.

All this taken from a simple google search. come on now!

One time I installed 3000 fonts I got from some website... computer would load but photoshop was like fuuuuuuu

rofl that is an amazing FUDONTSTEALOURCONTENT picture.

NG, I appreciate the offer, however my dad lives in Holland. Shipping would be a bitch.

Scorch, I went and tried all those things to no avail. Thanks for your cal-i googling skillz though.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this computer just sucks?