Could use some help with a laptop problem
 

I've got a Sony laptop Pentium2 running windows 98. It's running slower than anything I've ever seen. Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot this thing?

1. Disk Cleanup
2. Defrag
3. Spyware remover

Then,
4. Look at the swap drive/paging file allocation
5. If all else fails, re-format and reinstall Windoze.

Load a flavor of Linux on it.

I would skip directly to step 5, and I would not re-install 98, install XP. That being said, because of a lack of drivers, it can be a pain to sort out an XP install on an older laptop because of driver issues.

How about step 6?

6. Wipe drive, re-install 98. Donate to charity and take tax break, get new computers.





(PS-Sony computers are utter *****e, and their BLOWS)

Kevin,

Everything that Don says is right on, as well as see what is running upon startup. Look at the lower right corner of your screen and identify the icons.

If your hard drive is full then it will run slower as well.

Beyond that, W98 is really old and how long has this computer been running with this load of W98? If more than a year or two then its time to save everything, format the hard drive and reload it again. You would really be surprised at how much faster it will be when its done over again. What HD said is also correct and if its really old it might be time to upgrade.

JoeA

This is a typical garage find. probably hasn't been booted up in years. I was just trying to save it for my kid.

If its not going to be connected to the internet, you might be able to salvage the 98 install.

I did not realize this was not for your day to day use. I put a win2000 pro install on an ancient Compaq for my daughter to run her Winnie the Pooh games. Works just fine. No internet connection.

Kevin,

In this case, I would really format it anyway. If you do not know what all is on there, then there might be something NOT meant for kids, if you know what I mean.

Format it, put W98 or W2000 on it and let them have fun. Its not a big deal to do... If you need help lots of us here can help you with it.

JoeA

Once I got this up and running it shows that the os is XP Pro.
What does it mean when I run the task manager and it shows 27 "processes", cpu usage 18% but no applications running?

What process is causing the 18% use? How many megs of RAM?

How do I find out which process is running?

64 megs ram

Task Manager -> Process tab. Look to see if one or more processes under CPU is constantly using 18%. The CPU load should go up and down a bit, but constantly stay at one level unless a program is running. Ugh, I'm hungry, this barely makes sense....

Dave

Hit the "Control, alt and delete" buttons at the same time. New window opens up and look under the "processes" window...

I just noticed also that according to the system properties this is a Pentium 11 processor 364 MHz with 64 MB ram
can you run XP Pro on a 364MHz ?

While in the task manager I see that the highest cpu usage is by "system idle process" 70% is this acceptable?

PII with 64Mb RAM? I'm surprised it booted XP at all.

Since I don't recommend throwing any money into the computer (i.e. for memory), format the drive and install W98 or W2K. Should get you a few months of grins from your kid.

Thats most likely what I'll do. No sense spending money on a garage find laptop. Thanks all for the help.

System idle process should always be high when no applications are running. 64 megs is not enough for WinXP. Chances are the laptop won't handle the amount of RAM needed by XP.

Dave

Throw it away! Don't you know you're supposed to buy a new PC every time a new version of Windows comes out? Seriously, you've probably spent more time than the laptop is worth just trying to get it to run decently. Old computers have a way of wasting your time and $... ask me how I know!

Max out your memory (RAM) and load XP. Also make sure your hard drive has enough free space to handle swapping. There are a few vendors on Ebay that sell RAM and drives very inexpensively. I was ready to toss an older Dell and this approach made it perform quite decently. I was on an old W98 install as well.

I think if you were to remove everything and reinstall Win 98, and then only load an older version of office, excel and word, it could be a nice computer again. It probably has a lot of "stuff" loaded on it and just does not have the processor or the ram or the HD to handle it all.

It should be as fast as it was new, and it will never be better than that.
I doubt that its processor or its HD will handle XP

It had a bunch of garbage in the start up file and something in the msconfig about loading windows services which I deactivated and now it boots quickly. The h/d is only about 32% full. I ran the defrag even though it said it didn't need it. This will be fine for my kid to play her games and do some homework on. I've got no intention of using this for net access so I think it should do fine.