Need Help For Wife's Laptop

[MattKellett]

I know there's some smart computer guys here, so maybe someone might be able to give me some suggestions to speed up my wife's computer.

Here's the deal - Its an HP laptop, maybe 5 years old, 2.4 ghz celeron with 192 ram, running xp.

I dont use it much, but I am sure it never took so long to open programs or just do simple tasks. All the computer is used for is surfing the net and occasionally watching a video in the dvd or looking at photos from a digital camera.

Is there something I should be checking to make the performance better? I have run disk defragment which doesnt seem to make any difference. Is it possible the ram has gone bad or is 192 very small.

I really have no experience in how computers function, so any pointers would be gratefully apprieciated...... maybe just time for a new one!!!!


Many thanks
Matt

[Vipergrün]

Make sure things like Microsoft Office and other programs are NOT loading at start up. These essentially live in memory (RAM). If your physical memory (RAM) is fully utilized, you'll start using virtual memory (hard drive), which is much slower. If you hit ctl-alt-del, you should be able to bring up the task manager and see how much memory is being used, both real and virtual. Run a virus scanner and an adware scanner, either of these can cause problems.

Finally, with a decent laptop costing 500 bucks, they are pretty much disposable.

Good luck!

[schnellfahrer]

XP will wake up if you add RAM.
RAM is very cheap these days.
Over here you could get 512MB of quality RAM (Kingston, Trancend etc) for less than $50.
You should see a significant increase in performance.

[HardDrive]

Not nearly enough memory. I suspect that you have 256mb 'on board', so if you add 512mb to the expansion slot, that will give you a healthy 768mb.

If you don't already have an anti-spyware program, I would recommend using one to scan the machine. It might be chock full of junk. Try the free anti-spyware from grisoft.com.

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/download-free-anti-spyware/us/frt/0

Also, defragment the harddrive.

[azasadny]

Crucial.com will show you the max amount of RAM you can put in the laptop. If you plan on keeping it, max out the RAM. 5 years is very old for a PC, especially a laptop...

[Zeke]

I have over 60 processes running using half of my RAM at any given time. But how does one know what the file names mean?

[MAS956]

Try http://www.processlibrary.com/. Or just Google the process name.

[spuggy]

You need more memory. XP runs like a 3-legged dog with 512MB, much less 192.

Run 'msconfig'. Work out what is enabled under the Services/Startup tabs that you can do without. Switch them off. The default is pretty much to enable everything installed...

Use the System Restore points before making sweeping changes, in case you get a little too carried away and need to go back...

If you sometimes find that the computer is OK, and other times it crawls to a halt, check to see if drive indexing is crippling it. Switch it off (there's about 4 places you need to do this, BTW) if you can live without the file search. I got other ways to find files that work better for me...

Run a good anti-virus and let it scan the computer. You may be part of a bot army attacking web sites or sending spam - this will slow your computer quite a lot...

Get a registry de-fragger (CCleaner seems quite good and is free), and remove all the junk that bad installers left behind/de-fragment the registry files too. There's a process monitor program that showed me that XP spends almost all of it's time opening/reading/closing the registry to read keys - sometimes programs do this 3-4 times a second. Anything that slows down registry access adds up into a big deal.

Get a faster hard drive - like a 7200 RPM one, instead of the 5400 RPM one. More RAM helps a lot (by caching the disk into memory), but even with lots and lots of memory, you still need to access the disk for new sectors from time-to-time..

If all you do is surf the web, play DVD's and load stuff from a digital camera - put Linux or BSD on it. You can try a LiveCD to see how well it works for you without needing to blow away the software. Some of the recent work with Gnome and KDE desktop stuff has gone a long way to make it easier to use for non CS geek types.

My ex-work Latitude C640 ran XP poorly (2G RAM, 2Ghz P4). It's 10 times more responsive with FreeBSD on it, even with 25% of the memory (decent multi-tasking and process handling - MacOS has a FreeBSD-based kernel with Apple eyecandy). As an added bonus, I found that the network interface throughput is consistently 4 times faster on the same hardware when running a decent OS.

It's weird. It can be really tough to get/keep a 'Doze system running well after a while, and it gets really involved. Hence the frequent advice to re-install the OS - which works great until the Updates re-frag your registry...

But people think that *nix is "hard". Personally I find it way simpler to keep it running well. I've never had to punt and re-install a *nix-based OS (unless I made a grave error on some of the install choices), but sometimes it's just the fastest way to sort out a sick 'Doze installation...

If you get really stuck, find someone who knows what they're doing (e.g. not CompuWorld or Rat Shack) and pay them to look at it, if necessary. In the business world, the purchase price of the computer is reckoned to be 20% of the cost.

[MattKellett]

Many thanks for all the suggestions.

I am going to go out and buy some more RAM as its so cheap now, get the antivirus running correctly, right now I am using Trend Micro PC cillin. I'm also going to download ccleaner, that sounds like a great.

Wont change from XP for the time being. The funny thing is my wife doesnt think it's slow, I only noticed when updating the anti virus, as I never use this comp.

Many thanks again everyone

Matt

[azasadny]

I use AVG for antivirus as it doesn't eat as many resources as most AV software.

[Mule]

Originally Posted by milt

I have over 60 processes running using half of my RAM at any given time. But how does one know what the file names mean?

Get WinPatrol. It gives you complete control over startup programs. Cacheman & 1gb ram should make a difference as well. Get rid of Nortoon & McCrappy if you have them.

[Harold_89_911]

For most of my internet surfing I use a pretty old laptop. It's a Compaq Evo with 1.2 GHz Pentium III mobile with 256 Mb ram. I only have XP professional on it and MS Office XP with Acrobat 5 (purposely use an older, leaner version). For the internet I use Firefox and then CA for antivirus. I do a clean install pretty much every 6 months and don't save any data on it. It's working great this way; I can do streaming video and even watch a Netflix movie. I rarely ever shut it down and just keep it in sleep mode in between uses so I'm online is less than 15 seconds. My desktop is for everything else, such as movie editing and finances.

So my experience is that your wife's laptop should be plenty fast with 256 if you did a nice fresh install with XP and limit the amount of other stuff you install. Just give it a try and it will be like a new computer without spending any money...

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Mule

Get WinPatrol. It gives you complete control over startup programs. Cacheman & 1gb ram should make a difference as well. Get rid of Nortoon & McCrappy if you have them.

I looked into that. Didn't seem as user friendly as I might need it to be. What do you think?

The "process library" left me pretty much where I am now. Clueless.