Slow computer

[Two Rivers]

What makes a computer run Soooooooooooow. Its a 2000 Dell Dimension. CPU? Memory? Seems like it goes to sleep between pages. If I am on ebay and want to look at an item I go get a cup of coffee after clicking on the item. Time for a MAC? Windows XP on it now,service pac 3.

[Joeaksa]

Need more info.

Have you ever defragged it? How full is the hard drive? How much memory.

As for the connection speed, are you using dial up, DSL or cable? What speed are you connecting at?

Also have you ever formatted it and installed the OS (XP) again? You need to do this around every year to get good performance, letting it sit there as is just slows it down.

A 2000 model of any computer is about 6 years too old to tell the truth. Buy a new one every 3-4 years or get ready to be doing a lot in the background while the computer, any computer, chuggs along.

[Gogar]

2000

[74-911]

Did the slowdown happen suddenly or just over a period of time? If it happened over a period of time, Joe's last diagnosis is probably the problem/solution.

You might check your firewall / anti-virus setup. I ran ZoneAlarm and AVG for years on my XP OS with no problems. Back in January or so AVG released a new version. After loading it the machine was so slow it was unusable. Seems there was a serious conflict between ZoneAlarm and the new AVG. I downloaded AVAST for my anti-virus, uninstalled AVG and all is well again.

[Por_sha911]

Joe is spot on. Although you don't have to format and reload every year it can help clean up messes (especially since you are probably running Win ME). Do you have any error messages or crashes? If so then definitely format/reload.
That said, immediately you can defrag your hard-drive, run several strong malware cleaners (I like Ad-Aware and Malwarebytes), delete all cookies and temp files, and use a registry cleaner. Malware will slow you web speed to a crawl.

Putting aside your connection speed, you probably have a wimpy video card with not much (or no) memory and that will make screen refreshes slow. CPU speed will affect memory intensive stuff like videos, games and Photoshop but shouldn't affect web access too much.

Lastly, have you done any updating lately? My 3 Meg DSL was suddenly running at 1/2 Meg. It turned out to be a bum install of Java was killing my speed. I used System Restore to get to a point before the Java update and it is back at full speed.

[gr8fl4porsche]

Are you saying the computer was purchased in 2000?

10 yr old computers cannot handle the modern Internet. Too much action on web pages for your 256mb of ram, slow processor, tired video card and ancient system board.

Time to upgrade.

You will love Win 7 and 4-6 gigs of ram.

[gr8fl4porsche]

Don't upgrade parts though- scrap the old box and start fresh.

[Two Rivers]

Thanks..This was given to me after the flood of 08 stole the lap top. Off to best buy to update to another PC. Thanks again

[Joeaksa]

If you want to save it for another year, save the info you need off of it, format and reload XP. That will get you going again until December.

Then pore over the holiday sales and get a newer machine. Should cost around $4-500 and be light years ahead of what you are using now.

Once you get a second computer, network the two together (after formatting the old one) and use the 2000 model as storage and backup. Covers your rear in case the newer one dies and you still have your data stored.

[RWebb]

I use Partition Magic to create different logical drives. I try to keep the OS on C: and nothing else; appls. go on a different drive and different data types go on others.

That makes it easy to wipe C: and not lose everything else.

[nynor]

Originally Posted by rwebb

i use partition magic to create different logical drives. I try to keep the os on c: And nothing else; appls. Go on a different drive and different data types go on others.

That makes it easy to wipe c: And not lose everything else.

+1

[RWebb]

come to think of it - you might speed things up just by closing all the apps & restarting the computer

"hooks" into memory not always closing when an app. shuts down - can build up over time

[slodave]

A lot of good advice, but I strongly recommend checking the hard drive to see if it's bad before formatting, reinstalling... Doing this day in ad day out, there was a time that I routinely skipped this and found myself finding out an hour later, after fighting with formats, installs, that the HD was bad... In certain failures, a HD will continue to run, not causing Windows to crash, but start up may take forever, the pc runs extremely slow...

Granted with a pc that is from 2000, it's best to to just toss it and get current...