Anyone got any decent tips on speeding up windows XP? It seems to really drag recently, And if i have more than one application open it will usually crash... I run Avg, and spybot S+D weekly so i dont think its a virus or anything... Anyone got any ideas?
run a defrag go into msconfig and check your start up apps. see what's loading up when you boot up. download regclean and run it download bootvis and optimise your boot up times make sure all your drivers are up to date go to windows update and make sure you're all up to date with security fixes, etc if you don't know how to do this stuff then i or someone will explain. tbh it's probably something which is running in the background and chewing up all your memory....usually you'll find the culprit under msconfig/startup tab
The spec is pretty poor or so ive been hearing... It cant handle CS or any online games. 2.9ghz celeron, 256 meg ram, 160gig h/d Cr4p graphics card... Ive sorted msconfig, and ive got a registry cleaner aswell. Ill download that bootvis, and run a defrag see if that helps... How do you check your drivers are up to date?
use dxdiag to see specs of your computer and then go to websites for manufacturers such as your gfx card, sound card, motherboard chipset, etc and just download/install the latest versions for your model of hardware. you have enough ram to run the computer but the more apps you have open at the same time, the more it's going to lag when you switch between stuff. i would check your background apps and kill anything which is unecessary and chewing up too much memory and then add another 256mb (or more) to see if that improves things.
cntrl/alt/delete then click on the processes tab turning off certain services will also free up system resources but be very careful when doing this or you'll end up with things suddenly not working and be scratching your head. not the end of the world cos you can turn them back on again but obviously a pain if you don't know which service is affecting any problem you may encounter. if you want to have a butch then put services.msc into start > run.
ctrl+alt+del to find out what's running, do everything 'blocks says, and if it's still running slow, then put another 256mb of ram in, xp says it needs 256, but 512 is preferred.......
btw the answer to this is no - windows services are different and can be viewed under services.msc as previously described.
thanks peeps, it seems a bit quicker now. Think another stick of ram should sort the rest of the problems.
ram wise, xp basically need a minimum of 512mb to boot at full speed. 256mb slows my system down so much. when you run out of ram, the comp has to start using the hard drive storage space for RAM... it cannot access the HDD as quick as it accesses ram, hence the lag. 512mb is needed to make win run nicely. if you want to do games etc... you need more
