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[amigadave]

About a year ago I took advantage of a company/government group buy discount from Dell and purchased what was to be my ultimate desktop computer that would hopefully last me several years into the future and satisfy my work computing needs. Having the newest and highly regarded Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 2gb of RAM and a pair of high end graphics cards, I thought it would be the fastest computer I had ever experienced. At first I did nothing to test the speed of this monster, but then reluctantly, I let my 13 year old son use it occasionally to play a couple of online games. It seemed to be up to the task, but now almost a year after purchase it seemed to be one of the slowest computers I have used in years. It seems to take a huge amount of time to do just about anything. I have purchased spyware detectors, adware removers, registry cleaners, and nothing seems to make a difference. I am at the end of my rope and ready to download any and all files that I need to save and completely wipe the hard drive and start with a fresh install of XP Pro to see if I can remedy the speed problem. I hate to do this as it will take hours, if not days to re-install and reconfigure and re-enter all the information for email, passwords for different sites, putting files back where programs can find them, etc.

Does anyone here have a suggestion to save me some grief and hours of frustration? :-?

[Piru]

I'm afraid it's impossible to give generic instructions or answer to this one. You'd need to have physical access to the box to be able to really make a difference.

If you have time and a spare HDD, there's one thing you can do to determine if it's sw or hw issue:

- detach the original HDD from the system
- attach the spare HDD
- install windows xp pro, and drivers required for the system to function
- install whatever sw that was slow before and test it. Is it slow still?

If the system is slow still, then it's HW related issue. If it's fast, something in the old installation is screwed, and unless if you have skills and patience to find out what then reinstall is the only cure. The benefit here is that at least you're not screwing up the existing installation.

One common cause for massive system slowness is fragmentation of the page file or NTFS Master File table (MFT). To find out if this the cause, launch defragmenter and Analyse and check the results.

[amigadave]

Thanks Piru, I will try defragmenting first and then remove the hard drive and install an identical hard drive that I have that is empty (had an unsuccessful Linux installation on it).

Amiga.org member help is the greatest and fastest on the Web! :-D

[Piru]

The standard windows xp defragment can't defragment the pagefile or MFT though.

Pagefile can be defragmented with PageDefrag.
With 2GB memory, this is unlikely to be the cause for the slowdown, however.

Massive fragmentation of system files and/or MFT could still slowdown the system, but it should be limited to cases when something is loaded from / saved to the HDD.

[amigadave]

Is it safe to defragment while still using a web browser and the TV tuner card?

My slowdown is mostly noticed on start-up, which takes minutes, not seconds, and when opening programs. Shutting down also takes longer than I would like, but is not as bad as starting and opening programs.

[Piru]

Yes

[RRunner]

If the problem is most notable during startup, try de-fragmenting your registry. I have noticed dramatic performance increases (especially at startup) after optimizing the registry using Registry Mechanic.

[hamtronix]

Just reformat and reinstall WinXP. That will cure your ills. It should be done once a year in any case to remove 'debris'

[weirdami]

@hamtronix

But then you have to put the debris right back on.

I'd like to see how this one goes, in any case. The solution might come in handy down the line. OR, I can sound smart if someone asks me for help with this sort of problem.

[amigadave]

@hamtronix,

That is what I am trying to avoid, it is a pain in the a$$ that I don't want to go through.

Here is a copy of the defragment report:

Volume (C
Volume size = 228 GB
Cluster size = 4 KB
Used space = 53.56 GB
Free space = 175 GB
Percent free space = 76 %

Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 0 %
File fragmentation = 0 %
Free space fragmentation = 0 %

File fragmentation
Total files = 99,791
Average file size = 693 KB
Total fragmented files = 0
Total excess fragments = 0
Average fragments per file = 0.99

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 2.00 GB
Total fragments = 1

Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 11,296
Fragmented folders = 1
Excess folder fragments = 0

Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT size = 110 MB
MFT record count = 111,338
Percent MFT in use = 99 %
Total MFT fragments = 3

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fragments File Size Files that cannot be defragmented
2 604 bytes \Program Files\AmiKit\AmiKit\Utilities\AMPlifier
3 12 KB \Program Files\AmiKit\AmiKit\Utilities\Eagleplayer\Engines
3 604 bytes \Program Files\AmiKit\AmiKit\Libs\xad
4 16 KB \Program Files\AmiKit\AmiKit\Locale\Catalogs\deutsch


I will see if programs open faster now and Windows does not take several minutes to open and start being usable.

[amigadave]

Is the Master File Table normal after running the defragment? Percent MFT in use is 99%??? Is that okay?

I'm so confused.

[Zac67]

hamtronix wrote:
Just reformat and reinstall WinXP. That will cure your ills. It should be done once a year in any case to remove 'debris'

I have never - ever - done this. My current windows installation was made as Win95OSR2 in 1997 (parallel to WfW3.11), then updated somewhat later to Win98SE, then a couple of years ago to XP Pro. Of course I didn't just throw the new OS at it, I cleaned out anything system related before.

The current XP SP2 is ~2.6 GB in size which isn't too bad considering the age. I can still run ancient Corel Draw 5.0...

The most important thing is: watch out what you install and how. Don't activate 'agents', 'quick load options' and all that crap since all that stuff loading during boot and running in the background all the time (when you don't need it) can get the fastest machine down to a crawl.

I've cleaned out lots of Windoze machines from colleages, friends that had unbelievable amounts of junk in their systems. All these so called system optimizer, "we make Windows faster", memory doublers are just a bunch of crap. A lean and clean system is a fast system.

Of course you'll have to watch out for spyware and trojans as well. Don't install anything from a source you don't trust 100%, especially not anything you just downloaded from somewhere...

And don't use Internet Explorer. ops:

[mpiva]

I found that cleaning up my WinXP's PreFetch folder helped my boot times a lot. There are many programs on my system that I only use occasionally and dumb Winblows was prefetching them every bootup.

Instructions Here

[adolescent]

One good utility is CCleaner. Just be careful not to purge useful things like cookies, etc.

One other thing to check is to make sure the CPU isn't set to "Compatible" in the BIOS.

[JoannaK]

CCleaner is definitely good to have and can eliminate a lot of old junk. Also XP-lite might help on removing the unnecessary trash as long as you don't overuse it. Also CachemanXP is worth to install.

One thing worth to check is if the computer is clean from the dust and all fans are working.. Some Intel machines keep on working a lowered CPU speed if they overheat.. Some people have not remembered to clean their systems resulting slowdown on systems trying to cope..

Another, as mentioned is to check what stuff gets started a bootup.. Plenty of programs install themselves waiting, having those pesky icons at the bar ans wasting boot time and system memory.. It should not be so much problem on your system as it has considerable amount of Ram but it might help.