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I'm Covered In The Fire Ants Of Obsolescion! Waaaaah!

#1   Platinum Sun 

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      Posted 25 December 2007 - 10:45 AM

    Something that's always been a matter of casual curiosity to me, as well as a day-to-day inconvenience. Why do older computers massively slow down? And, more specifically, what can I do about it? Now I know that streaming videos and such will take a long time, it did when this thing was new, but I'm talking about big, unexplained delays when doing even the most menial things. 5+ minutes to boot up and log in, freezing when I open more than three tabs in IE, lag when using freakin Microsoft word! That kind of thing.

    My computer always acts like it's climbing a mountain. I have to listen for its temperment like its an '87 Escort on its last legs. I can hear the hard discs oscillating like it's thinking really hard, even if all I asked it to do was open internet explorer. And woe to he who clicks anything before it's done thinking. :P Now I realize that I got this thing in 2001ish and it's still running XP so I don't expect it to outperform my new laptop, but honestly! Sometimes there's a delay inbetween typing and text appearing on the screen. That's not normal!

    I mostly use it for web browzing, and that's when I notice these things most significantly, especially when I try to multitask. I've had DSL for some time now and it worked great when I got it, so I doubt that it's my connection. So, in keeping with my vehicle metaphor, can anyone answer this one?

    Duct tape : Escort :: ________ : Jurassic Comp?

    #2   Eugine 

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      Posted 25 December 2007 - 07:25 PM

      Lets see... Of course Max would be more help than me, but here is what I recommend.

      1) Uninstalling unwanted programs and deleting unwanted files.
      2) Defragmenting your PC
      3) Remove some unnecessary programs on startup using msconfig
      4) Get more RAM

      #3   Toasty 

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        Posted 25 December 2007 - 08:45 PM

        PS, all I can say is, "Welcome to my world." :P I've got a Dell Dimension 8100 from '01, so I'm probably worse off than you. :P

        Run Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter. If all else fails, back up your important files and re-install windows. It'll clear away all the crap that slows down your PC.

        Another thing that slows it down, is when the hard drives get too full. It wouldn't be a bad idea to keep 10 to 15 percent of your hard drives free at all times. Get rid of any files or programs you know you don't need, or ones you never use. You can aslo adjust the size of your hard drive's cache. A larger cache will give it more space to work with, at the cost of loseing a few GB of space. Nothing serious if you have a drive 20GB or larger.

        Also, spyware will slow it down to a crawl. But re-installing windows will get rid of that.

        That's the free stuff. After that, you could invest in a faster CPU and some more RAM, but usually, with PC this old, you're MUCH better off buying a new one than upgradeing.

        #4   Platinum Sun 

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            Posted 25 December 2007 - 10:17 PM

          I've got a Dell Dimension 4500, so no, I'm officially worse off than you. The year is just a guess too. I kind of assumed that if I bought it 2000 or before I'd have the corresponding version of Windows and not XP, since this is the OS it came with. I'll have to look that up.

          Regardless, it's not hard disc space. I've got 56/80 GB free, so I should be golden there. I'll defrag/cleanup/error sweep when I get a spare moment. Increasing my cache is a good idea. I'd forgotten all about the Virtual Memory shortages this thing has run into in the past. My paging file size is still set to ten times the reccomended size as a relic from those days. Seems like kind of an obnoxious amount, perhaps that's doing more harm than good...

          Dusting off my spybot wouldn't kill me either. Well it might... spybot's 'found problems' indicator tends to run in the thousands and there's always a few hundred that it says it can't fix. That's part of the reason I gave up on it.

          #5   Split Infinity 

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            Posted 26 December 2007 - 01:58 AM

            Toasty, how do you increase the cache? I could really use the extra memory when I'm working with 8K images.

            #6   Max 

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              Posted 26 December 2007 - 06:46 AM

              In my experience, adding more RAM is the single easiest way to increase what I call "apparent" performance (i.e., your perceived computer performance, generally with regards to the responsiveness of the UI, launching programs, etc.). I generally recommend going to crucial.com, plugging in your computer model to their wizard, and then they will recommend some options for upgrading RAM.

              Short of that, defragmenting might help, but it doesn't matter nearly as much as it did back in the 90s. Over time, Windows gets slower because the registry builds up errors and erroneous information as programs get installed, uninstalled, and just go about their daily business. The best way to get back lost performance is to reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything. Obviously back up your data before doing that, but that's the only guaranteed way to regain performance.

              Also, keep in mind that the computer might not really have gotten much slower, but since you've used other, newer and faster computers, you might perceive it to be slower relative to other computers you use.

              #7   Toasty 

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                Posted 26 December 2007 - 02:29 PM

                View PostPlatinum Sun, on Dec 25 2007, 08:17 PM, said:

                I've got a Dell Dimension 4500, so no, I'm officially worse off than you. The year is just a guess too. I kind of assumed that if I bought it 2000 or before I'd have the corresponding version of Windows and not XP, since this is the OS it came with. I'll have to look that up.

                Regardless, it's not hard disc space. I've got 56/80 GB free, so I should be golden there. I'll defrag/cleanup/error sweep when I get a spare moment. Increasing my cache is a good idea. I'd forgotten all about the Virtual Memory shortages this thing has run into in the past. My paging file size is still set to ten times the reccomended size as a relic from those days. Seems like kind of an obnoxious amount, perhaps that's doing more harm than good...

                Dusting off my spybot wouldn't kill me either. Well it might... spybot's 'found problems' indicator tends to run in the thousands and there's always a few hundred that it says it can't fix. That's part of the reason I gave up on it.


                Your's only sucks more if it has less than 1GB of memory. The 4500 actually comes standard with a fatser CPU. Mine cam with a 1.3GHz Pentium 4, your's probably came with a 2GHz or something similar. I've since upgraded to a 1.8GHz, but it still wouldn't outperform. The 4500 is newer too, I believe.

                You can also find out detailed system information by opening up the RUN thingy and typing in "dxdiag.exe".


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