John P
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| posted on 29/12/10 at 02:38 PM |
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Computer Grinding to a Halt - Help Please
I’ve got a somewhat old Compaq desktop with an AMD Athlon 64 processor, just 488 MB of Ram and running XP Home version 2002 with service pack 3.
(This is the original spec the machine came with).
The main use is for simple word processing and spreadsheets using Word 2003 and Excel 2003, browsing using IE 8 and e-mail with Outlook.
I’ve got AVG Free installed which replaced Norton which made the computer too slow to use.
Recently things are getting both very slow and unreliable, especially when online. It’s not unusual for IE8 to take several minutes to load and then
it regularly crashes simply stopping working at all. In addition there are issues with both the keyboard and mouse (both wired) in that occasionally
keystrokes are missed and more regularly the mouse stops responding at all and I have to re-start by using the Alt + function keys.
I’ve tried disabling most of the add-ons in IE8 and this certainly seems to help especially having Shockwave Flash Object disabled but this obviously
creates limitations. I’ve also run a couple of AVG scans, run Spybot and defragged the hard disk but nothing makes much of a difference.
Any suggestions / help.
John.
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mookaloid
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| posted on 29/12/10 at 02:44 PM |
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I would
1) uninstall AVG and put microsoft security essentials on it.
2) install google chrome and use that instead of IE
3) Upgrade the memory to the maximum the MB will take - use the crucial scanner to work out what you will need.
4) run CCleaner on the registry
assuming there are no other hardware faults this should speed things up.
Cheers
Mooky
"That thing you're thinking - it wont be that."
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Ivan
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| posted on 29/12/10 at 02:45 PM |
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How much free space do you have on the hard drive - 0.488 Gb ram is minimal and your machine will be relying on the hard drive for working memory - if
there isn't 2 or three GB free on the C drive than the machine will slow down drastically.
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balidey
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| posted on 29/12/10 at 02:47 PM |
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Or, if you are feeling adventurous get rid of windows altogether and try a Linux OS, I am running Ubuntu. They are known for being very forgiving on
older hardware. I have had a couple of old PC's from people that were so slow they would hardly run, yet put Ubuntu on and they fly.
Dutch bears have terrible skin due to their clogged paws
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mookaloid
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| posted on 29/12/10 at 02:52 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by Ivan
How much free space do you have on the hard drive - 0.488 Gb ram is minimal and your machine will be relying on the hard drive for working memory - if
there isn't 2 or three GB free on the C drive than the machine will slow down drastically.
Very good point 
"That thing you're thinking - it wont be that."
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Andybarbet
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| posted on 29/12/10 at 03:00 PM |
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My main pc is now a ten year old laptop, its a 600mhz processor and was painfully slow running AVG free.
After someone put a post on here the other week about AVG, i uninstalled avg and downloaded Avast, it runs perfect now and surprisingly quick for the
age of it, might be worth a try, good luck.
Give a man a fish & it will feed him for a day, give him a fishing rod & you've saved a fish.
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John P
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| posted on 29/12/10 at 03:14 PM |
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The hard drive has a total size of 68.9 GB with 21.5 GB Free Space if that helps.
John.
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John P
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| posted on 29/12/10 at 03:18 PM |
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If it's significant thare's also a D Drive (partition?) which shows a total size of 5.60 GB with just 175 MB free.
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britishtrident
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| posted on 29/12/10 at 03:25 PM |
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Strange PC spec ----- a big enough processor but very short of memory and I would guess hard disk space and only a basic onboard video card using
shared memory (hence the odd memory size). It needs more memory and a fresh install of windows.
AVG won't be helping neither will some of the windows updates --- especially Windows MSRT which you don't want to keep downloading if
you have some other virus protection.
Also I would suggest using Thunderbird for email and Firefox for browsing ---- Chrome is fun but not yet good enough to be your main browser.
Linux has been mentioned but the memory spec is a bit low same goes for Windows 7.
I would advise a memory upgrade and a complete clear out ie re-install with formatting the C: partition. For your operating system you could use
XP or try Mint Linux 10 or buy Windows 7
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britishtrident
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| posted on 29/12/10 at 03:27 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by John P
If it's significant thare's also a D Drive (partition?) which shows a total size of 5.60 GB with just 175 MB free.
That is the repair partition
[I] “ What use our work, Bennet, if we cannot care for those we love? .”
― From BBC TV/Amazon's Ripper Street.
[/I]
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RichardK
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| posted on 29/12/10 at 03:46 PM |
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Go into ad & remove programs and look for any "Toolbars" and get rid of them, especially "Search or Shopping" ones. In
fact anything that doesn't look cosher.
Cheers
Rich
Gallery updated 11/01/2011
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