I have a turn-of-the-century Gateway PC with Windows XP, SP3, 768MB of RAM and a 1.3Ghz Pentium 4. It boots up without any problems, but its very slow to launch programs (Word, Excel, etc.). I have to let it idle for about 20 minutes before launching any programs. I scanned the hard drive for viruses and errors. I defragmented it. I used the disc cleanup utility. I used MSCONFIG utility to see if any programs are running in the background (besides my Avast A/V software). Still, I have the same problem. Anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

 

There is really only two things you can do.

1) Max out the RAM.
2) Reinstall Windows.

You can do 1 or 2, or both.

 

Doing both should fix the problem for awhile.

 

I have a similar old Gateway PC and increasing the RAM definitely improved it.

 

Mine is a Dell, but I keep an image of the OS on a DVD and reinstall about twice a year. It's amazing how much Internet stuff builds up in an XP system, and the only way I know to fix it is to let my image disk wipe the C: drive and put the clean copy of the OS in. Works every time, and I'm back in business in about 15 minutes if I don't include the time it takes for the machine to download all the updates since the last time I made a backup image.

Very handy, those image disks. Kills most viruses, too.

 

There is really only two things you can do.

1) Max out the RAM.
2) Reinstall Windows.

You can do 1 or 2, or both.

3) Install Linux

 

3) Install Linux

I have been there, I have done that, I still use Windows.

 

I have been there, I have done that, I still use Windows.

I still use Windows, too. On a virtual machine under Linux.

 

I still use Windows, too. On a virtual machine under Linux.

My gear is old, P2, P3 machines. There is no point running one OS in order to run another OS. That is my case. I am sure other people have other needs.

 

Have experienced such a problem quite some time back. The sluggishness was due to the antivirus hogging the resources for updating. Just disconnect the net, uninstall antivirus, and check it out!

 

I had an old Dell laptop with not that much RAM. Remember installing a new version of AVG made it very slow and sluggish. Changed to the free Microsoft virus scanner that helped a lot

 

If your hard drive is nearly full, Windoze may be having a hard time trying to find space for a swap file and housekeepng stuff.

 

What made my PCs slow:

Windows update enabled. Incredible how much time is wasted.

Avast dealing with every single file I open/close/read/write plus other shields that I do not need (P2P amongst them). Microsoft's antivirus is so well tuned to Win XP that mess with everything all the time. Returned to Avast.

 

2 steps:

1) Uninstall Avast
2) Install Microsoft Security Essentials.

See if it works any better.

Avast is absolutely terrible. Not sure if removing it will solve your problem, but it's definitely worth a shot.

Matt

 

2 steps:

1) Uninstall Avast
2) Install Microsoft Security Essentials.

See if it works any better.

Avast is absolutely terrible. Not sure if removing it will solve your problem, but it's definitely worth a shot.

Matt

Waste of time. The old rule of thumb is to reinstall Xp every couple of years. I had a Xp instal running 4 or 5 years, it slowed down, in that time I have used AVG antivirus, later I used Avast, both worked fine, the system slowed down anyway, particularly in the later two years.

We have a combination of things here: old Xp install chock full of crap that collected over the years, low RAM (768 MB of RAM is straight from P3 era, in those days it was max), and likely full hd so that there is not enough space for page file.

 

Waste of time. The old rule of thumb is to reinstall Xp every couple of years. I had a Xp instal running 4 or 5 years, it slowed down, in that time I have used AVG antivirus, later I used Avast, both worked fine, the system slowed down anyway, particularly in the later two years.

We have a combination of things here: old Xp install chock full of crap that collected over the years, low RAM (768 MB of RAM is straight from P3 era, in those days it was max), and likely full hd so that there is not enough space for page file.

I still recommend getting rid of Avast. I had nothing but bad luck with it.

 

Thank you for all of your help, but I found an easier way of fixing my slow PC. All I did was disable two auto start programs, one is called Wired AutoConfig and the other is Extensible Authentication Protocol Service. I did a little research and discovered I really don't need these programs because I don't use an Ethernet connection. I don't know how these programs got running in the first place. Maybe some files got corrupted.