sluggish pc

[zak_swan]

i last formated my hard drive over a year ago and now it's pretty sluggish.
i've done all the usual things eg. defragged hard drive, run anti spyware program, tried to keep number of processes down (although it's crept up to 34 now) cleaned out registery etc. but it's still too slow.
are there any goods apps to speed up pc?
i know i should format hard drive and reinstall xp but i just can't be arsed.

[Cobra]

Back up all your data, perform a full NTFS format and reinstall a clean copy of XP.

It looks like you've done a fair bit for your PC - time to start afresh. Cleanup applications can only do so much.

Cobra

[gitreel]

How much memory do you have and how many apps are running in your system tray?

If you run msconfig, how many things are running at startup?

I tend to stay away from the tweaking programs. They tend to do more damage than good.

[zak_swan]

i've got 512mb ram and when i start windows about 34 apps are running but i've still got 300mb spare.
i've already got xp on my second hard drive due to me being unable to access primary one, (after installing new motherboard and cpu, it's ok now though)
i'll probably start to use that one and add programs i need.
how often do u format cobra?

[gitreel]

I usually go about two years between formats and reinstalls.

[rallynavvie]

These problems are so odd and hard to trace. Other than the above suggestions you could just try to play through it. You need to note specific instances of when you think it's slowing down and compare that to other instances to see what the correlation is. Another thing you may want to do if you're running a lot of different programs (like more than a dozen different apps a day) is disable DLL caching. If you use the same few programs a lot then leave this on as it speeds up loading times. Also what are your pagefile settings? If you've got a second hard drive in there I'd recommend moving your pagefile to your other drive.

As for defragging I've got mine scheduled to do it once a week at 3am. Each drive has a different day set. I also have a NAV scan set. Oddly I haven't run AdAware on this machine yet since it was built. I wonder what I'll find with that.

[zak_swan]

i only ever have a couple of programs going other than the ones running in the background.
i've got 3 hard drives.
the one i use with windows is a maxtor 6L060J3, the second is a maxtor 6Y120PO and the third is an external 250gb maxtor one touch.
which one should i move pagefile to? and more importantly how do i do it?

[JSB]

How big is pagefile.sys? It should be in your root directory ( C: ).

JSB

[zak_swan]

sorry JSB i don't know.
for some reason pc running better.
my mate told me to treat it like a lady so i punched it and threw it down the stairs.
JOKE

[shoozleboy]

That's the most frustrating thing sometimes - tracking down what is eating up your resources....

I had a proggy called X-Fire that I use to locate online buddies for playing online games.... It was causing some exe file called "cthelper.exe" to chew up 90% of the CPU for no reason. It ran flawlessly for months, then one day it just started lagging the system down big time. I end up having to ctrl-alt-del and end the cthelper.exe process to get it back to normal. (it has something to do with the sound card - but closing it never seems to have an effect on the sound)

But anyhow - I feel your pain. It's a bitch to find out what's going on....

[BobV]

I go to blackviper.com to help track down what services can be stopped from starting at starup. If you have never been there give it a try. If you have a service running thats not listed at blackviper, just google it. I inspect the services running on my PC about every 3 months.

[shoozleboy]

good info - thanks, BobV!

[Jayhawk]

How big is pagefile.sys? It should be in your root directory ( C: ).

The pagefile location and size can be found with the Accesories >> System Tools >> System Information program (1st page). A lot of disagreement on size / location but a general rule on size is 1.5 X Physical Memory (768 in your case). For smaller memory machines I would recommend 2.0 X Memory.

Location preference is in this order (best to worse):
1. A hard drive on another channel
2. A hard drive on the same channel but not on C:
3. The C: drive

Other simple non-hardware tips for improving performance:
1. Turn off file indexing
2. Turn off System Restore
3. Use the Performance Setting in My Computer (not Appearance)
4. Turn off Remote Assistance (for security mainly)
5. Turn off Error Reporting
6. Turn off QoS in you LAN card properties
7. Visit www.blackviper.com for other unneeded / dangerous processes
8. Auto-Load only programs you intend to use. Load the others as you need them. The second or so loading when you need them is far less than the dozens of times you reboot / load them and then don't use them.

[zak_swan]

thanks for tips guys but i've decided to brush off the cobwebs on my old zx81 and get that super fast baby going.
i'm lying i had a dragon 32 and a msx

[dxj40c]

I think you can go into the BIOS settings and have the computer display each item as it loads. Mine used to take forever to boot, I changed the BIOS to show everything as it loads, turns out that it was a tablet driver that was taking forever to load. I now load the driver manually, only when I am going to use the tablet.

I know that is different from being sluggish, but it might show you something important that "failed to load".

[Jayhawk]

dxj40c is right about checking the driver loads for slow-loading OR missing drivers. If I'm not mistaken, it's a bootlog setting in Windows that actually creates the text file. Do and Run > MSCONFIG and in the BOOT.INI tab check Bootlog. Restart and you should create a C:\Bootlog.txt" file with everything that loaded (or didn't) and I believe the timings. Uncheck it afterwards so it doesn't create it every time.

[Scottie]

I format my computer about every 3 months or so to keep it running smooth

[gitreel]

I format my computer about every 3 months or so to keep it running smooth

That's kind of extreme.

[rallynavvie]

I've never had to reformat either of my workstations. The only time I did was when I burned a board and toasted the volume on the boot drive I was running. I had to format and reinstall rather than fix the image. I think it's pretty odd that folks have to do a clean install so often, even once a year. As long as you're vigilant about what you're doing with your computer there shouldn't be any problems. However if you share your PC with the ignorant users then I can certainly see having to fix things a lot. I remember doing that a lot when I still lived with my parents.

[Jayhawk]

Agree with rallynavvie and gitreel. I use to rebuild once a year with Win98 and twice with WinME but with XP I haven't found it to be needed. I will probably rebuild when I go to SP2 but even then it probably won't be a total rebuild. Just restore my base Acronis image, apply SP2, and reinstall applications.