OT: Windows Optimization?

[AgentZero]

I've got a 2.4GHz P4 with 512MB RAM and about 6GB free hard drive space running WinXP SP2, but for the Last few weeks, the system has been running really sluggishly. Games seem to be more or less unaffected, aside from noticably increased loading times, but when I'm working on the desktop, lots of simple things seem to take a long time.
For example, when Windows loads when I turn on the PC, it takes 4-5 minutes before I can actually DO anything. The desktop is there, everything seems to be fine, when I click an icon it highlights, but if I double click to open a folder or run a program, nothing happens til I've left the machine alone for a while. Even then, sometimes just opening a folder takes 10-15 seconds.
I've got about 3-4 anti-virus programs and they all say the system is clean. I've downloaded a few of those Windows optimization programs but they haven't been much help.

So, I'm wondering if this sounds familiar to anyone, or if anyone has any ideas as to what I can do to get the performance I think I should be getting. I've tried everything I can think of and nothing seems to work.

[Suicide Junkie]

Upgrade to 98!

Meanwhile, you should take a look at what's starting on windows load.
Disable everything that's not nessesary. Drivers, firewall, one antivirus, and that's about it.

The rest of the stuff shouldn't be loaded until you actually want to use it, instead of wasting your time on boot, and system resources all the time.

Get Mozilla to avoid auto-installer popups and various other nasties on the web, too.

For example:
My system tray has:
-Norton
-volume control
-video driver control
-Zone alarm
plus:
- System resource meter
- Temperature monitor (reads disk/cpu sensors- C:\ =37 celcius right now)
- Trillian, since I'm using it right now.

[Spoo]

I've got about 3-4 anti-virus programs

If you mean like McAfee and Norton, your computer is probably screwed. It's a definite no-no to have more than one antivirus program installed. If you're counting programs like Adaware/Spybot S&D, then you're okay.

Second, have you defragmented your hard drive recently?

Otherwise, it's probably like SJ said, too much crap loading at start-up.

[Will]

Yeah, for full anti-virus suites, having more than one installed is a huge no-no. It doesn't offer any more protection, and they tend to snipe at each others definition files making all of the scanners useless. Pick one and just use that (use the TrendMicro Online scan if you think something slipped past your VScan).

Check how many fonts you have installed. Since Microsoft decided it would be a genius idea to load every single font into memory at startup, systems with many fonts installed will take longer to finish loading. Get rid of the frivolous ones, and keep the standards (Times New Roman, Courier New, Tahoma are the main ones covering serif, mono, and sans-serif).

Kill startup programs. Like SJ said, there shouldn't be much running at startup, usually just have AV/Firewall, Volume Control, and Video Driver. Using Firefox prevents the installation of random useless programs from the Internet, like IE allows.

Check virtual memory settings. If it's set to be automagically handled by Windows, that should be fine, but it could be messed up. The general rule is to have a swap file twice the size of memory (1gb in your case). Defragmenting the drive helps here too, so your disk doesn't have to jump around a lot when accessing virtual memory that is split into several sections.

[Fyron]

Will said:
Check virtual memory settings. If it's set to be automagically handled by Windows, that should be fine, but it could be messed up. The general rule is to have a swap file twice the size of memory (1gb in your case). Defragmenting the drive helps here too, so your disk doesn't have to jump around a lot when accessing virtual memory that is split into several sections.

Make sure to disable virtual memory _before_ doing the defragmentation, so that the drive can be defragmented as much as possible. Reenable virtual memory after it the defragmentation process is completed. This ensures an even more continuous block of HD clusters for the swap file. Also, you might consider disabling the auto-magic management. It tends to be unnecessary (assuming you have the size set to a large enough amount) and slows down the computer when Windows changes the size of the swap file all the time. You can do this by setting the minimum size to the same value as the maximum size. This will also have the advantage of locking the swap file in place, preventing it from being created in fragmented parts of the hard drive as it is resized. It will stay in the same clusters of the drive. It is critical to defragment before fixing the size of the swap file for this very reason. Having a separate drive partition for the swap file can be handy as well (assuming you fix its size).

[Ruatha]

Go through these sites and you will propably notice a difference:


http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks1.htm
Where page 6 is the most important page, the services..

and perhaps you can find something else aswell at

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,,5155,00.asp

[Arkcon]

Imperator Fyron said:
Make sure to disable virtual memory _before_ doing the defragmentation, so that the drive can be defragmented as much as possible. Reenable virtual memory after it the defragmentation process is completed. This ensures an even more continuous block of HD clusters for the swap file. Also, you might consider disabling the auto-magic management. It tends to be unnecessary (assuming you have the size set to a large enough amount) and slows down the computer when Windows changes the size of the swap file all the time. You can do this by setting the minimum size to the same value as the maximum size. This will also have the advantage of locking the swap file in place, preventing it from being created in fragmented parts of the hard drive as it is resized. It will stay in the same clusters of the drive. It is critical to defragment before fixing the size of the swap file for this very reason.

If you're into all that, you might want to drop by {here} as well. This little freeware program will defrag the (now permanant) windows swapfile. Windows tends to create it fragmented. They have other small, free, well-thought out, utilites on that site.

Having a separate drive partition for the swap file can be handy as well (assuming you fix its size).

I've heard that's not too great an idea. The separate partition helps prevent data from fragmenting the swapfile, that's true. But the drive heads really have to work overtime, reading two separate directories, zipping from file table to data part -- not so speedy. Now a separate hard drive to contain the swapfile, sure, that'll help.

[tesco samoa]

We had a really good thread on this a few years ago.

I have no time to do the search on it. Perahps some one else could and post that thread. Lots of links and such to this topic

[AgentZero]

Meanwhile, you should take a look at what's starting on windows load.
Disable everything that's not nessesary. Drivers, firewall, one antivirus, and that's about it.

I've gone into MSConfig, gone to the startup tab and disabled everything I know I don't need, but there's still an awful lot of stuff that I don't know what it is, so I'm reluctant to remove it. Does anyone know if Windows puts vital programs/drivers into that Startup section?

If you mean like McAfee and Norton, your computer is probably screwed. It's a definite no-no to have more than one antivirus program installed. If you're counting programs like Adaware/Spybot S&D, then you're okay.

Second, have you defragmented your hard drive recently?

What I meant was that I've got 3-4 anti-virus programs installed on the computer. I only have one actively running, but have used that 4 different programs to run a complete scan of the HD to be totally sure there's no viruses. Last defragged the hard drive about 3 weeks ago.

[Arkcon]

AgentZero said:
I've gone into MSConfig, gone to the startup tab and disabled everything I know I don't need, but there's still an awful lot of stuff that I don't know what it is, so I'm reluctant to remove it. Does anyone know if Windows puts vital programs/drivers into that Startup section?

Oh. I can answer this bit at least. You can try the websites {here} and {over here}. They decode for you the cryptic names of several things the Windows may try to load. They identify them as crucial, or known spyware. If a file is not on these lists, I'd search Google or ask about the filename specifically -- that's how the world finds out about new viruses.

This forum became world famous a while back as we were musing about a file called {siae3123.exe}. No one knew what it was back then, but its now known to be a trojan dropper.