cheap way to get the computer moving

[AMD6415]

ok I help my mom and all the people in her office with there computers, cause they know nothing about them, and one of the computers is a Dell with Intel P4 2.5GHz with 256MB of ram and it is the slowest computer in the office but it dosn't have much on it. What are somethings I could try to get it moving again? Start up is a killer probably 5-10 min and then it is very sluggish once it is on and running. Any ideas would be helpful thanks

 

[saltynay]

reformat and a complete new install of windows xp and you will get that great two week performance boost of a clean windows system

 

[patnshan]

ok I help my mom and all the people in her office with there computers, cause they know nothing about them, and one of the computers is a Dell with Intel P4 2.5GHz with 256MB of ram and it is the slowest computer in the office but it dosn't have much on it. What are somethings I could try to get it moving again? Start up is a killer probably 5-10 min and then it is very sluggish once it is on and running. Any ideas would be helpful thanks

Run:
ccleaner
spybot search and destroy
adaware

All are free and will make quite a bit of difference in your performance.

Pat

 

[Trotter]

Defrag with O&O:
|MG| Free Download - O&O Defrag 2000 Freeware Edition 3.5.562

Download and run BootVis:
|MG| Free Download - BootVis 1.3.37.0

Uninstall anything that is not needed, and redefrag. Run CCleaner's Issues option.

Finally, use MSCONFIG and only allow what is absolutely needed on startup.

 

[peterhuang913]

is O&O better of Diskeeper?

 

[Trotter]

The version I linked to is the free one. I use the pro version, and it rocks. Never used Diskeeper, though.

 

[Sora]

Ashampoo WinOptimizer 4

 

[S0ULphIRE]

You also might want to think about upgrading the ram, 256 aint that much. and how fast is it?

 

[kmote]

sorry to go against the flow but... i think that saltynay had it there. if a machine is taking 5-10 minutes to boot then i know i wouldnt want to be the one to run all those programs on it.
i would simply reformat a machine in that kind of state altough maintenance is very important (i would use those sorts of programs for maintenance as well as msconfig whenever i install a new program as well as for regular maintenance)

P.S. i am well aware that i said the word "maintenance" at least three times in one paragraph lol

 

[AMD6415]

ok thanks alot