Troubleshooting help

[Dean2004]

Hi, Im still fairly young & have alot to learn in the computing world but would like to get in the know how trade "PC Doctors" go about there business. How do you troubleshoot an extremely slow PC with having to re-format or re-instal window?

I have spent the last few weeks making sure I have got all the utilities up-to-date for registry fixes, anti-virus checkers, ad-ware, spy-ware checker, deleting cookies, temp internet files etc. I have also spen time checking out other alternatives such as msconfig & de-selecting programs that do not need to start up when windows boots up. Also tried disk de-frag, disk clean up, also cleaning up un-used programs not used by add/remove programs.

Im running out of ideas now, I know that adding memory helps but is there any other tricks of the trade that really helps speed the performance of a PC without reformatting/reinstalling?

Perhaps updating windows may help to sp2 or making sure they do not have a photograph as some people do for there backdrop anything you feel may help there performance will be a great help.

Also please be as descriptive as poss so that I can understand your answers

Please let me know...thanks,
Dean.

 

[Sui]

Is this thing extremely slow due to a cause, or just generally slow and needs all the help it can get? What kind of performance are you looking to gain?

You can disable some services for a little boost, you get rid of all the transparency effects, and eye candy for a decent boost. Defragmenting can help loading times. Increasing Virtual mem settings might help depending on your settings and how much ram you have

For info on services http://www.theeldergeek.com/services_guide.htm

For windows effects right click on My Computer > propertys > advanced, then settings under performance. Just unclick everything you don't want or need. You can change virtual mem settings one tab over under the advanced tab, but make sure you defrag before you increase the size.

 

[Dean2004]

thanks for the reply, its a dell 3ghz, 1gig ram, 180 gig hard drive (with tons of space left), dvd cd/rw, xp professional operating system. Can someone point me in the right direction of this virtial memory thing please: for each memory setup? what the settings would be? There are two figures on the virtual mem page?

128 mg
256 mg
512 mg
1 *

 

[Sui]

Soooo ok, what exactly is whoever looking to get out of this computer?