Glenn And Kitty
Breaux Bridge, LA
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Original poster here:
Thanks for all the great input so far. Let me address a few points that were made and see if there's more to consider.
I have a 60 Gig RAM. It shows 71% free space. Only four startup programs: A mouse pad startup that is needed, AVG (anti-virus), hkcmd and ctfmon (both needed).
As for not shutting down, I use it in my truck and if I leave it on, even in standby, it kills my truck battery if I don't start the truck for a day or two.
Once again, no virus or hidden programs are detected.
2006 Trail Sport 22QB
2006 F-250 Super Duty
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pulsar
Lewisville, NC
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I am sure that your "60 gig RAM" is really the hard drive size.
You can get the how much memory your computer has by right clicking on My Computer and selecting properties.
Tom
2002 Adventurer 32V - Workhorse chassis
1998 CRV toad - manual transmission
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RedRollingRoadblock
Oregon
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You may want to do a cleanup of your drive. Download ATF-Cleaner by Atribune. It is small simple to use and safe. Brief instructions and the DL are here: FOR XP AND WINDOWS 2000 ONLY
http://www.atribune.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Itemid=25e:
It may take a while for it to run depending on your system and you may think it has stalled. Just give it time.
Turn off un-needed services. On this page you may want to watch the video for a how too. Then drop down to Windows XP Services That can be disabled.
http://downloads.techrepublic.com.com/search.aspx?q=disable+services
Personally I like AVG for anti-virus but F-Prot the was mentioned is good also. Anything but Norton. And use it and keep it updated.
ON EDIT
Do a disk defrag. To open Disk Defragmenter, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Disk Defragmenter. Its use is pretty well self explanatory or look in your help files. Give it several hours to run if you haven't used it for a long time.
* This post was
edited 03/14/08 10:59am by RedRollingRoadblock *
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tpi
Southern CA.
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Joined: 02/22/2005
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Post the processor speed and amount of memory in the laptop. Some laptop hard drives are just slow and coupled with slower processors, lack of memory and power saving features you'll get results like this.
You may get a little better performance by defragmenting the hard drive-but I doubt it will be night and day.
Another thing is to check the drive is running in one of the UDMA modes-and not the PIO mode. Find the device manager, click on IDE/ATA controllers, go to primary IDE channel (right click select properties), click on advanced tab, and verify it is running in UDMA (usually mode 5).
Try increasing the memory to about 1 GB if you want to invest in the laptop and its specs warrant it.
But in general some of the laptops released in the early days of Windows XP were very much like yours.
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Glenn And Kitty
Breaux Bridge, LA
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pulsar wrote:I am sure that your "60 gig RAM" is really the hard drive size.
You can get the how much memory your computer has by right clicking on My Computer and selecting properties.
Tom
You're right, my bad - my laptop memory is 248 mb.
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tpi
Southern CA.
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Oh and look into all power saving settings-check the documentation to see if any are set on the motherboard bios. If you generally run plugged in set all to "best performance."
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tpi
Southern CA.
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Quote:You're right, my bad - my laptop memory is 248 mb.
You will get better performance by increasing that. That was barely enough in the early days of XP with a bare bones installation. It is insufficient for best performance at this time.
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themave
Livermore, CA
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this is just a guess, but if you don't shut down correctly you can get file errors and windows may be running chkdsk on startup. this could take a few minutes.
other then that, you could have some other hardward problem, I had a hard drive that was going out, my system did this same thing for few weeks, everything appeared fine, startup was really slow, and every once and while the system would slow way down, thought I had a virus, turned out there were sectors on the hard drive going bad, and the file system was compensating while it could, until a few sectors too many went bad in a critical area of the disk.
A king size bed sure beats tent camping, not as young as I used to be, that ground sure got hard
2005 Cardinal 312BH with king size bed
2001 F250 Supercrew Longbed 7.3l diesel with banks power kit
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BobJoh
Whitestown, IN 46075
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Joined: 05/23/2004
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Thanks all for the hints on speeding up.. ThinkPad XP T40 refirb. But my desktop is slow Vista, but added 2GB, slow on start up but OK working.
BobJoh
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JasonD
Annapolis, MD
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Glenn And Kitty wrote:
As for not shutting down, I use it in my truck and if I leave it on, even in standby, it kills my truck battery if I don't start the truck for a day or two.
Hibernate, not Standby.
From Microsoft's website:
"Hibernate Turns It Off, but Saves Your State
Windows XP helps your computer start faster when you use Hibernate. This feature saves the contents of RAM to your hard disk in compressed form so you can turn your laptop or desktop computer completely off. When you turn on the power, your documents and applications are open just as you left them so you can start work quickly."
There is no battery drain when a laptop is in Hibernate...it just starts up MUCH fater when you hit the power button.
2008 42' Foretravel Nimbus CE
2007 Chevy Tahoe toad
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