Before I spent any money, you have two options. Try to figure out what's slowing down your system (which will possibly take hours, even days, with uncertain results) or reinstall XP. I'd opt for the latter.
Back up all of your data (if it isn't already). If you have all of the program disks and the original install disks, use them.
In my experience with XP, after a couple of years, it starts behaving similar to as you describe. In my line of work, I tend to install/uninstall a fair amount of programs for evaluation. They never seem to completely "uninstall". So you either have to go in and surgically try to remove everything OR reinstall XP. I have always found reinstalling XP to be the best, most sure way of restoring the system.
And yes, 256 MB is low by today's standards, but I've run XP systems on 256 MB and they start and run fine as long as you're not asking the system to do too much at once.
Good Luck,
~Rick
* This post was
edited 03/14/08 06:20pm by Rick Jay *
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Quote: And yes, 256 MB is low by today's standards, but I've run XP systems on 256 MB and they start and run fine as long as you're not asking the system to do too much at once.
Rick-while most of your post has good points, I disagree with this statement especially concerning laptops.
As XP has picked up service packs and updates it also has more services running than the original release in '01. The software installations also have more processes running at boot than typical installations in '01. Compounding that is the relatively slow performance of laptop hard drives-especially ones from the early XP era.
256 MB memory installations (current XP SP2 install w/updates) will significantly slow XP boot time compared to 1 GB+ memory installations-even on a fast computer. When the hard drive is slow, the memory is even more beneficial.
Memory should be a first priority here if the laptop is worth updating.
I use Hibernate also (during the turn off routine, press Shift and select Standby and Hibernate appears).
What hibernate does is write all the current open stuf and settings to the disk (takes a little longer than Shut Down) and then turns totally off. When you turn back on, it retrieves the disk stuf and comes alive right where is was (so you don't have to sit there after waiting for Start Up and then wait for browser, etc.).
I'll agree that more memory could cure the problem assuming everything else (software and hardware) are proper. I don't know the age of the OP's computer or how much a memory upgrade would cost, or whether it's even worth it or not. They may or may not be running IE7 or even have the latest service pack updates. But if all of that suggests a memory upgrade, then by all means I'd certainly support that.
But if it's an aging system, and it turns out the HD is "iffy", spending extra $$$ on memory and a new HD may not be cost justified.
I generally like to pursue the least expensive options first. I like XP as an OS, but in my experience, a clean install every couple of years works wonders and is relatively painless (assuming you have a high speed internet connection for all the updates).
Pete D wrote: I use Hibernate also (during the turn off routine, press Shift and select Standby and Hibernate appears).
Thanks for this! It's 6:30 and I learned something new so I can quit for the day!
Dave
An even easier way is to go into Control Panel, find the energy options (I'm on a Mac so I can't look) and set it so when you press the power button the computer Hibernates. No quicker way.
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Thanks again for all the info. The puter is about four years old however the hard drive was replaced last November (6 months ago) the old one crashed. When I reloaded xp and all my regular programs start up was great. It is only in the last thirty days I've noticed the slow start up (haven't added any new stuff during that time).
Once it gets going I have no problems with operation speed. I do a lot of music stuff and it does fine. I have an air card and surfing the Internet is not a problem either. It never freezes or gives error messages, it just takes a while to get going.
I set the hibernate and that's working pretty cool. I'm just puzzled as to why it has gone into the "slow start up mode" over the last thirty days, even though I haven't changed or added any thing.
I think I'll try a reinstall of xp in the next few days when I have time and see what happens. If that does any good, I'll let every one know.
I just spent the better part of a day fighting the same problem. Win xp notebook with 256mb of memory was taking 7 minutes to boot, and was slow in operation. Much help in this article (link below) article-make xp startup faster
Most of the tips have been covered in posts above, but I suggest you look at the mod to boot.ini to reduce the 30 second wait on boot time. Also read the section about prefetch. The laptop I was working on had over 40 programs being loaded as prefetch, and there was not enough memory to do this...so a lot of disk swap was taking place (at least I think that was what was happening).
I also got good results with "CCleaner", which is a good shareware utility (originally named******cleaner). It fixed a lot of registry problems.
Overall, I followed the tips in the link above, used CCleaner, added another 256mb of memory to bring it up to 512 mb, and now it boots in slightly under 1.5 minutes.
These steps are worth trying before you reinstall the operating system.
I hope this helps....Fred
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