COMPUTER IS SO SLOW!!!

MGally

5 years ago i purchased a desktop,

its specs are:

iQon

System Manufacturer: iQon Technologies (www.iqon.ie)
Operating System: windows XP Home edition Service Pack 2
Intel Celeron @ 2.66GHz
Ram Size: 224MB
Rom Size: 70-80 GB with an external hard drive of 640 GB.


How can i improve my computers performance???? (as cheap as possible)

Can anyone give me any advice as I have no idea about computers.
Thanks in advance........

Martin

Same As

Probably the best idea would be to firstly back up all files you wish to keep onto that external hard drive that you have. Then I would suggest formatting your computer. I'm no technical expert but I did the same to my own computer and its back working a charm. Note: Be sure that you have a backed up copy of all the neccessary drivers needed to run your computer (these often come with the computer on a CD).

Croc

MGally wrote: »

5 years ago i purchased a desktop,

its specs are:

iQon

System Manufacturer: iQon Technologies (www.iqon.ie)
Operating System: windows XP Home edition Service Pack 2
Intel Celeron @ 2.66GHz
Ram Size: 224MB
Rom Size: 70-80 GB with an external hard drive of 640 GB.


How can i improve my computers performance???? (as cheap as possible)

Can anyone give me any advice as I have no idea about computers.
Thanks in advance........

Martin

First step would be to increase the ram. I don't know how you are even managing to run XP with 224mb

Do you defrag regularly ???

Also download and run this, but be careful by default it will empty your recycle bin.

USER X

Not being smart here but for future reference, if it has iQon or Celeron written on it, avoid it like the plague! Celeron processors are cut down versions of other decent processors. PC manufacturers love them because they can still quote relatively high clock speeds which is what most people are interested in and sells the PC at a cheap price, what you miss however is the cut-down Bus speed and small amounts of Cache in the processor. Not all Celeron motherboards will accept a "Full-Blown" processor, you need to check what processors your board can take. You definitely dont have enough RAM. RAM has become soo cheap in recent years so throw a GB of RAM in there.

You should also defragment the Hard drive, For windows XP, START> PROGRAMS> ACCESSORIES> SYSTEM TOOLS> DISK DEFRAGMENTER and press DEFRAGMENT

Download "Spybot Search and destroy" and install it. Its a free anti-spyware/malware application which can remove annoying software that slows down your PC and aims to interfere with your overall experience of using the PC.

All of this is over-documented on the web, so if in doubt, Google it!

Solitaire

That Celeron may be old, but its still servicable. The bigger problem is that if XP has been left to its own devices it may have repeatedly updated itself to the point where you'd need 2-4 times as much RAM to run it compared to when you bought the PC. You most certainly need to do a bit of spring cleaning - at the very least use CCleaner and then defrag and maybe schedule a Disk Check so CHKDSK can try to nail any bad sectors.

If you have the time, energy and an external HDD (or a whole load of rewritable DVDs) you should probably follow Same As' advice and backup anything you want to keep (and the most recent versions of all the drivers your hardware needs!) then wipe your whole system and start from scratch. But if you let XP update itself over the web you'll probably need a RAM upgrade.

-osborne-

just buy ram,its fairly cheap now

Solitaire

Not so much for DDR or SDRAM!

Kinetic^

Throw up the motherboard serial number so we can check it out. It's more then likely DDR ram but best to make sure. A simple ram upgrade and a re-install will have you flying tbh.

JæKæ

Defrag is not worth the time it takes to run.
Far more useful to run Spybot (as mentioned), and look at disabling programs from startup in msconfig.
This will stop unnecessary programs from starting every time you start windows. Let me know if you need assistance.

MGally

Kinetic^ wrote: »

Throw up the motherboard serial number so we can check it out. It's more then likely DDR ram but best to make sure. A simple ram upgrade and a re-install will have you flying tbh.

I have no idea what the motherboard serial number is. How do i access it? Do I need to open up the computer to get it? The computers serial number is 143939018 if thats any use??

Solitaire

Try Start > Run > DXDiag and the mobo number might pop up under System Model (if iQon didn't overwrite it with a hacked BIOS )

MGally

I did as the above advice said and it says the System Model (Motherboard Serial Number) is: S651MPRZ. If I buy any old RAM how do I know it will be suitable for the rest of the system?? I'm thinking 1 or 2GB of ram should be more than enough???

Solitaire

Yep, yet another OEM mobo made by Gigabyte. They made a lot of them for Fujitsu and iQon back then. As with most of the rest it takes 333MHz (PC2700) DDR memory.

The good news is that you should be able to snap up 1GB of the stuff for around the €40 mark. That's 4 times what you have at the moment

Slutmonkey57b

JæKæ wrote: »

Defrag is not worth the time it takes to run.

Total garbage. Why are SSD's so fancied? No mechanical seek time. Every time the disk has to seek to another sector - 8.9ms penalty. Minimum. Every Time.

Any mechanical disk is the bottleneck in any system and defragging a system that's been left to its own devices for years will make a MAJOR difference. Defragging every week? No. But given that it's probably a slow drive with low cache in a cheap machine that's never been spring cleaned? Defrag will make a difference.

Kensington

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Total garbage. Why are SSD's so fancied? No mechanical seek time. Every time the disk has to seek to another sector - 8.9ms penalty. Minimum. Every Time.

Any mechanical disk is the bottleneck in any system and defragging a system that's been left to its own devices for years will make a MAJOR difference. Defragging every week? No. But given that it's probably a slow drive with low cache in a cheap machine that's never been spring cleaned? Defrag will make a difference.

A defrag will make little or no difference in the OPs case. The problem is the RAM (or lack thereof!). 224MB is simply far too little RAM for XP, a fully patched XP system will be sluggish even with 512MB of RAM (and that's before you begin adding in AntiVirus, anti spyware etc. into the equation).

Kinetic^

I'd tend to agree with the RAM issue here. 1GB should show a dramatic improvement and once that's up and running then run disk cleanup and defrag.

PapaQuebec

I've services a fair few iQon systems in my time. Biggest problem is lack of support site for drivers etc so if you decide to format and re-install the OS make sure you A. Have the original CD containing the system drivers, or B. Use an application like Driver Genius to make a backup of the drivers to an external drive - USB stick is fine.

Add more RAM. If you intend to use 1 Gb of RAM get 2 x 512 modules, if 2 gb, use 2 x 1 Gb modules. This will enable dual-channel.

Use something like Diskeeper to keep your HDD defragged. Diskeeper can be configured to run in several modes, one of which is "screensaver" - does what it says on the tin!!

If you use apps like yahoo messenger/skype/ etc use msconfig to prevent them loading at startup - in fact disable anything that you dont NEED to run at system boot - this can dramatically increase performance!

Hope this helps

Papaquebec

MGally

could you advise me on how to do this?? and also would you be able to tell me how to do this on windows vista too?? how will i know im not disabling anything that will harm the performance of the machine or disabling anything that will hinder any future start ups??

barochoc

I would personally back up all my files to an external Hard drive (A must have for anyone with a PC or laptop)

I would buy as much RAM as you can fit. It must take at least 1GB.
Try 7dayshop or shop4memory. They'll also have a configuring tool
to help choose the right RAM. It should be very cheap for your PC.

I'd do a fresh Windows install (Booting from the disc) & reformatting the
Hard Drive. Assuming you have the original XP disc & drivers disc.

If you don't have the drivers disc I would suggest downloading these 1st
as it can be a pain to do after an XP install. At least download the network
or ethernet driver so you can go on-line after the fresh install & update all
the drivers.

This can take a long time on an old PC. Some one might offer to do it for
you for a small fee. I would suggest this if you wanted the job done right
& if you were looking to get another year or two from you PC.

ryanch09

RAM would be the key thing. Xp's minimum RAM specs are 256mb my pc was at 512mb recently upgraded to 1.7gb now she works like a charm:D:D:D:D

AdamusAdonis

Just get another stick of ram, you're probably running a reasonable page file with that little.

lucernarian

Thought i'd stick my oar in here, if it's not too late?? OP, how are you getting on with speeding up the computer?

I think RAM will give a pretty decent boost to speed, but I don't think defragmenting should be ignored, especially when it's free. Having worked in repairs for computers, I've seen the improvements that can be realised from defragging a computer that hasn't been maintained since it was bought 5 or more years ago.

Also, for a computer of its vintage, it mightn't take a single stick of 1 GB very well. Most of those IQon computers don't seem very reliable, as I had to do several IQon mobo replacements stemming from a PSU fault or else the mobo itself failing. So I wouldn't be 100% certain it could take the gig. 512MB would boost it up to 768MB, which is decent for an XP machine, and the ram only really speeds things up when it's there to be used instead of the pagefile. A computer of that age would be too slow CPU-wise to really allow very large programs to run. Certainly your average punter working off a Northwood P4 or suchlike.

Stick to the 512MB, better safe than sorry.

Solitaire

If the machine is so slow a defrag is only pointless in the context of "this machine is so messed up you need to format+reinstall that sucka"

Format >> defrag