Squeezing the Sweet Bejesus Outta Me PC

[mrmod]

I have an old Dell Dimension 8300. As stated it is old but it holds up... However this past year (learning about P2P and what not) it is becoming gradually slower. I got it given (for free well we donated to charity because they wanted rid of it and didn't want the ca$h) and it's not that bad. But it is becoming slower and other people use apart from me.

It has a Pentium IV chip at 3 Ghz and 512MB Ram. It runs XP (Setup 2) and it has a pretty small HD (74 GB) which is very nearly full (70GB full).

I play CS 1.6 on it (Steam version) and online multiplayer is fine. The graphics hold up (Nvidia something or rather at 128 MB)

I am now defraggling it (it is going to take ages) and I now it's not possible to OC the pentium (Dell Bios ).



So do any of you have any suggestions as to how i could make this computer faster?:angel:

(I will post up some CPUZ shots but I am using defrag atm)

[Benny2guns]

1. Defrag it daily
2. Do a disc clean up daily
3. Remove everything from your startup
5. Install more ram
Thats about all you can do.

[mrmod]

I'll do 1 and 2 first .

My startup only has BitTorrent and Avast (thinking of changing to a less hungry AV though) and few others (used to have Steam but removed it). Is there a panel I can remove startup programs from?

And that would be installing hardware. Is installing RAM difficult? (I've never opened up a computer but I understand a bit about IT)

Thanks for the speedy reply btw

[Benny2guns]

You can stop things from start-up by doing this.
1. Go to start on the task bar.
2. Click on Run
3. type msconfig in the box and click ok
4. click the startup tab
5. uncheck everything except your anti-virus
6. click apply and ok then restart your pc
7. on restart a box will appear, put a check mark in the box and ither apply or ok or close. Your done.
All you really need running at startup is your A/V....anything else can be turned on when you need it and turned off when you don't. You will save alot of resourses this way and your system will respond better.
Changeing memory is easy, first you need to know what type and how much your board will support. Download a tool called cpu-z and install it. Run it and it will give you the info. If you have a hard time understanding it then post a screen shot of each tab here and i'll look at it with you.
EDIT: Yes a 32bit system is limited to just under 4Gb of ram but your motherboard may have stricter limits. Some boards do not support the full amount of memory that the operating system does.
The average cost per Gb of memory depends on the type of memory your board supports. For instance DDR memory is older and harder to get so it will in most cases cost you more. DDR2 memory is pretty cheap at the moment but as time passes it will i am sure go up in price as DDR3 memory takes over the market place.

[mrmod]

Ok will do .

Erm i already have cpuz (mentioned it in first post ) i'll post and see. I think I have 2x256 Installed and its a 32-Bit system so I'm guessing the maximum it can handle is 4GB. Am i right?

How much does RAM cost btw (say a couple 1 GB sticks average)?

I'll edit this post to include screenies of CPUZ later on so you can reply then . I'm on my laptop atm.

[billy]

You can stop things from start-up by doing this.
1. Go to start on the task bar.
2. Click on Run
3. type msconfig in the box and click ok
4. click the startup tab
5. uncheck everything except your anti-virus
6. click apply and ok then restart your pc
7. on restart a box will appear, put a check mark in the box and ither apply or ok or close. Your done.
All you really need running at startup is your A/V....anything else can be turned on when you need it and turned off when you don't. You will save alot of resourses this way and your system will respond better.
Changeing memory is easy, first you need to know what type and how much your board will support. Download a tool called cpu-z and install it. Run it and it will give you the info. If you have a hard time understanding it then post a screen shot of each tab here and i'll look at it with you.
EDIT: Yes a 32bit system is limited to just under 4Gb of ram but your motherboard may have stricter limits. Some boards do not support the full amount of memory that the operating system does.
The average cost per Gb of memory depends on the type of memory your board supports. For instance DDR memory is older and harder to get so it will in most cases cost you more. DDR2 memory is pretty cheap at the moment but as time passes it will i am sure go up in price as DDR3 memory takes over the market place.

won't he need some of the msconfig strtup processes to run windows?

[Benny2guns]

No nothing in the startup list needs to start with windows. Everything in that list was installed after windows and is not the operating system so to speak. Only in that list so make sure your in the correct one.

[billy]

i'll try it on my partners pc first :p. thanks benny

[Benny2guns]

If it is online leave the antivirus running on startup.
Your welcome.

Just a couple words about defrag and disc cleanup
If you do it on a daily basis it takes next to no time at all to do and your pc will work tip top all the time. The longer you leave it undone the slower your system will get and the longer it will take to clean up.
One of the things i like about windows 7 is i can set it to preform these tasks by itself at a given time every day if i want to and i do. My pc's are never switched off so they clean themselves up every morning at 3.

[mrmod]

You can stop things from start-up by doing this.
1. Go to start on the task bar.
2. Click on Run
3. type msconfig in the box and click ok
4. click the startup tab
5. uncheck everything except your anti-virus
6. click apply and ok then restart your pc
7. on restart a box will appear, put a check mark in the box and ither apply or ok or close. Your done.
All you really need running at startup is your A/V....anything else can be turned on when you need it and turned off when you don't. You will save alot of resourses this way and your system will respond better.
Changeing memory is easy, first you need to know what type and how much your board will support. Download a tool called cpu-z and install it. Run it and it will give you the info. If you have a hard time understanding it then post a screen shot of each tab here and i'll look at it with you.
EDIT: Yes a 32bit system is limited to just under 4Gb of ram but your motherboard may have stricter limits. Some boards do not support the full amount of memory that the operating system does.
The average cost per Gb of memory depends on the type of memory your board supports. For instance DDR memory is older and harder to get so it will in most cases cost you more. DDR2 memory is pretty cheap at the moment but as time passes it will i am sure go up in price as DDR3 memory takes over the market place.

Ok. Defragging is finito and i've configured the startup (which is now much faster ). Thank you very much Mr TwoGuns

And yeah i figured - it took me a mighty long time because it was the first time I had it done, plus with 70GB worth of stuff it took the best part of 10 hours leepy:.

I understand (thanks to vf also) that this is to be done regularly, in order to keep it in shape (like going to the dentists or what not).

A 3 GHz CPU is still a pretty good machine. But 512 MB RAM is not nearly enough to run Windows XP satisfactorily.
You should at the very least double the amount of installed RAM to 1 GB or more.

Defragging the hard drive regularly is also very good advice. I defrag at least once a week.
Personally, I am running Windows XP pro on an AMD 2600 CPU with 1.5 GB RAM installed.

It seems that i might be buying some RAM in the future. Don't know if too soon though :/. I am running Home Edition and it has become slower. :/ Is pro much of a difference?

The CPUZ screenies are here:







Now I've learned from you guys that i could with more RAM. I have DDR RAM so that's the old type but I think there might be some for me. Does my mobo (ooh geeky word, I guess I may have lurked before in SB xP) support lets 2.5GB of RAM? Maybe more depending on the price?

Thanks btw guys for all the feedback this got .

[Benny2guns]

Ok Dan I just read the manual for your computer and it say's your board has 4 memory slots and each slot will support a maximum of 1Gb. So 4GB's in total. It also say's that you need to install ram in matched sets in your system or you will take a preformance hit. Thats a standard given when it comes to ram. It also tells me your system is capable of running duel channel ram so thats a good thing. I sudgest you purchase a 2 x 1Gb kit of DDR400 memory and do not use what you already have with it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6820231039
That stuff right there.

[mrmod]

Thanks alot Benny

Do they ship to the UK? And is billing price high?

[Benny2guns]

I am not sure if they ship there or not Dan but there must be a spot that you can get it over there i would think.
Any DDR400 2 by 1Gb kit will work. G-Skill is very good ram if you can get it. Kingston would be my next choice for your pc.
Sorry Dan i forgot....No, pro is no faster than home.

[. . . .]

If it is online leave the antivirus running on startup.
Your welcome.

Just a couple words about defrag and disc cleanup
If you do it on a daily basis it takes next to no time at all to do and your pc will work tip top all the time. The longer you leave it undone the slower your system will get and the longer it will take to clean up.
One of the things i like about windows 7 is i can set it to preform these tasks by itself at a given time every day if i want to and i do. My pc's are never switched off so they clean themselves up every morning at 3.

But that can be done in windows XP Task Scheduler to.
Heck if you want you can have it start a MP3 file (will start media player) and set it like an alarm clock to..
And if you defrag once a week, then schedule it to defrag on a night that you are sleeping so it wont matter if it takes a little longer.

---

If the hard drive is 90% full wont that slow it down to unless you configure the virtual memory to stay static?

[Benny2guns]

If it is online leave the antivirus running on startup.
Your welcome.

Just a couple words about defrag and disc cleanup
If you do it on a daily basis it takes next to no time at all to do and your pc will work tip top all the time. The longer you leave it undone the slower your system will get and the longer it will take to clean up.
One of the things i like about windows 7 is i can set it to preform these tasks by itself at a given time every day if i want to and i do. My pc's are never switched off so they clean themselves up every morning at 3.

But that can be done in windows XP Task Scheduler to.
Heck if you want you can have it start a MP3 file (will start media player) and set it like an alarm clock to..
And if you defrag once a week, then schedule it to defrag on a night that you are sleeping so it wont matter if it takes a little longer.

---

If the hard drive is 90% full wont that slow it down to unless you configure the virtual memory to stay static?

Not sure about it but i would think no. As for xp and task scheduling, i never ever tried that and infact i did not know you could. With W7 the first time you defrag you are presented with the option of doing so. I thought it was a great way to do it.
On your 90% full question again, I have a few drives that are full as in 1Tb drives with 50Mb's free space and i don't see a differance in speed but you could be correct still with some systems and some drives. HD tune shows no differance anyway. Have you found differant results on your end?

[. . . .]

Yeah, if your virtual memory isnt static and is on a nearly full and fragmented HD it will slow down a lot because windows is changing the size of the virtual memory as needed and has to do it in whatever free space it can find.
Best results for me; I installed a 2nd drive and after formatting first thing I did was put the static sized virtual memory on it. Then use the rest of the space for archiving. The only time you will ever need to change the size of the virtual memory is if you change the amount of RAM you have. The faster the 2nd HD is the better of course.
The task scheduling thingy I thought of when I was being devious; I set a friends PC to play Pink Floyds "Time" from Dark Side of the Moon. The start of the song starts out with many alarm bells going off.. He has a 7.1 surround system in his room so....
Now if I could rememeber how I did that...

[Benny2guns]

Fragmented then yes, thats what slows down any drive. As far as data amount I would still say not to a noticable extent that will vary from rated read/write speeds.
When you are talking about static virtual memory you are talking about page file memory which is a portion of the hard drive itself used in the same manner so to speak as Ram. When you take into account the fact that virtual memory is far far slower than Ram then haveing more of it does slow down system responce times, both read and write hard drive speeds. On older single core processor systems another trick i used was to reduce virtual memory and in some cases turn it off completly and install the fastest ram and the maximum amount the system would support to speed the system responce times. By turning the virtual or page file off you force the system to use the much faster memory there by increasing preformance.

[. . . .]

Yes Page file memory is what I meant. Unless I have about 6 gigs of RAM installed I would not even consider turning it off or Windows will make your life a hell. Of course pure RAM as memory is the fastest way to go.
But if you allow XP to manage it by default then it will get defraged a lot in a short amount of time and most defragment programs will not touch it. And if you do find a program that will defrag it, like I did once, then windows may find fault with it. (BSOD) That may have been a fluke but I dont want to push my luck..

[Benny2guns]

Depends on your hardware bud, but alot of systems yes windows complains but I always turn it off for bench marks and overclocking.
Reduce it to the lowest point where by you can get windows to stop complaining. That is if you have fast ram and on a 32bit OS 4Gb installed.
I have to say though that with a Duel or Quad core it is not even an issue.

[. . . .]

I just remembered how I got windows to play a media file at a preset time; by using that useless add on called Microsoft Plus. It has has a doohicky that expands the abilitie of the Task scheduler or sumsuch like that.

---

Depends on your hardware bud, but alot of systems yes windows complains but I always turn it off for bench marks and overclocking.
Reduce it to the lowest point where by you can get windows to stop complaining. That is if you have fast ram and on a 32bit OS 4Gb installed.
I have to say though that with a Duel or Quad core it is not even an issue.

Quad cores have to be cooled, I am about to start playing with a liquid cooling system for a friends PC that currently has enough fans to be its own hovercraft. Are they reliable? I always have the worry they may leak.