Squeezing the Sweet Bejesus Outta Me PC

[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 .