My computer has been getting slower as of late. I defragment it regularly, have all the spyware and adware blocked, and have Norton Antivirus installed and updated as of yesterday. I have no viruses or spyware and I maintain it, but I think it’s just had too much put on and taken off it.
I have a Gateway Laptop with:
Windows XP Home Edition(with the latest update from Microsoft)
2.2 Ghz Celeron processor
512 memory
40 Gigabyte harddrive of which 51% is free.
I just feel that it’s not as quick as when I got it, especially when turning it on. Lately, it has been non-responsive when I try to put it into standby(it just reacts like I haven’t told it to go into standby).
I’m wondering if you think a clean refresh and install would get it back to new. I can burn everything critical I have to disks and I know I’d have to update all my important software again, but I’m wondering if it might be a good idea.
Has anyone ever done this to your computer? Is it a good idea? My goal is to get the computer back to new, as if it’s never been used. It was quicker then(July of 2003). It actually runs pretty good now. I’d just like to get it to go even quicker.
Does anyone know a good website that could walk me through this process step by step. I’ve seen some websites that tell me how to reformat my hard drive, but most of them are for people who are upgrading from Windows 98 to XP. I already have XP and just want a clean, fresh start.
Back in the Dark Ages, before XP, I used to do that all the time. It did help speed everything up. I never needed to do that after I got Windows XP, however (maybe the hardware is just better now?).
Anyway, a reformat would certainly get everything back to pristine condition, but you have to be sure you know what you’re doing (or have a friend that can help/another computer you can use to ask for help). Make sure you back up not only the applications but also important documents, media, and drivers. I like to wait at least 2-3 days after my initial set of backups to make sure I didn’t forget anything important.
Do you have the original installation discs/installer files for all your programs? You can not just burn the program dirs to a CD if that’s what you intended.
Note the part in there about deleting the existing partition and formatting a new one.
You also have to be sure that your computer hardware supports booting from CD. Any relatively recent computer should be able to. You’ll know if you just put in the Windows CD and reboot. If nothing happens, check your BIOS settings.
Also, if you re-install XP from scratch (or ANY Windows OS, for that matter), be sure that the first thing you do is go to the Microsoft.com site and download any “critical” updates from the Windows Update section.
These are all the patches that were (and continue to be) released after the official release of XP – these are the patches that plug the holes that that let in the internet worms that ate the cat that ate the rat that reside in the OS that Gates built.
Whenever I reformat a hard drive, I start one level below formatting. I use Microsoft’s Delpart tool to delete the partition first, then use FDisk to recreate it before fomatting and going on from there. The Delpart tool is included with the Microsoft Windows NT 3.1 Resource Kit only. It is not included in the Windows NT 3.5, 3.51 or 4.0 Resource Kits. It works with Windows 9x as well as 2000 and XP.
A reformat will make things faster and I know perfomance junkies who do it every six months. You might want to try a registry cleaning program first, it could give you the performance boost you want without spending all the time needed for a reinstall.
There is seldom a need to reformat or repartition. If you truly need to reinstall, then you can gain the same benefits by doing an over-the-to install (warning: you may get asked about an upgrade install) or by renaming c:\windows and c:\windows\win.* and c:\Documents and Settings and then installing XP. You’ll still have to reinstall all your apps, but you won’t lose any data.
It sounds to me like you’ve got surplus DLLs and obsolete entries in the Registry. Run a registry cleaner.
Sometimes there is no other option but to nuke Windows, repartition, reformat, and reinstall.
I had to do this when my home PC running WinXP decided that the broadband connection just wouldn’t work anymore. I troubleshot everything and even contacted my ISP to find the problem, but everything appeared to be setup right. So rather than try to dig through tons of registry entries and try different startup configs, I chose to nuke everything and start over. Things run so fast now, plus I know I’m up to date and virus free too.
Partition the hard disk into multiple drives. It will make your life easier in the future.
Next time you need to do this, you can just format the drive with the OS, reinstall, and all your MP3s and Porn will be unaffected on one of the other disks.
I kinda hate to be such a simpleton, but in all the stuff I saw posted here, I saw nothing about cleaning out the temp internet files and cookies. Just the defrag was mentioned.
Using the reg. cleaner and dumping all the temp stuff should make a lot of difference. A lot of gurus say you don’t need to clean the temp files and defrag in XP but my personal experience begs to differ.
Also, for plain boot speed, run 2 hard drives and save as much as you can to the other drive, “D” or whatever, and keep “C” as close to empty as you can.
Did you run scandisk? In XP it’s fairly hidden (and not called scandisk anymore, it’s called error checking. Not sure why). To get there double click on My Computer, right click on the hard drive(c:), go to properties then tools and click on check now under ‘error checking’. Tick both check boxes and hit start.
I hear people all the time complain about slow systems and needing to reinstall Windows. I don’t know what is up with that. I am a computer geek (do it for a living, have been for 11 years now) and I have reinstalled Windows two times on all my personal computers(#1). Those two reinstalls were simply because I hosed things beyond belief while experimenting with something. Of coarse both those times I was experimenting I was also drunk, which didn’t help.
Anyway, running scandisk/defrag, killing temp files, running an up to date AV ought to keep the system running just fine. You alos might want to check what is running on startup as alot of programs put in TSRs that will eat resources. You can get there by going to start->run->msconfig->startup tab. Uncheck what you do not want to start (if you are not sure google the name and you should be able to find out what it is and also check start->programs-startup) and reboot.
Slee
#1. I beat the hell out of my computers, install tons of programs yet never have problems (unless I am drunk. But I am sober now so that doesn’t happen). Though I do go through a lot of keyboards. Spill too much stuff on 'em and they don’t last too long.
