XRS

I recently spent a few days building/rebuilding the XRS household PCs. We had:

AMD 2100+ 512 Mb DDR / 128 Mb Geforce 4600 120 Gb h/d running XP Pro
AMD 1800+ 512Mb / 32 Mb Geforce 2 GTS 80 (40/20/20) Gb h/d running XP Pro
Pentium II 350 + 640Mb / 64Mb Geforce 2 Mx 8 Gb h/d running XP Pro

As you can imagine, the Pentium machine was slooooooooooow.

We now have:

AMD 2400+ 1Gb DDR 400/ 128Mb Radeom 9700 Pro 180 Gb h/d running XP Pro
AMD 2100+ 512 DDR /128 Mb Geforce 4600 120 Gb h/d running XP Pro
AMD 1800+ 512Mb / 32 Mb Geforce 2 GTS 40 Gb h/d running XP Pro

And have disposed of the Pentium having put Windows Me on it.

The problem that I’ve noticed recently is that XP seems to be very slow on all the machines when starting programs. In fact I tested the Pentium with Me against the 2400+ on opening various MS programs and the old PC was just as quick if not quicker.

All of the AMD machines are up-to-date with MS updates, run anti-virus and sit behind Zonealarm as well as my ADSL router.

Can anyone suggest why the AMDs are so slow?

Fig

I had a problem recently with XP slowing down drastically. It appears to have been due to recent (17th April) Critical Updates (Q811493 was last one installed), as I restored the system to 16th and disabled automatic updates, and the speed increased immediately.

AFAIK it could only have been due to this update, as more than one machine was affected and all resumed normal service after restore. I've not checked to see if there's anything in the KB about this.

medders

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/30426.html

this may be your problem

Paul

XRS

Cheers guys, that'll be the one.

I thought I was going mad, and was more than a little annoyed at spending out on the upgrade only to have three slow systems.

Almost decided to turn off UD as that is also running on all of them.

Chris L

Happened to our new PC aswell. XP running on a 2.4G P4 - good spec machine, but it has been very slow opening applications. At least I know what it is now!

Chris

Chris L

Out of interest, I followed the link to The Register and then onto Microsoft's site. I have removed the patch and it does make a huge difference. IE is still a little slower than I would expect, but Office applications open almost instantly. I would recommend you do the same unless you really need this patch.

Chris

AndyMoody

iTrader: (2)

I removed this patch too after reading this, the difference is like chalk and cheese. Things open when you click on them now, not a minute later! A vast improvement.

22BUK

This is a stupid question, but how do i remove the patch?

XRS

Go to Control Panel/Add and Remove Programs etc and it will be listed near the bottom of the list. Look for Q811493 and uninstall it.

Good luck - it does warn that any new programs may not run properly after you uninstall it, but mine was OK, and this was installed as I was building the system.

Also, check that Windows Update is not configured to run automatically and make sure you don't d/l this one again.

Cheers

22BUK

Many thanks XRS. Back to warp speed!!!

stevebt

iTrader: (8)

took off mine aswell as ive been having loads of probs with mine lately