john_s

iTrader: (1)

I've noticed on a few computers that winXP just seems to get slower and slower over time.

It seems to show up during periods of disk access, though I don't think it's exclusively that.

I've tried the usual scandisk, defrag, remove temp files, delete some crap, etc a few times, but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Is this just a "feature" of XP.

Any other suggestions to try to fix it?

John.

Kieran_Burns

iTrader: (1)

yeah - turn off the indexing service and get a good registry cleaner / hoover application

warrenm2

and check for spyware/malware

PhilA

over time all OS systems get slower. we install more and more junk so more services run and more background programs run on startup eating CPU time. Uninstall any unused programs.
Run "msconfig" and disable any unwanted items on startup.

BuRR

If you have lots of files, then the slowdown may also be due to MFT fragmentation.

Iain Young

Also, if you don't have enough memory in the machine to run what you are asking of it, the page file (pagefile.sys) can get fragmented quite easily, causing slowdown in the process. I don't think the standard xp defrag touches this, so you'll need to get hold of good 3rd party one (they're not expensive)...

farmerwrx

how do you turn off the indexing service and what is it etc?

Iain Young

Control panel -> administrative tools -> Services

Select indexing service in the list -> properties

Change start up to manual, and stop the service if it is currently running.

Bascically, it's a resource hungry service which creates indexes of files on your machine for faster searching etc...

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

Or you turn off the paging file reboot, do a defrag and then turn the page file back on again, this does the samething. You can only do this is you have I would say at least 512mb of ram.

Kieran_Burns

iTrader: (1)

or start up in safe mode... takes longer as you don't have the enhanced access to the disk - but it gets there eventually.

Good uninstaller apps are available - does Norton Utilities still do this on the latest version?

john_s

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for the ideas so far guys. Will give the ones I've not already tried a go.

Hadn't thought about the pagefile, though thinking about it, it is something I've done in the past to trim performance up a bit.

John.

Kieran_Burns

iTrader: (1)

It's always a good idea to have on partition specifically set up for the page file - we have 4Gb ones on all our Servers, and NOTHING else goes in them.

This way, there will be no fragmentation ever, and you can always ignore that drive from the backup selection.

It's just as vaild for a desktop if you have the disk space to accomodate one.