Help: Windows XP sp2 on 128mb RAM

[helppls]

My Grandma's got these specs (she won't buy or let me give her a RAM upgrade):

2.8ghz Celeron
128mb RAM
~40gb 4200rpm

She only uses the thing for webmail and word processing, but it is still incredibly slow (windows freeze when dragging them across the screen, for instance).

I've done:
1. Deep spyware/virus scan (nothing)
2. Disabled unnecessary services
3. Uninstalled unnecessary programs
4. Upgraded to sp2
5. Defragged
6. Switched to Firefox

What else can I do?

 

[lxskllr]

Use classic theme
Add more ram but don't tell her. This is the option I would choose. Make up a story about why the computer's now faster. I found a loose stick of ram in the box, I disabled the server module, I replaced the turbo jumper on the mb... You get the idea ;^)

 

[nerp]

Sneak a couple 512mb sticks in there when she's not looking?

I hate to say it, there's not much more you can do really. Looks like you've covered all the usual bases. Unless you think there's a hardware or software glitch somewhere, I don't see what else you can do.

 

[VirtualLarry]

XP alone is sluggish on 128MB, nevermind Firefox. Firefox is an absolutely huge memory hog. Mine is using 1.5GB of RAM right now.

I would point-blank ask her why she likes to waste time on a slow computer? Ask her if she drives at 10 mph on purpose all the time. And if she doesn't, ask her why not, and then try to apply that analogy to the computer.

 

[Peter]

192 MB of RAM = 128+64 is borderline OK for people who only ever open one window at a time, but 128 definitely won't work well for anyone.

 

[jae]

We have some old IBM P3 (~800MHz) laptops with 128MB of ram.. Ive been meaning to examine them because they run fast as shit for some odd reason.. Believe our System Admin said they are running slimmed down XP installs.

 

[bacillus]

try going to system properties>advanced>performance>settings and choose "adjust for best performance".

 

[ManyBeers]

Originally posted by: helppls
My Grandma's got these specs (she won't buy or let me give her a RAM upgrade):

2.8ghz Celeron
128mb RAM
~40gb 4200rpm

She only uses the thing for webmail and word processing, but it is still incredibly slow (windows freeze when dragging them across the screen, for instance).


What else can I do?

In performance settings uncheck "show window contents when dragging".

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
XP alone is sluggish on 128MB, nevermind Firefox. Firefox is an absolutely huge memory hog. Mine is using 1.5GB of RAM right now.

I would point-blank ask her why she likes to waste time on a slow computer? Ask her if she drives at 10 mph on purpose all the time. And if she doesn't, ask her why not, and then try to apply that analogy to the computer.

My mum has a XP PC with 256mb and I still find it sluggish,I recommend 512mb or more personally.

 

[Nothinman]

Tell her to f' off until she lets you do what's necessary to bring the machine up to acceptable performance levels.

 

[JustaGeek]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Tell her to f' off until she lets you do what's necessary to bring the machine up to acceptable performance levels.

Is that what YOU would say to your Grandma...??? :shocked:

EDIT: But she needs at least 512MB of RAM, preferrably 768MB if the integrated graphics take 128MB. The difference in performance between 512 and 768 was HUGE on my old ACER laptop with 128MB of integrated graphics memory.

 

[Nothinman]

Is that what YOU would say to your Grandma...???

I probably wouldn't say "f' off" verbatim, but I would tell her that I'm not going to do anything for her unless she lets me do what I think is necessary and in this case that's add more memory.

 

[JustaGeek]

Of course...

BTW, what's going on with your new Moderator title...? I believe that you deserve it as much as the other "elected".

 

[Nothinman]

I've been too busy with work to follow up on the moderator stuff. I poke in to post once or twice during the day but that's about it. I suppose I could do that today...

 

[duragezic]

A friend gave his old laptop to this girl who came to me to install XP on it. So I do that, only to find it had 128MB of RAM minus a little for the integrated video. Ouch. It was < 1 GHz processor too, and like a 8GB hard drive. Too bad she didn't have Windows 2000 for it or something. My friend had linux on there for that reason but obviously this girl didn't want to use that junk.

So nonetheless, I loaded the couple of things she had given me to put on there. And for basic word processing and internet usage... well it wasn't completely bad! I turned off every damn thing I knew that I could, so it only had a little more than a dozen processes using like 60-70MB of memory on bootup! So it was still very slow if you had a few browser windows open and anything else, but she has not contacted me since complaining that it was slow, and from what I used of it it seemed like it worked good enough.

So turning absolutely everything off and setting all settings to performance (classic style) really helped with the memory usage. But no doubt, I think 256mb is the real minimum requirement and with 512 MB and a properly setup system, it will be plenty speedy for basic tasks.

 

[Nothinman]

My friend had linux on there for that reason but obviously this girl didn't want to use that junk.

Of course, because it's just assumed that XP is OMG!! BETTAR!! for the unnamed tasks she had planned for the thing...

 

[Evander]

you can use the autoruns utility (freeware) to disable any unneeded startup programs (I bet you've missed a few)

try using KMeleon instead of firefox (it is it's lightweight cousin)

boot into safemode and surf/wp from there if it's really bad.

One last thing, I have never tried this but Blackbox is supposed to be an extremely lightweight and fast windows replacement shell, please let us know how it goes if you try this:

http://www.bb4win.org/news.php
review: http://shell-shocked.org/article.php?id=253

from the review:
"To quote the manual: [BlackBox]'s not meant to be Eye Candy ... , nor is it meant to be the most fully featured shell out there. It is just meant to be fast. And that it is I can assure you. It loads in no time. The menu pops up the same instant you click (well, it really doesn't of course, but it feels that way). Switching to a new style takes only a few milliseconds even on my dinosaur computer. I can in fact notice a remarkable overall speed increase when running BlackBox, almost like a slight processor overclocking. I don't have any benchmark figures to back this statement up, but even if the shell doesn't actually make your computer faster (probably just a matter of graphic rendering speeds) it's nonetheless pleasant. Even if it's really just an illusion of speed, it's a convincing one.

As far as resource usage goes BlackBox is much lighter than Explorer, but I couldn't detect any notable difference between BlackBox and LiteStep. Both shells utilize around 7-8MB of memory, but it must be added that BlackBox sure feels a lot faster and more responsive than LiteStep, which possibly can be ascribed to BlackBox's bitmap-less approach. One would think that it also might have something to do with BlackBox being a port from Linux (since Linux is always faster and better than Windows... right?), but actually the Windows version doesn't have the same codebase at all except for the rendering engine.

What about stability then? Well, right out of the box (no pun intended) BlackBox runs like clockwork."

 

[duragezic]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

My friend had linux on there for that reason but obviously this girl didn't want to use that junk.

Of course, because it's just assumed that XP is OMG!! BETTAR!! for the unnamed tasks she had planned for the thing...

Heh, I was just joking about it being junk. But it wasn't even Ubuntu or one of the easier distros and had something like Fluxbox on it which is no good for her. Maybe if it had KDE or something like that it would've been okay to use, but I'm guessing the reason it didn't have that was it would take at least as much memory as XP.