Horrible lag with Windows XP

[elzmaddy]

I'm experiencing some horrible slowness with Windows XP now. Well, I did have to remove 256MB RAM because it went bad, so now I am down to 256MB from 512 previously. However, it wasn't that fast before either.

How slow? Take a look at this: From the moment I type in C: in Start->Run to the moment the drive contents display takes 4.48 seconds. The time from clicking on the Internet Explorer icon and the browser displaying is 6.04 seconds. What the heck? Everything in my process list adds up to 95MB so I am blaming the bloated Windows XP operating system for hogging the RAM. I almost feel like going back to 98SE (but not really) just so I can have a fast computer. It's not just application slowness that bothers me, it is doing basic functions like copying or moving files with explorer, creating folders, etc. I sometimes do them from the command line because I can't take the slowness.

My system stats right now:

Running Processes: 47
Average CPU usage: ~10%

Used Physical memory: 239MB
Free: 17MB (no matter how low this number is, it never gets to zero)

Page File Used: 488MB
Page File Free: 507MB
Page File Total: 747MB (doesn't quite add up)

I suppose I should reconfigure the page file size since my memory has been reduced?

 

[elzmaddy]

With all apps and processes shut off, performance is still only fair. By the way, I am using the classic Windows theme and I have tried to turn off as many graphics effects as possible using a tweak program.

I just set "Classic folder view" and this seems to have helped a bit!