Mother's computer is extremely slow *UPDATE*, PICS NOW INCLUDED!*

[Philippine Mango]

My mother is very finicky when it comes to her computer and yet she won't even let me back it up, side the point I am wondering how I can improve performance on her machine with out formatting it. She is running windows 98 on a dell xps r400 and it's been running windows 98 ever since she bought the computer (has never been formatted). I know I normally would have at least formatted the machine 3 times but I am unable to do so. I think she is running CL3 ram so that could be slowing down the system, she defragment's the system and she doesn't have that many programs running on startup so I'm not sure what I can do. She's got a 16Gb drive with 384MB of ram and not much of that ram is being used... Any ideas?

 

[imported_Lucifer]

First off, how much disk space is available? When you are really low on disk space, things run very shi!tty. My cousin used to use Norton AV on his computer, but removed it because he said it slows down his computer a lot. So he installed Zonealarm Antivirus, and said it doesnt slow down his system at all.

 

[Philippine Mango]

Shes got plenty for a 10GB drive (about 3GB).

 

[timswim78]

You can try scanning for spyware. There are some good free programs. Adaware SE and Spybot Seard and Destroy are examples. You can also clean her registry with a free registry cleaner.

 

[mechBgon]

Those are good suggestions and here are links: Spybot S&D and Lavasoft Ad-Aware. Is her Norton at least the 2004 version, so it can detect what Norton calls "expanded threats" (Trojans, dialers, adware, spyware and hack tools)?

Big picture: is the lack of responsiveness bothering her, or just you? If it's not bugging her, and she won't even let you back it up, then I'd say let well enough alone until the hard drive dies.

 

[Philippine Mango]

No I've tried that too! Tried everything in the book, do registry scanners really work? I think there is one my MS that I might try, otherwise I have no idea what to do. Yes it does bother her, infact what is really irritating about it all is that she will DISABLE norton because it makes her system slow. Anybody have any ideas how to remove norton from the system tray and have it enabled? Because I have a processor waiting for her that I was suppose to install in her system (powerleap 1.4GHZ processor) which should help a lot and she is not motivated to let me install it. So I want to enable norton and not have it in the system tray so she WILL complain about it being EVEN slower.

 

[mechBgon]

How much RAM does it have? That's something you could add without it really being obvious, if you want to be crafty about it. And what apps does she typically run, just email and Internet? Or does she do more than that?

 

[Philippine Mango]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
How much RAM does it have? That's something you could add without it really being obvious, if you want to be crafty about it. And what apps does she typically run, just email and Internet? Or does she do more than that?

Read the initial post and yes she does e-mail, internet, chat, website, word, nothing intensive. I've had this 1.4GHZ processor (powerleap) lying around for a while and I really want to install it. She says that she want's to buy a new computer and since I know thats stupid, I've been holding her Frontpage '98 cd (the thing preventing her from doing). The processor upgrade would help tremendously but otherwise it's her defective motherboard and crappy dell ram she bought (she spent so much I dont even want to mention it) and its slow ram at that!

 

[mechBgon]

CL3 versus CL2 is a performance difference in the 1-2% area, so if you can just get the 1.4GHz CPU in there without the computer going up in smoke, that would be good for the CPU side of things.

Bigger picture: no matter what you do, the relatively-slow I/O of a 10GB ATA drive is going to hold up the show at times. Plus, how much longer do you expect it'll last? She might have a good idea with buying a new system, especially if she gets something that's spec'ed out well. Maybe you can help with that, or get her to let you build one.

 

[Philippine Mango]

No she will probably just buy another stupid dell, there is no point of her having a 3GHZ+ machine for the stuff she is doing. 400MHZ should be plenty fast as well but there is something wrong with her machine and I think it's the motherboard. I have a XPS R450 board with a 450MHZ processor and it walk all over her machine. I don't have the XPS board anymore because I installed it into a friend's computer since his T850 was running slowly, swapped boards and their system is running much faster. Any idea to the norton thing on how to make it invisible? Really want to install the processor ASAP. She used to know how to program and everything, I was quite proud to hear what she knew how to do but now she just knows barely anything, quite sad to see (Programmed on a 8088 and we still have it!)

 

[Malak]

Norton will lag on that old machine, it's designed to run on new machines. Get a simpler AV like maybe antivir. Shouldn't lag.

 

[Philippine Mango]

Agian the thing is I had a machine exactally like hers (50MHZ faster) and it could run norton AND play games. Now that I think about it, I realize it ran things pretty damn quickly. I could play flight simulator 2004 on the rage 128 AIW card I had in there, when I got a better video card I then realized it was the bottle neck but otherwise it was killer fast compared to my mother's system. No idea what to do for her, she needs the anti virus software enabled and I'm not sure how I can FORCE it to be enabled so that she can't disable it.

 

[camara120]

did you have the exact same 10GB drive in your machine mango?

I think that thing must be slow as hell. If I were you, I would get a cheap 40GB 7200RPM drive and use some software to duplicate the drive onto it when shes not around

if shes smart enough to notice the size difference, you could always format 10GB only and leave the rest unused

I think that would speed things up a LOT



if money isnt tight, just let her get a new Dell for $300 or $400... you may think theyre stupid, but if the new one makes her happier, it shouldnt really matter

 

[mechBgon]

I know with Norton 2004 and 2005, you can password-protect the Norton options and then it will not allow itself to be disabled unless the password is entered. There might be an option to hide the tray icons too, I'll refresh my memory next time I'm working on my mom's Norton-equipped rig. Of course, your mom may not like being, uh, mothered like that...

 

[Philippine Mango]

Yup same drive, well I'm pretty sure it is anyways. I think she has a 7200RPM drive in there beacause I looked it up to see if that was the issue. At the time I think she payed extra for the 16GB drive but then later when the 450 came out, it was just standard (5 month difference). It's slower than my pentium system I can tell you that, I have so many computers I just don't think it's worth it for her to get a whole new system that won't be faster than her's because lack of everything. I really think she has a defective board, another problem is I can't just sneak into her room and switch everything because she locks her room and I will be gone when the holidays are over.

 

[mechBgon]

So what it boils down to, really, is a relationship problem here. Your mom isn't happy with her computer's performance, but it sounds like she's made it clear that she doesn't want you to fix it with hardware upgrades. Well, it's her computer, and she's an adult... maybe she could be educated to understand better about the potential risks of not having her antivirus software enabled, at least. example.

 

[Philippine Mango]

she "claims" that she runs norton every once in a while but the problem is virus's can trick norton and make it useless. I have not yet told her about that but probably should, I'm so confused to why she won't let me image her drive onto mine. I have so much disk space it's not even funny, sure would make my life easier. Also her damn AOL dsl is a pain in the ass because she has to disconnect the dsl modem every time the computer starts and I told her she can just get SBC dsl and use aol as a client on top of it.

I've been using mindspring internet since 1998 and I love it, I've lately been letting my sister use it and now she doesn't even log onto aohell anymore, she just use's the web browser based e-mail to check aol's e-mail. I really hate aol but my mom has been using it since 1993 and she is litterally hooked on it, she likes the fact news pops up every time she logs in, (is looking for a free alternative to having her stop using the program). The program crashes her computer all the time and is a real hog, I really hate it. Another reason my little sister uses it is because she can't play WOW with stupid aol so she uses my mindspring.

 

[Philippine Mango]

She says that currently she is going through all of her files to see what she can delete and what she needs to backup. I guess she is planning on backing up her files soon, I must have inspired her to do some "house cleaning" because I did it to my system and I was able to recover 20GB of space!

 

[xpoptical]

liveprotect could cause lag.. it takes a while to scan any active files .CAB .BAK .EXE when you dl or use them try checking disable liveprotect. if it works ... get a new AV
if it doesnt... get a new AV

 

[Philippine Mango]

*UPDATE* She finally let me work on her computer, I was able to:

Installed Powerleap Processor (1.4GHZ Celeron Tualatin Core)
Remove CL3 ram stick (now she has 256MB of CL2 ram which is sufficient for WIN98)
Cleaned out her system (lots of dust, have pics Below)
Installed New chipset drivers
Disabled Dialup modem because she has DSL which removed all hardware conflics with other devices
Intalled New Bios update [fixed computer not shutting down after software shutdown (startmenu)]

After all this, I get a much faster computer and can have norton enabled while running everything smoothly. The only bottle neck I can see in this system now is the HDD, it's a 16GB drive and the system was purchased in August 1998 so it's probably 5400RPM.

Here are all the pictures I took of the dust and crap.
20.JPG
21.JPG
22.JPG
23.JPG
24.JPG
25.JPG
26.JPG
27.JPG
28.JPG
29.JPG
30.JPG
31.JPG
32.JPG
33.JPG
34.JPG
35.JPG
36.JPG
37.JPG
38.JPG
39.JPG
40.JPG

 

[Philippine Mango]

*bumpidie bump

 

[TTM77]

Get her a new one for Xmas. Bypass all the formating and everything.

 

[Sunner]

Holy shit, that's a crapload of dust...

I cleaned up a computer just yesterday, had a shitload of dust as well, but the dust was nice enough to just shape into a carpet, so I could just pull one end of it, and damn near the entire layer of dust would follow

 

[Randabis]

OMFG, I've never seen a computer collect that much dust before. I'm surprised the damn thing was even running at all.

Good thing you finally convinced her to let you clean the damn thing. Next you should put win2k on it or something. Screw 98 man.

 

[jamesbond007]

Another vote to put Win2K on there. Stable workhorse!

That is also the most dust I've ever seen collect into the front bezel of a computer...that's INSANE! Put a piece of wood or something under the tower. Even if it's only a couple inches off the ground, it'll help immensely.