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New O/S install, system running slow...

D

deadken

Diamond Member
A buddy of mine gave me his old laptop since he just bought a new one. It's a Compaq Presario 2575us: P4 2.66Ghz, 512MB, 15" screen. All it needed was a new hard drive (since he took the old one out). I bought a 80GB WD hard drive, installed it and ran the recovery discs. The computer is old enough that the discs only put on XP Pro SP1. I had a few issues with automatic updates not working (IE 6), but I finally got everything updated (SP3 and IE8 (I use Firefox)).

My problem is this thing is slow as could be. I happen to have a Dell 5150 P4 2.66Ghz, 512MB, 15" screen that I used to use, but the video card is flaky, so I didn't use it much. Well, I hate to say it, but there is a marked difference between the Compaq and the Dell in the way they operate. The Compaq just drags its ass. From opening up programs, to surfing the net, to watching a video on youtube it is sluggish. Although, watching a DVD seems to work fine.

Every now and then when it is slow, I press ctrl - alt - del and look at the performance tab within Task Manager. While the CPU is pretty pegged (mostly %100 but sometimes dipping), I see that the Memory is flatlined at around 480. I'm figuring that 32Mb of the 512Mb is shared with video and the remaining 480 isn't enough for what I'm doing. So, it keeps shuffling stuff on and off the hard drive and that is why the system is so slow (made even worse by having a 5400RPM).

The weird thing is: I used to recommend 512MB as the lowest you'd want with WinXP if you were going to be doing more than one thing at a time. I'm wondering if I should run a memory test (or swap the modules from the Dell into the Compaq). Or, should I just buy 2x512MB sticks (around $20 shipped on eBay) and know that I'll have more than enough for most anything I'd want to do on that laptop.

I'm sorry to say that I haven't really focused on how much crap might be running in the background. I did install 'Total Defense' antivirus (after removing the Norton that it had on it), but IIRC, this system was dogging even before I installed that. FWIW, This was basically a O/S install. I didn't add any other software that might come preloaded.

So, what do you guys think might be the problem?

TLDR Notes:
Installed new HD into 2.66Ghz laptop
installed O/S, system runs slow
512Mb of memory
have another 2.66Ghz laptop w/512 that's faster.
 
Yup, more ram will certainly help. I would recommend 2gb ram if the system is capable of it.

As for why it's running slower than your other 'comparable' system, who knows... it could be a combination of things. I'm thinking there might be some programs which are using all of the CPU resources. When you ctrl/alt/del'd, what did you see that was pegging the processor to 100%? Could be a matter of uninstalling some unwanted bloatware to help speed things up.
 
If you "installed" by running the recovery cd's then the laptop runs with drivers for the old hard drive ,check if thats the problem,if its running fallback drivers than those run through cpu power and not the controller so it could be the cause of everything being sloooooow.
 
Thanks. I was figuring that with task manager showing it was using as much memory as I had, more would help if it would keep the O/S from having to use the HD in place of memory.

I didn't see much of anything in processes that struck me as out of place. It's been a while since I've used XP regularly, but I remember something like 35 - 40 processes being pretty good, over 50 and some likely could be cleaned up. I'll take a closer look.

I'm glad I asked. I didn't want to throw another $20-$40 at this if it isn't going to help. I'm only into this Compaq for $25. But since I spent around $60 fixing that Dell laptop (needed a screen and charger) and I never really use it, I don't want to start throwing good money after bad.

Hmm, I checked device manager and didn't see anything really out of line. I did end up going to HP / Compaq and downloading a video driver (the one from the recovery was from 2002, the newest one was from 2004). The 'new' HD is a Western Digital while the original one was a Hitachi. I assumed that all HD's used a 'standard' driver (like a CD Rom drive does). Thanks for the idea, it's easy enough to check.

BTW: I've never really used a laptop. I don't know that I'll ever use this laptop. Maybe I'll use it for watching a movie or surfing the net if I'm away from home. So, for a few bucks, I'm a sport. Once it starts adding up I have to ask myself why I'm spending money on something I've never needed before and likely won't use.
 
XP Pro should run well on 512MB with a 2.66GHz CPU.

The minimum hardware requirements for Windows XP Professional include:

Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended)
At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended)
Click to expand...

Based on your symptoms you are running out of RAM, but you shouldn't be.

I've got a 1.5GHz single core laptop with 512MB and it works fine with XP.
 
Does XP come with DMA enabled by default? We had to manually turn that on back in the Win95 days...

Go to Device Manager and see if you have any yellow marks. If you do, some drivers need installing...
 
In order to determine if you have a hardware or software issue you might try to run FatDog64 Linux from a live CD. It is tiny so it won't take long to download and burn. You don't need to install anything FatDog will run just fine in RAM. Play with FatDog and if it works then your problem is something in the software. If FatDog is slow too then you might have a hardware issue.

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=82611
 
Thanks for the replies.

I've just checked again and there are no obvious issues in Device Manager. The HD drivers are from 7/1/2001, but a visit to WD's site shows no drivers for their 2.5" drives (like I figured, must be a standard driver).

I did find a few new updates (more have shown up after the 122 were installed Friday night). I don't expect any of those to be a miracle cure, but I want to rule out everything.

I've used Knoppix before. I had a copy of it on a flash drive, but have since erased that drive. I'll have to download it again and try that in place of XP. That would rule out any hardware problems.

Just now, while looking up the hard drive info, I was using 440+ Mb's of ram. Perhaps I need to look at the applications and sort them by memory usage. Wouldn't that show me what is eating up all of my ram?

Thanks for the XP specs. I remember people using 256Mb's for XP. I suggested more if they multi-tasked and complained about sluggishness. From what I remember, 512Mb was a good solid base.
 
I used Knoppix years ago...

Sorry if I'm being overbearing but you really should try Puppy Linux or FatDog64. These tiny distros are amazing. Being small they will load completely to RAM so once they are booted they are fast, really fast.

Knoppix is too big so it will be much slower.
 
I'm not perceiving you as being overbearing. I just am (a little bit) familiar with Knoppix, so when you suggested removing the O/S from the equation, that is where my mind went.

I didn't realize that knoppix was 'big'. It still fits on a CD Rom (less than 700MB). I used a version called Puppy Knoppix that was on the flash drive. I'm sorry that I erased it. I tried getting it again, but am having problems with it (no audio). Perhaps now is a good time for me to try one of the ones you suggested.

I'm on vacation this upcoming week. Perhaps when the craziness of the holidays are over I can try one you suggested.
 
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