Windows XP acting sluggish on older computer

[sindows]

So I've been playing around with an older computer of mine but not so old that its ancient but XP runs fairly poorly.

Specs
P4 1.7Ghz Willamette
512 SDRAM
old 80Gig Western digital HD
i845 based motherboard
TI4800SE video card
freshly installed XP

When I say sluggish, I basically mean that there are often times when the computer is responding much slower than I would expect it to. If I were to launch Word with no other running programs(~190Mb Memory usage), it would take a good 5-7 seconds before I could type anything. Another example of sluggish performance is when I'm watching a video file and I want to type notes, there is a small but noticeable delay between my hitting the keys and the letters appearing on the monitor.

Is this because my computer is just too slow for XP or do I have a bottleneck somewhere(I'm thinking harddrive or maybe memory)?

The reason I suspect the harddrive and/or motherboard is because I've used the PCwizard2008 harddrive benchmark and the scores are much lower than anything they list as as comparatives. On the other hand, I also have a relatively new harddrive(~2 years old) hooked up and it only scores marginally better than my old one(which come with the computer and is a good 5-6 years old). This leads me to suspect the motherboard...or I could be overestimating the performance levels of this older hardware...

Can someone clear me up?

Cliffs
Xp runs not as quick as I'm used to
way too outdated hardware or is something malfunctioning?

Edit:scanned for virus/adware already so it can't be that besides XP was reinstalled about a week ago

 

[mechBgon]

Williamette-core P4 + single-channel SDRAM isn't an ideal combo. Aside from that, did you install the Intel motherboard-driver package and nVidia video-card drivers? http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/cs-009247.htm

 

[Sink41]

Try making sure that the hard drives are in ultra DMA mode.

Check Your IDE Port Mode

First check what mode your secondary IDE port is currently working in. Go to Device Manager: right-click on My Computer, select Properties, click on the Hardware tag, click on the Device Manager button, click on the plus sign to the left of IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller, double-click on the secondary IDE channel, click on Extended Settings and check whether it is set to DMA when available. Directly underneath that setting is a grey field that shows the actual working mode of your IDE channel. You want the highest possible DMA or Ultra DMA mode there, and you definitely don't want PIO mode.

If so right click and uninstall it, then restart. Windows will detect and re-install driver.

more info here: http://winhlp.com/node/10

 

[Noema]

Those Williametes are dog-slow. My parents have an old Compaq with a Williamette and even Xubuntu is sluggish in it. Pretty much everything ramps CPU usage to 100% on the machine.

 

[SpeedEng66]

are all of your drivers updated?

 

[Bluefront]

Many of the computers at work have that same CPU, same chipset, and 512mb ram. They are not nearly as slow as you describe.

Do you have a bunch of programs running....A/V programs and such? Fire up task manager and check your CPU usage......probably should be less than 10% most of the time. I'd say you have a software problem of some sort....

 

[sindows]

Update:
Good news: things are better
bad news: still a bit slow...

@mechBgon
Thanks I've just installed those drivers.

@Sink41
I do believe this was part of the problem. My main hd was in pio mode but I reset it along with using a different IDE cable and it now sets to DMA mode. However my second harddrive(newer) is still humming around in PIO mode for some reason 🙁

I used the "cable select" setting for both drives and the main drive is connected to the black cable while the second drive is connected to the grey cable.

@Noema
The processor could be the problem but it should be fast enough to run XP smoothly right? I mean this was close to Intel's best when XP launched back in '01 IIRC...

@SpeedEng66
yes I think...

I have motherboard drivers
sound drivers
video card drivers
anything else?

And thanks for all the help everybody 🙂

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: sindows
Update:
Good news: things are better
bad news: still a bit slow...

@mechBgon
Thanks I've just installed those drivers.

@Sink41
I do believe this was part of the problem. My main hd was in pio mode but I reset it along with using a different IDE cable and it now sets to DMA mode. However my second harddrive(newer) is still humming around in PIO mode for some reason 🙁

I used the "cable select" setting for both drives and the main drive is connected to the black cable while the second drive is connected to the grey cable.

@Noema
The processor could be the problem but it should be fast enough to run XP smoothly right? I mean this was close to Intel's best when XP launched back in '01 IIRC...

@SpeedEng66
yes I think...

I have motherboard drivers
sound drivers
video card drivers
anything else?

And thanks for all the help everybody 🙂

If you have a drive that's still in PIO mode, see if you can change it to the appropriate DMA mode and make it stick through a reboot or two. If not, open Task Manager, drill into the IDE/ATAPI controller list, and do an Uninstall of the controller that the drive is on, then reboot and let Windows "rediscover" the controller, and see if that does the trick.