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XP is running ridiculously slow (even after work)

H

hans030390

Diamond Member
I'm trying to fix up my friend's laptop (HP Pavilion zd8000), as it was running fairly slow. The boot time was horrible, the log on sound was crackly and choppy, and it took even longer to be ready to use on the desktop.

So, I tried all of the typical things. Deleted unnecessary programs and files, went into msconfig and disabled all unnecessary services and startup things, did a thorough check for viruses, spyware, etc, did all available updates for windows, ran Crap Cleaner, cleaned out the registry, and did a defrag with Perfect Disk.

These steps usually work extremely well for most computers I work on...but, this computer is still running really slow. Boot time has noticeably decreased (especially on the desktop), but it's still slow...sounds are still choppy. If I have one application running after everything has stopped loading up, it runs OK...but it can't multi-task. (Side note: Any themes or effects are disabled in XP)

So, what's up with this laptop? It's not a BAD laptop...2.8Ghz P4, 512mb ram, x300. Perhaps there's some sort of driver problem or hardware problem? Perhaps I need to do a full reinstall of XP? Could anyone help me figure this out?
 

Add at least another 512MB stick of RAM. Even the 256MB stick made a huge difference on my old ACER laptop (total of 768MB, out of which 128MB was taken for Video Memory).

It should run fine with 1GB of RAM.

 
Originally posted by: JustaGeek

Add at least another 512MB stick of RAM. Even the 256MB stick made a huge difference on my old ACER laptop (total of 768MB, out of which 128MB was taken for Video Memory).

It should run fine with 1GB of RAM.
Click to expand...

That won't fix it. This setup is currently running basically no background programs at all, no themes or effects, no startup apps, etc. XP should be running pretty quickly on this setup, even with just 512mb of RAM.

For example, I have a desktop...2.2Ghz P4, 512MB RAM, Radeon 9200. XP runs perfectly on that system, and it generally has a few startup apps and other things running on it.

Why, then, would this laptop be any different? Now, perhaps the RAM is faulty. OK, that would make sense, but if not, extra RAM will not be the answer.
 
First thing to check is whether the system harddisk is still running in DMA mode. XP likes to fall back to PIO mode at the slightest hint of a problem - and in a notebook, the drive going offline briefly after you bumped the thing can be enough.
 
Originally posted by: John
Run WD diags on the hard drive and make sure DMA mode is enabled in the Device Manager.
Click to expand...

Ah, it was in PIO mode. I had to do a bit of searching around (no option to just turn DMA on...well, there was, but it still defaulted to PIO), but I enabled DMA mode. Everything is running much better now. I'm currently running the WD diag tool right now.
 
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