Cousin's Slow Computer Needs Fixing

My cousin's computer is really slow, yet it has some some-what good specs.:ldown:
Here are the specs:



  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional
  • Version 2002
  • Service Pack 3
  • Intel(R)
  • Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz
  • 2.79Ghz, 512MB of Ram
  • 18.4 GB used out of 37.2 GB of HD

I don't' know much about the video card, but it looks like a decent one. :S

I already put the computers settings to take it as "Customize for Performance", and worked, but only by 4-20%. :frowning:

Then, I removed all start-up programs, and it too, increased the speed, but found out that it takes even longer to load Explorer.

After that, I gave up, and told myself it must be the RAM (at that time I didn't know the computer's specs), and said must be a little bit. But, figured it wasn't that, so I tried the HD, and that didn't' turn out so well either.

Then, I just gave up, and tried to see if anything else worked, but failed.

Can anyone out there give me some advice on how to handle this?

Thanks,
MasterChief0312
 
Hello Masterchief, welcome to NST.
Yeah, you are correct. It needs some more RAM, which is fortunately pretty cheap these days. :wink: So get it a couple 1GB sticks of RAM, and it should run a lot faster.

Jake
 
Defrag the drive and clean up to claim back additional space using disk defragmentor and disk cleanup (which well be available under administrative tools in the control panel). Uninstall any programs that are not used that could be taking up valuable system resources (especially the crud they tend to pre-install on your computer).
 
Hello Masterchief, welcome to NST.
Yeah, you are correct. It needs some more RAM, which is fortunately pretty cheap these days. :wink: So get it a couple 1GB sticks of RAM, and it should run a lot faster.

Jake
Hey Coolname007, thanks.

I'll try and see it, I figured, " It's pretty decent with 512MB of RAM since it's running XP." so I just ignored that theorie. But, I'll tell my cousin, and see if he'll buy some.

Thanks,
MasterChief0312
 
Though not the minimum to run XP on a computer, Ideally XP should be running on 1gb of RAM or greater.
 
Though not the minimum to run XP on a computer, Ideally XP should be running on 1gb of RAM or greater.
Kiarozamorro,

It was said that 256MB was the minimum for XP. And 512MB is like 1GB on Vista. So I figured, why not let it like that. I guess I could put either 1 or 2GB of RAM for the computer.

I have almost the same thought, but ignored it.
 
Yea, something WAY higher than the minimum. At least something double.
Well, 512 MBs is double, so I was talking about something like 768 MBs more than the minimum (i.e. 1 GB)...:wink:
And of course, after that, when you continue adding more RAM, it just gets more faster, and able to run more tasks at the same time. So yeah, I guess I meant something WAY higher than the minimum. :brows:

Jake
 
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