Computer running slow

P

pillar

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Feb 14, 2008
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Heres the situation guys. I gave this old computer to a friend of mine because she didnt have a computer & she does photography, so I figured I would give her the machine. The machine was made back in '03, so its quite up there in years. Anyways her dad bought her a new computer (Acer from Best Buy) & shes happy with it. Well the reason her dad got her a new computer is because the power supply finally went out after all these years. It was a 350w psu. Well I had my 460w psu from my current machine that I kept in case of emergencies (good thing I kept it). Anyways, I figured I would install it in her old machine. Well before we know it, things right off the bat were getting ugly. Even tho I kept the cable in on the floppy drive, the software for some odd reason went into Admin Rights mode & was asking for username & password. Neither myself (who originally owned the computer) nor she ever use that mode. Instead, the computer was split into 3 different accounts (1 for her and her parents). Well I figure might as well put the power cable into the floppy drive. As weird as it was, that bypassed that mode & went straight into booting up. But light I said, it went from bad to ugly real quick. Well I remember when the computer used to boot up really quickly. Even when I gave it to my friend, it would still boot up rather quickly (esp for its age). Well Im not sure if its the psu or whats goin on, but its acting like its running on a Pentium or PII cpu w/ like 128-256mb memory, its just that slow. It took at least 10 minutes to boot up. I really couldnt believe how slow it was acting, not to mention that I couldnt understand why it was being so slow. Heres the specs on the system:

P4 2.4 Ghz
1gb ddr333 memory
80gb+40gb hard drive
Windows XP Pro 32 bit

One thing I should mention is that the motherboard is capable of usin full 20+4 pin connection for the motherboard power, but was acting up earlier, so I moved the 4 pin. Im thinkin that the 4 pin may have something to do w/ the speed issue, but I doubt it. Any thoughts/suggestions??
 
It sounds to me like your hard drives are getting fragmented.

Have you tried a defrag to see if that makes it boot faster?

Also, do you have another hard drive that you could try in this box?
 
Yes, it seems that that is indeed the case. Im letting the computer run a system defrag & right now over 750 file segments are unreadable, which isnt good. Im not quite sure how much longer this will take.
 
Another really great thing to do is run msconfig!

Go Start > Run > type msconfig and click ok

Go to the Start Up tab

Everything in there is starting with your PC and it's probably a lot more than you expected.

Turn off EVERYTHING that you don't need (things like Wireless software will be in there which you probably want).

Common things are MSN, QuickTime (qt.exe), iTunes, Digital Camera software, lots of other things.
 
Only use msconfig if you know what you are doing!!! Disabling the wrong can be baaaaad!
 
I say a factory reboot will fix your problems. It will remove the need for a defrag, and remove any unwanted stuff her or her family may have put on the machine. That's my suggestion.
 
I once had a Seagate barracuda crash on me, in a hard drive enclosure, right next to my ear. I thought a bomb had going off. It was one of the loudest cracks I have ever heard.
 
bobtheworm said:
I once had a Seagate barracuda crash on me, in a hard drive enclosure, right next to my ear. I thought a bomb had going off. It was one of the loudest cracks I have ever heard.
Click to expand...

You should hear a cap die in a power supply ;)
 
well i finally found thru further research that the 2nd harddre (40) is really bad but he good news is that all the info m friend needed was on the 1st drive.
 
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