Very Slow WinXP

[lino]

WinXP Pro is running ever so slowly on my PC - e.g. Win Explorer takes 36 seconds to open (Media Player 11 secs, IE6 8 secs, OE 13 secs) and my entire time seems to be taken up in waiting ages after every mouse click.
Pentium 4 1.6GHz, 80Gb HDD (70Gb free), 512Mb RAM, GeForce 3Ti 200 64Mb graphics, NTFS formatted - 4K clusters.
This is a relatively new installation with very little clutter from other programs. Installed on a clean HDD. DMA is enabled. Very few background progs.

Any ideas? Cheers.

[Rick]

You may want to try this.
Go into control panel and double click the System Icon
when System properties opens use the Advanced tab
then the Performance (Settings ) Button
Under Visual Effects
I use the Adjust for best performance

it also has a second tab for Advanced you can tune the program and memory setting from there

[tsunami]

Thanks Rick - was just passing by and read your suggestion - Xp is now much faster on my machine.

[lino]

Thanks.
The situation got so bad that just to get to System Properties took over 20 mins, and any sort of troubleshooting would require a full day to do what would usually take 10-15 mins!
As there was not much installed, I opted for a reinstallation of XP which has cured the problem - I've now got more software installed than previously with no signs of any slowdown. (I have now specified 'Best Performance'.)
I know that it doesn't help with understanding the problem, but I had to get the thing up and running.
Cheers.

[hiredgoonz]

Understanding is overrated anyway, I don't always necessarily care WHY it works, as long as it works...and my ultimate solution for Windows (any version) is reinstallation, ain't pretty, but it does the trick...

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