Slow pc....crawling.

[mick70]

My friend has installed/uninstalled loads of programs on his 3 year old p4 p.c. It runs so slow and is not very stable. He only has a recovery cd from the supplier.
I suggested he buys a new copy of Xp OEM for £50, reformats his HDD and starts all over again. Is this a bit drastic?

[Wicked_and_Crazy]

3yr old pc, could be lack of memory and a hard drive that is fragmented.

id try defraging the drive first.

Does it have win xp on it? is that what was installed when it was new? how much memory does it have? You need 512mb plus really for windows xp

what programs are running in the background and in the taskbar?

Why can't he use the recovery cd ?

[mick70]

Has XP on it,defragged the HDD,ram 512mb.Nothing in the background. Only things that could slow it are Norton Utilities and Roxio Go Back. Maybe he should remove those. What is the use of the recovery cd by the way. Thanks in advance!!

[Stuart]

Generally, the Recovery CD restores the PC to the same condition it was in when it was bought.

Apparently, some even reformat/repartition the hard drive.

[Paul K]

Boot into safe mode to see if it is background apps etc? Would also help isolate any problem programs that may be causing the instability.

---------- added 27-11-2005 at 22:08 ----------

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Generally, the Recovery CD restores the PC to the same condition it was in when it was bought.

Apparently, some even reformat/repartition the hard drive.

Yep some of them restore to factory condition which means putting the hard drive right back to how it was at the factory wether you like it or not.

[Marge]

I found my laptop was running horrendously slow, it took at least 15 minutes to boot up. I had a look through the start up programmes and found loads that started up and were then running in the background. I stopped all but the essential ones and it's now running better than ever !!

[mick70]

Can the registry become damaged over several years by all the installing/uninstalling that he keeps doing? He even has a game program of 7,500mb that will not uninstall that he does not remember installing!!!!!!!!!!!!

Best advise, go for the reformat option using the recovery cd.
If you buy a full OEM version of XP (home or Pro) it can be tricky to remove the partition that the recovery CD sometimes uses (I know my Packard Bell Imedia 1517, bought from PC world) came with only a recovery partition, which is supposed to restore to factory levels.
I bought XP home cd, but the way the makers installed the partition, made it very difficult to remove, as the partition was not in NTFS or DOS, and therefore, not recognised by the XP home installation CD.
Removed it the hard way in the end, using FDISK via win.98SE startup floppy.
If you need this approach, I can advise further.
The system runs perfectly now, and is free of the pre-installed rubbish the PC makers think we need.
Once you do this re-installation, the registry will be 100% OK and fresh.

[nffc]

Originally Posted by Paul

Boot into safe mode to see if it is background apps etc? Would also help isolate any problem programs that may be causing the instability.

---------- added 27-11-2005 at 22:08 ----------

Yep some of them restore to factory condition which means putting the hard drive right back to how it was at the factory wether you like it or not.

The newer PBs, like 1518, come with >1 HD and even then, if they only use 1 then it's partitioned into C and D with the data files on D. The recovery only wipes C.

They also have problems with system restore (shiiiit) and the Documents and Settings folder but PB are looking into that.

Originally Posted by atlantis

Best advise, go for the reformat option using the recovery cd.
If you buy a full OEM version of XP (home or Pro) it can be tricky to remove the partition that the recovery CD sometimes uses (I know my Packard Bell Imedia 1517, bought from PC world) came with only a recovery partition, which is supposed to restore to factory levels.
I bought XP home cd, but the way the makers installed the partition, made it very difficult to remove, as the partition was not in NTFS or DOS, and therefore, not recognised by the XP home installation CD.
Removed it the hard way in the end, using FDISK via win.98SE startup floppy.
If you need this approach, I can advise further.
The system runs perfectly now, and is free of the pre-installed rubbish the PC makers think we need.
Once you do this re-installation, the registry will be 100% OK and fresh.

Why would you want to Fdisk it out? You could always have used smart restore to kill all the crap like AOL, NIS etc and then there's the issue of tattoos and drivers for the PB (branded not OEM) stuff, for an OEM machine then maybe I'd say Fdisking out the recovery is borderline OK but there's no point in doing it on a 1517 where HD space isn't a problem.

---------- added 27-11-2005 at 23:40 ----------

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Generally, the Recovery CD restores the PC to the same condition it was in when it was bought.

Apparently, some even reformat/repartition the hard drive.

Course they do. If it's a problem with HD configuration or some form of virus then there's a need to automatically reformat especially seeing as the programs are designed to be noob-proof (ACD of five minutes to take someone through a PB recovery).

You have to understand that most customers buying this type of PC know (in general) naff all about internet security, viruses (well I've got the 3 month trial of NIS that came with the computer but I haven't run a live update or a scan since I got it and my PC's now 18 months old surely I can't have a virus), you know...

The reason I resorted to using FDISK, was after trying to restore the PC for my son for the seemingly endless time, was that all the crap was held in the secure partition, which like I said before was neither NTFS or Dos, nor FAT 32, so no attempts could delete the damn thing, FDISK found it, and gave me the chance to fully delete it, which I did, and I'm glad I did so.
Now the only files on the PC are the ones my son actually wants and uses.

[grandmaster]

Originally Posted by atlantis

The reason I resorted to using FDISK, was after trying to restore the PC for my son for the seemingly endless time, was that all the crap was held in the secure partition, which like I said before was neither NTFS or Dos, nor FAT 32, so no attempts could delete the damn thing, FDISK found it, and gave me the chance to fully delete it, which I did, and I'm glad I did so.
Now the only files on the PC are the ones my son actually wants and uses.

I prefer the Smart restore, Boot the laptop push F11 or whatever then sit back,relax while you machine sorts itself out.
The only gripe i had was that if you select the option to create a cd set it wipes the hidden partition.....

OP:

I would click start,Run and run MSCONFIG
Select the last option Startup.
Uncheck everything that you do not need.

Reboot

If it is still slow then i would use the restore cd

[jamesclarke555]

I'd just use the recovery disk tbh, however if this is too drastic then I'd suggest:

• Defragging the hard disk
• Clean out temp files & folders
• Download and install Tweaknow RegCleaner (Free Version)
• Removing any unnecessary startup items using msconfig
• Upgrade chipset drivers
• Finally, probably the best and most common hardware upgrade that techs can recommend is more memory, there's no excuse these days, seeing as you can get a 512MB stick for around £40.

[Scarlet]

My PC is also very sluggish and appears to be labouring. I regularly defrag and clean up disk etc, delete temp int files and so on. Have WinXP Home , 512mb memory so am now considering buying more and hope that may do the trick.

Interested to read about the free reg cleaner but am unsure if it's worth me downloading it as I suspect it will run a check and then give me a huge list of things it can clean up for me - but it will be up to me to choose which? It's at that point I will have a problem as I do not know enough about it to have confidence to decide. I have attempted registry cleaners in the past but chickened out at the last minute though lack of knowledge. Is this one going to do the same?

Cheers

Originally Posted by Scarlet

My PC is also very sluggish and appears to be labouring. I regularly defrag and clean up disk etc, delete temp int files and so on. Have WinXP Home , 512mb memory so am now considering buying more and hope that may do the trick.

Interested to read about the free reg cleaner but am unsure if it's worth me downloading it as I suspect it will run a check and then give me a huge list of things it can clean up for me - but it will be up to me to choose which? It's at that point I will have a problem as I do not know enough about it to have confidence to decide. I have attempted registry cleaners in the past but chickened out at the last minute though lack of knowledge. Is this one going to do the same?

Cheers

Scarlet try ccleaner it's free and easy, bit like some of the folks here really and it does a back up file, run the cleaner and the issues tabs, works great for me.
And to the forum btw