Computer runs Slower than normal

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GWillford

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I am having trouble with my computer running extremely slow. I have a 1.7 Ghz pentium 4 with 384 megs Ram running Windows Xp home edition. In fact it is running slower than my old 450 Mhz pentium 2 I tried cleaning all the junk and unused programs off I run diskeeper 8.0 professional on a regular basis and I have Norton System works professional keeping the viruses away with norton anti virus. I also have Zone alarm Pro running to keep things secure. I update and defrag and scan for viruses at least once a week. I have 33% of a 60 Gig hard drive left. I don't understand what seems to be going on I even checked to see what programs are running in the back ground and I have approximately 35 processes running is this excessive if so how do I limit these. I know about msconfig but what programs are needed and which are not. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
 
Does it have mainboard drivers installed?

ie. is DMA enabled with hard disk drive(s) and CD/DVD drive(s)?

You can check it from Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager -> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers -> Primary & Secondary controllers -> Advanced Settings.

I also recommend reading some XP tweak guides.
 
Has the computer always run slowly or has it just started ?
From your memory config, i take it your running 256 and 128 memory sticks, remove the 128 and see if you notice any difference.
 
To Mictlantecuhtli I do have Mainboard drivers Installed according to the settings in device manager thanks for the reply and to Shiney I am running 3/128 meg sticks. It has been running slower than normal and it seems to have been a gradual change becasue I cannot really tell you when it actually started. I haven't made any changes to the system in quite some time so it isn't a hardware change. Thank you both for your replies any other info that you can pass along on this problem will be greatly appreciated
 
slow pc

It maybe that you have a lot of things running in the background. Take a look in msconfig services tick the hide all microsoft services to see what`s running. Also have you tried a good reg cleaner I recomend CLEAN MY PC REG CLEANER i think it`s a really good piece of softwear and it`s also got quite an informative start up section that you can edit. I`m not saying that this will solve your problem, but i feel it`s well worth a look. Regards Howard:grinthumb
 
Thanks Howard

I did the Reg Cleaner and I shut down everything that was uneeded in Msconfig. I di this quite a while ago but I still thnk you for your time and effort.
 
Any error mssgs or weird Emails? You could have picked up a worm???

Also, I'd run Spybot, or ADAware to get rid of spyware. You'll be surprised how much you get.

Ashampoo win optimiser is free, so maybe run that too and clean your junk files, duplicate registry files and internet.
 
Hey Thanks Steve. Nope no weird E-mails or messages. I run a trojan and worm scanner on a regular basis because that is what I thought it might be but I came up clean. I do run Ad-Aware also quite regularly and you are right I do get alot of junk showing up but nothing changes. The only think I haven't tried is using the ashampoo windows optimiser I will try that tonight and let you know. Thanks again
 
I have tried everything that I can think of. I am still having problems with my computer running at below normal speeds for example. I bought the SIMS2 the other day and it requires an 800 Mhz Processor mine is 1.7 Ghz it requires 256 Meg Ram I have 384 Megs and at least an 8 speed Cd drive I have a 48X. It ran so slow I couldn't do anything it was so Choppy and erratic that I finally decided to try loading it on my kids PC to see what would happen they have 256 megs of ram a 48X cd Drive and only a 450 Mhz Pentium 2 processor. Remember it requires at least an 800Mhz processor. The game runs perfectly with an occasional skip in the game play that is barely noticeable. Now please tell me how that is possible. Thank you in advance for your responses
 
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