Is this normal?

[Jawshh]

Hi,

I have an old computer that I use for school stuff and other works.

Specs:

Gigabyte GA-81915PL-G
Pentium 4 3Ghz with HT
512MB PC2700
256MB geforce 7300GT
500GB WD caviar
$15 powersupply

There is windows XP pro SP3 installed. I tweaked it to the max,ie, I disabled unnecessary services, set "optimize for performance" under performance menu. I am pretty sure that there is no tweaking to be done anymore.

However, it lags very much. Sometimes it freezes for minutes.

Is something wrong or is there too little RAM? Because I remember when I first bought it in 2005 there was the same RAM module installed, it wasn't lagging that much. In fact, 512MB of RAM was considered to be more than enough back in 2005.
Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[Puiu]

It was enough back then but the programs now use more ram than before. But it s shouldn't freeze for a minute not even with 512ram. Did the freezing start before or after you disabled some services?

 

[Ritwik7]

+1 Puiu.

I don't think that any ordinary programs like Office, Media Player, etc. would freeze / lag on that system. You could try a clean install of XP and see if the issue gets fixed. You may have a failing HDD, but can't be sure. Often, virus infections are a cause of a laggy / buggy system. Since you say that you're install of XP is optimized I'm not mentioning any tweaks that you could have implemented.

 

[SNGX1275]

Update drivers, do a disk check with something like SeaTools, and check your RAM with memtest. XP original was good to go with 512 megs of ram, but with the added service packs 512 isn't much for XP anymore.

Perhaps you should unoptimize your tweaks and see if the hangs go away, with the information we have right now, the most likely explanation is you've done something tweaking that you shouldn't have.

 

[Jawshh]

The freezing started a few days after a clean install. That is why I tweaked the system a little bit, well, the system has improved but the freezing continues. I will try to test my RAM and HDD. I guess I'll have to add another 512MB after all.

 

[Puiu]

Most likely the windows didn't install right or the version you installed has a bug (if it's pirated).
Try another clean install.

 

[LookinAround]

Also, since you have such a small amount of physical memory, I;d
> Under Computer Properties Advanced Performance, I'd set the Virtual Memory to custom size. And set initial size and max size both = 2000MB. Click OK and reboot
> Cleanup any unneeded junk files/space that can be recovered by using CCleaner
.> Defrag the hard drive using Auslogics defrag
> Finally, defrag the pagefile (and other Windows system files that don't get defragged when Windows is running. Use pagedefrag