Window XP running slow...

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neveron

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i just added two exactly same brand RAM as my original to my computer, so the total is 384MB. however, XP seems doesn't work much faster. it takes about 5 seconds for me to open "My Document" and even longer if i have other applications open already. i have pentium 4 1.5G.
is it the problem that i don't have enough virtual memory or sth?...
can someone help me with this situation please?
 
adding more ram does not so easily improve performance !

the computer works at the speed of its slowest component, so if your HDD is a 5400 rpm one or is not defragmented, or you virtual memory settings are bad, this might be some reasons ...
if it's not a clean install, the registry is also growing huge and such stuff ... With such a processor and your RAM this should be enough to open Explorer very quickly !!!

what's happening when you open explorer and before it shows up ? did you have a look at the load of the CPU and the HDD access at this time ?
 
Defragment the HDD(s) especially the primary partition with the OS.
Optimize your Pagefile size and if possible put it on its own partition. You want about 1.5x physical memory. Set the max and min size the same. This keeps the file from having to resize, this is especially helpful if you have a slower HDD.
Give the Registry a good cleaning to get rid of orphan files left by things you have removed.
Have a look at Techspot's XP Tweak Guide, then, if you feel comfortable hacking the registry,head on over to http://www.winguides.com/registry/ for even more tricks to speed things up.
You also might have a look at running services and see what you can do away with. You may have something running in the background that is hogging up a good bit of resources.
 
pick up the latest (May 2003) copy of Maximum PC this has a KICK *** article on tweaking windows XP and your hardware for the best performance
 
Not really much to do with your problem, but since we're talking about tweaks I figured TweakXP would be worth a mention. I have improved my performance significantly with some of their tweaks under the Performance tab, hopefully it should do the same for you; if not, perhaps a format is in order?
 
I added 512MB of DDR so that I had 1GB in order to try and fix my crappy FPS problem, it did nothing, everything is exactly the same, but at least RAM is cheap now and itll come in useful in the future
 
Adding RAM to a system that already has 512MB+ isn't going to show any increase in performance unless you use that added RAM. If you do a lot of graphics and video work, you'll see it. If you were previously running out of memory, you'll see it. IF you force the kernel to RAM rather than disk, you'll see it. If however, you are web surfing and playing an occasional game, you won't see it.
 
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