XP reinstall & now everything is non-responsive/mega slow

Tommygunn

Posts: 105   +4
Due to space issues on my 'C' drive, where I keep my XP OS, I re-installed and partitioned my HD, as I have done before, but taking some Gb from D and adding it to C.

I have now done three installations of XP, each time with the same problem. The first being the main re-install and format of C and D, the second being only on the C drive and the third being another complete re-install and format of C and D.
Anyway, on each of these attempts I thought everything was going fine, gave the computer a few minutes to fire up and give all the icons, programs, internet and widgets time to sort themselves. However, when I went to use a program, Start menu, icon, pretty much anything I've tried it takes ages to respond, if at all, since I'll probably end up hitting the reset button.

The only reason I'm able to get on this website is because the first thing I did was hit the Firefox icon before everything was sorted and loaded on my desktop.

It would seem that after two or three minutes, during that load time, things do work I.e. Firefox. However, if I leave the computer alone and come back to it in 5 or 10 minutes time then I can expect all facets of the computer to be unresponsive, mega slow to function or just hang on screen - plenty of hourglass action going on.

Any ideas?

Tom.
 
Possibly a lot of either downloading of updates (turn off auto update from MS), or anti-virus checking at boot time (depending upon whether or not you have any installed from the installation CD), or a conflict with current hardware and that assumed by an OEM install CD, or a version of XP is installed that is so out-of-date as to fail to work at all.

You only can know what is on your install CD and whether it differs from the current setup. A clue is that you seem to have firefox available from the off. That is not a standard install. You really should only install from a CD wth SP3 slipstreamed, as results can be unpredictable for anything before that. If you think it is internet activity, then install with the internet cable disconnected.

You also need to account for how your 'new' partition is set up. Is it already formatted, or is it unformatted after you have made space, and how indeed did you do the partition change?. I ask this because MS in their almighty wisdom, have subtly changed the NTFS specification without anybody much being aware, but in such a way that partitions created in (say) Win 7 or other recent software, can sometimes turn out to be incompatible with XP of earlier fame. Thus any attempt to write to the HDD sends it into a frenzy of bad-writes.

A solution to that would be to install (again, I know!) into just blank space, so the installer has to format the partition. Dont make it too enormous either, anything over 80Gb might be incompatible with XP drivers.
 
Suggestion: One Step at a time.
Get your Install CD available and gave a download of the antivirus you want to use on a USB thumbdrive.
  • Start over in a clean partition (formatted or not is not my concern here).
  • Install from a CD without any connection from your router to the PC.
  • Reboot the system when completed
  • Let the system settle in - - there's a lot of work for FIRST RUN so keep your hands off the keyboard and wait!
  • Now install the Anti-virus.
Once the A/V is loaded, connect to the Internet and run Microsoft Update.
You should have a reasonable system at this time and can start loading other programs (including Firefox, Adobe,,,,), tools and tuning the system to your usage.

STAY OFF all the IE & FF plug-ins - - rarely do you "need" them.
 
My comp. is home-assembled so I don't know if this helps, but after I install OS, I install the chipset driver for the motherboard, network, sound-card, video card, USB 3 etc. until they are done and the "Device Manager" shows all is well. then I windows update. I can't remember for Windows XP though if there was something like Device Manager.
 
Thanks for the input everyone.
Well, I made sure I had all the latest drivers put on as soon as I had the internet up and running and my computer has never run better.

I'm happy,
Tom.
 
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