laptop running slow, reinstalled WIN-XP

Problem - laptop is running extremely slow, (as slow as it was before I reformatted HD and reinstalled WIN-XP and some basic software). Laptop was prety fast when new and about the past six months it has slowed down.

I checked other posts, nothing seemed similar. Did not do all the info gathering as laptop has a bare-bones install (will do if need them).

HP Pavilian ZE4900
Intel Celeron M 1.30 Ghz
224Mb RAM
Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller

WIN-XP-Home (ver 2002) SP3

HD: used 7.88Gb Free 47.9Gb

Drivers, I believe, have all been updated.

Additionally installed software:
MS-Office 2003
AVG 9.0
Google Chrome

 

5 years old? A few things come to mind: you have the bare minimum of RAM and some of that is taken by the video chip so you have less than 256MB for the OS, the computer is old and has had quite a few windows updates which add complications, as far as AV (AVG 9 probably is a major cause of a noticeable slowdown) and last, a hd that is dying might cause a system slowdown.

Try this, disconnect from the internet so you have no chance of getting infected. Uninstall AVG 9 and work on the laptop a bit. Does it seem peppier? If so, try a different AV program (Avast or AntiVir are the two other well known freebies). If not, the next thing to do is increase your RAM.

 

With the wireless turned off, I have noticed it does run faster. Does the wireless hog that much processor speed/memory?

Is there a decent quick program to check process/processor usage, (aside from Windows Task Manger), something to give an idea of where the slowdown might be?

 

you could try NetStat (very limited, but clean freeware) or Bandwidth Monitor (awesome, but not free; 30 day trial), but those are for your connection up/down info. links, in order, are:

Code:

http://www.netstat.net/
http://www.bwmonitor.com/index.htm

that RAM, as plodr mentioned, is definitely a concern. my XP Home desktop came with 512mb and purchased 2 pairs (recommended you always purchase in pairs, if it applies) of memory sticks to upgrade to my top of 4gb...about $100 (free shipping) for 4 - 1gb sticks. can search/scan your system to find out exactly what you need at:

Code:

http://www.crucial.com/store/drammemory.aspx

there are a couple freeware RAM monitors/adjustors, but i didn't think they did anything. get them here, if you want to try:

Code:

http://www.jfitz.com/software/RAMpage/
http://www.yourwaresolutions.com/software.html#framxpro

only other thing (other than also upgrading your processor to pentium - i have pentium4 2.8ghz) would be issues with your AV/FW/suite database/version updates. were similar problems (now fixed via a critical update) with my KIS 2010 (Kaspersky).

 

Thanks all for the input. I did check my laptop at crucil.com and it shows the lack of memory to be an issue. I will work on adding more RAM and see how that goes. Again, thanks.

 

My wireless is a bit different. I have logitech USB wireless dongles on my husband's two computers. On the 2K one with 256 MB of RAM, when I open task manager, the CPU constantly moves between 0% and 86% for the dongle. I consider 86% high CPU usage. Open task manger and see if you get constant spikes.

 

System Idle Process seems to have +85% majority of the time, but nothing else seems to ever get into double-digits. Things change so quickly, it's hard to track what is actually taking processor time and how much of it.

 

Upgraded RAM to 2G seems to be running much faster. Thanks all.

Guess this should have been in the hardware forum.

 

You had below the minimum RAM. Windows XP needs at least 256mb to run. Since upgrading helped, you can consider that to be the bottleneck of your system.