Just after completly wiping and reinstalling windows. The speed has returned.

I have had my inspiron 8500 for about 2 years now. It has gradually been getting slower and slower and more and more errors keep poping up so yesterday i said fcuk it im just starting from scratch. So i backed up the stuff i wanted to keep and i got a program that wiped the harddrive clean and set all the bits to zero.

I reinstalled windows and all the drivers. Now the speed that i remember from long ago has returned. Before i took about 5 minutes to boot now it take 45 seconds.

Im gona install linux again too. Try and learn it proper this time. I had it on the system for about a year and never really used it.

Now its just a matter of getting all those windows updates again and SP2.

 

There is no question here right? Usually redoing a system will help speed it up quite a bit because useless apps tend to build up and run in the background a lot.

Also, as far as the updates go, you can have MS mail (snail mail) you a CD for free. They issue one every couple months if you just give your address. They don't even charge you for shipping. It's quite nice if you're on a dialup connection or just have to help update a lot of computers.

 

really? i didnt know they did that for free. ah well i have cable so its not worth it.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/cd/order.mspx

It seems they limit how many they send out. Although if you pay attention when they do release a new CD it's very easy to get one (at least I've never had a problem). I usally get them just so I don't have to download stuff when helping friends out all the time.

 

IMO anytime you can Drivers/Updates etc. on CD/DVD/floppy regardless of your Internet Connection speed it Is worth it, espessially if it's security update.
When I setup any pc with windows, I install all updates/drivers possible before ever going online, This will limit the chance of picking up bugs/virus & such, not too mention it's hard to get bad download if you have it on disk!

Windows XP SP2 is still avaible on disk:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/sp2/cdorder/en_us/default.mspx
The link coco provided, was the link for the previous windows update cd, it had updates for all version of windows from 98 up, sinse it came out there has been dozen's of updates, maybe why it's not avaible now, which did not have SP2 on it, that was discontinued long ago.

 

Whoops. I just googled for the link and I figured MS would have used the same page. I didn't realize with each update they made a new page. I've always just gotten the links from news sites as MS releases the CD's.