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Any Suggestions?


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I've been using Windows XP Pro SP2 on an old HP desktop for a few months now. It's got a blazing Petium 1 200 MHz, 64 MB ram, and a whopping 4 GB HD. It've got it as a temporary file server, but I'd like to be able to get it running a bit faster. I'm wondering if there's any tweaks I can to cut out some of the overhead on the system. I know the ideal thing to do is recycle it, but I've alerady got it doing much more than anybody would dare attempt with such old hardware.

Thanks.

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I'm sure a 'real' windows guru would have some things for you to try. :rolleyes: Unfortunately, I usually just get more RAM or a faster machine when faced with such a situation.

You'll definitely want to make sure you have minimal processes running in the background and at startup. Startup Inspector may help.

It seems like Linux, FreeBSD or OpenBSD are much more suited to making excellent, reliable use of older hardware.

I did find this post at XP Myths, and it has some tweaks listed below, but I'm not sure they'll help your system perform much better.

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What I would do in your situation

  1. Control Panel -> System -> tab Advanced -> Performance Settings -> tab Visual Effects -> select Adjust for best performance
  2. disable all schemes and screen savers
  3. uninstall anything that is not needed on the system
  4. check what to disable from startup (as per above post)
  5. install and run Ccleaner to make sure there is no unneeded garbage on the system
  6. run defragmenter to ensure HD efficiency

Add one more

7. open the Services Manager and see what (automatic) services you don't need; disable them

8. open the Device Manager and see if there are any devices you don't need; disable them

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