Snowsride Posted May 14, 2007 Report Share Posted May 14, 2007 I am, temporarily (for the next month or so), having to use an old low spec Dell Latitude laptop with limited RAM 256k and disk space 3 gb. Although the disk is small I'm still amazed that there is less than 10% space left since all that's loaded is Win XP Pro, MS Office 2000 Pro, IE7 and a few small utilities. The performance is, predictably, very poor (I've run chkdsk and defragged the disk and cleaned up the registry), I can't increase the amount of RAM (chips are not available) so I wonder whether I'd gain anything by compressing the disk. I realize the time to access files may increase but would this be offset by an increase in the amount of free space?I'll shortly have a higher spec machine available but any tricks or tips to improve performance would be appreciated.Regards Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted May 14, 2007 Report Share Posted May 14, 2007 I've not had much success using disk compression and I wouldn't suggest that anyone does it if they want to have a working computer at the end of it.What I would do, I think, is remove as much of MS Office as you can - all the parts of it you don't use regularly and any unnecessary bits like the huge collection of (not very good) clipart that many people load and then never use. Also, look in Add/Remove programs and see what you don't use and has a large size and remove that if appropriate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cozofdeath Posted May 14, 2007 Report Share Posted May 14, 2007 It really depends on what you want to sacrifice and what you want to do with it. I don't think drive compression is a good idea unless you have a decent processor and it frees a lot of needed space. I would of installed something like a minimal installation of Windows 2000. Then go through and uninstall programs, stop services, check start up locations, and whatever else you don't want. From there I would start tweaking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarecrow Man Posted May 14, 2007 Report Share Posted May 14, 2007 Do NOT compress the Windows drive/partition. Any other drive/partition is fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted May 15, 2007 Report Share Posted May 15, 2007 Just make sure that you don't keep any unnecessary files on your system; you will be surprised how much useless stuff CCleaner can find and remove! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snowsride Posted May 15, 2007 Author Report Share Posted May 15, 2007 Just make sure that you don't keep any unnecessary files on your system; you will be surprised how much useless stuff CCleaner can find and remove!Thanks to all - I shall not be compressing the drive! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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