Computer Advice / Computer Help?

Question

So here is the story: My computer is around 4 years old and i have noticed that the performance has degraded quite a bit. Here are some specs:
Pentium 4
2.66 GHZ
1GB of RAM
70GB of Memory
11.7GB of open memory left

I use the average utilities to run a clean computer (norton, registry mechanic, anti-virus, disk defrag, stuff from download.com, etc) but it still kind of sucks. Also i have about 40GB (out of 70GB) dedicated just to music.

Any suggestions on how to make my computer run better? should i buy an external hard drive and put all of my music files on that?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Besides disabling start-up programs, you might look at Task Manager, Processes (with View, CPU time ticked) to identify applications that might be using excessive CPU time. Also look at Control Panel, System, Hardware, Device Manager, Disk Controllers, Advanced Settings and verify that UDMA transfer mode is still being used.

> should i buy an external hard drive and put all of my music files on that <

Might be a good idea. Disk data transfer speed on the inner cylinders can be half that on the outer cylinders. The paging file is allocated on booting. If on auto settings and with lots of things loaded, this can be a fragmented file and slow due to disk head movement time.

Answer 2

Your problem is more likly going to be found that you have to many programs loadin @ start time. Just cause you don't see them doesn't mean their not there and they don't have to be a threat to take up your resources like memoery. Click on your start button, then click on run. Type in msconfig and click ok. Here you can select what you want to start up and what not to start up. I bet you'll notice a diffrence now if say you just load basic drivers and services.

Answer 3

I keep all my music files on rewritable DVDs if that's any help, but I don't think that would drop you 'puters performance. Try removing any running processes/programs you don't need. Nero, Roxio and even Quicktime can sit in memory waisting processor time and memory space.

Answer 4

How much crap you have in the startup folder? Turn some of it off. You will find some programs such as winzip, different hardware programs, etc. that dont need to be running. Type msconfig in your run box and see what all has invited itself to eat ram!

Answer 5

It's quite drastic, but consider completely formatting and reinstalling your OS. Of course you'd need to have a backup of all your data and also need to reinstall all your applications, but I can nearly guarantee that it'll run faster.