What are cheap easy ways to make my computer faster?

Question

I have a Pentium 4, AMD Athalon 1700+, 256MB DDR PC2100, 80GB IDE Hard Drive, GeForce 2, with Windows XP Pro SP2. Is there anything I can add to it to make it faster? I dont realy know much about computers, so I dont know what I can do to it?

Answer 1

Ashampoo has a good program that has some basic tools to clean the PC up from junk files

Answer 2

First all there are simple tweaks and standard stuff to do to improve speed

- you can run a program called Tweak XP Pro to cover the basics

http://www.download.com/Tweak-XP-Pro/3000-2086_4-10551016.html?tag=lst-0-1


do the auto tuner first
- system tuning strong
reboot
start again

- services weak

reboot

then go through the tweaks manually


2) reduce your startup programs to a minimum .
every program you add ( most) will add itself to a start up list
Slows your computer and unneccesary
for example if you go to print you can print
Why have the printer program running all the time in the background slowing you down

Use a program like this

http://www.download.com/Startup-Inspector-for-Windows/3000-2086_4-10452094.html?tag=lst-0-4

go through the list one by one
if you are not sure google the name or google the name and put xx spyware
and see what other people say
at the worst if you screw up you can start in safe mode and change it back ( to get into safe mode tap f8 or f5 on widows boot up)

4) go into control panel > add remove programs and remove all unncessary programs and windows components you do not need

5) defrag your hard drive

6) run spyware scans on a regular basis adaware and spybot - whatever you like or are recommended.
make sure that you do the updates
it is a cat and mouse game
- spyware can slow you to 10 % of your internet speed.
people buy new computers because of spyware thinking that their computer is slow
spyware not viruses are the plague now

7) so far you have spent time and no money

ram is far the cheapest thing that you can do to boost performance. You have 256 which now with the service packs slowing you down is minmum.
add another stick of ram - 256 or 512 depending on your budget. If possible get the 512 since the next time around you can take out the 256 and add another 512 for the 256 which is probably in there ( doubt that it is 2 x128 but you never know
- a faster hard drive can help if you have an older slower * 5400 rpm drive with no buffer). This is unappreciated. Can make a real wallop of diffirence in a computer of your vintage and is fairly cheap.
the drives now geneally have 8 mb buffers ( or 16)
I added numnerous upgrades to an athalon 2500 and found the biggest wallop of speed increase after 512 of ram was a newer faster hard drive. ( the previous drive had a 2 mb buffer)

Lastly two things

- in the bios have it boot from the hard drive first rather than a diskette or cd. It will boot up faster

- upgrade your video card driver at the least ( program that runs video card). Go the manufacturer of the card or Nvidia itself for the download.
you may also want to upgrade direct x - it is your call
you can get various versions at www.oldversion.com

There is enough here to keep you busy for a while.
It is a process that just takes time.
You ca do a fair bit withut spending ,
The ram upgrade though is an almost must have.
256 is now on the low end.
You or a friend should be able to pop it in.
Just unplug the computer and touch the metal case before installing.

Can you believe some of the comments such as
"With a computer as dated as yours"
" A gig of ram is minumum"
"outdated computer"
These experts probably cannnot even type 5 words a minute.
A slow computer is not their limitation. Typing skills most likely are. Don't let these types intimidate or belittle you or your computer.
Remember they went to the moon on 8 k

1MB = 1000KB

Answer 3

With a computer as dated as yours I dont think serious upgrades aren't worth considering. From what i can see for your class of PC you have a great system as is. The biggest factors limiting your speed is, unfortunately, a outdated motherboard. This limits your CPU speed, effective ram speed (pc2100 is the first generation of DDR2), and Video card bus (your on AGP 4x at most) which is bottlenecked in your case for most newer cards which need AGP 8x or PCI x16.

Where you could gain some speed is getting at least 512mb of ram as 256 is windows xp's absolute minimum. Finding pc2100 might be a problem, but its a cheap ($70) upgrade. If you game you could try a Nvidia Geforce 5500fx series of video card, anything faster would be wasted. Personally I would save this money to invest in a new system down the road.

Answer 4

A very easy fix for a slight increase in performance. Open it up and blow it out. An air compressor set on a low amount of air pressure works great. You could also add more RAM. Add extra fans to keep it cooler if possible. Overclock the processor if you find out how by reading tutorials on Tom's hardware. You could add a second sata hard drive and use it as your primary for your os(operating system) to speed up the rate of data transfer. GOOD LUCK!

Answer 5

Adding RAM is about the only reasonable thing to do. But if you are running Win XP, it can help quite a bit. Go to www.crucial.com, tell it what kind of machine you have, and it will tell you what memory you can use and sell it to you. If you are doing internet surfing or gaming, 1 GB is plenty; if you are doing heavy sound or picture processing, it might be useful to have more.

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Answer 7

I would add some extra ram memory to your computer. Most new computers have internal ports for add on ram cards and the ramm memory cards are relativly cheep and add a lot of speed to your computer.

Answer 8

256 MB of ram isn't much these days. You need at least 1GB. But first, if your PC has slowed down from the time you bought it, you may need some free maintenance such as disc cleanup and fragment. Also try http://www.ccleaner.com/. it's free.

Answer 9

Memory is always good. Use the systemscanner at www.crucial.com to see what you should buy. 1gb is good.

THere are a number of things you can do. I think the easiest way is to use the program: http://www.iobit.com/AdvancedWindowsCarePersonal/index.html.

And try to stop any extra programs from starting automatically.

Answer 10

add RAM check your Motherboard to see how much it can take and load it up at least 1gb if it can handel it