is your PC slowing down?

[sawood12]

Well chaps, thanks alot for that advice. Last night I deleted many thousands of redundant files between myself and CClean, performance wasn't transformed, but the PC did feel sharper, though it did nothing for my boot up speed.

Just done the MS Config thing and couldn't believe the sheer amount of carp that seems to be trying to fire up during the start up process. I un-ticked a hell of alot where I recognised as applications. There were a few files I didn't recognise so kept them selected just in case. And sure enough, as promised, boot up is much much quicker now, though it is now clear that my anti-virus/firewall software is causing the computer to hang for a good minute or so while, I assume, it carries out its daily check for new virus signatures. I've got F-Prot which I get from work for free and fully supported under my works license so I think i'll put up with that. It's a damn site quicker than Norton which I had before. Just in the process of running TuneXP so I might get more improvements yet. I think when I install the 2Gb of RAM the thing should fly!

Now that you can get CF cards with quite high capacity I quite like the idea of installing a PCMCIA card with high capacity CF card and running windows and applications off the CF card and relegating my HDD to a storage device rather than actually running anything off it. With the faster access speeds of solid state flash memory that should give lightning fast performance. Anyone on here done that?

Anyway, cheers again lads!

 

[zcacogp]

Scott,

Glad to hear that improvement is being made. How much memory do you have at the mo? If you are running XP, it really goes help to have 1Gb or more of RAM, and it is pretty cheap stuff these days ...

Best of luck with TuneXP. It worked on a number of machines for me.

Running windows from a memory device is an interesting one ... my guess is that it wouldn't make that much difference, as once windows is booted then everything it needs sits in RAM anyway, therefore the amount of disk access (i.e. slow bits) is minimal. Booting from the CF card would be a bit quicker tho', I guess.

I am sure that others will have a much more knowledgeable response than me tho'!

Try it out - I'll be interested to hear the result ...


Oli.

 

[appletonn]

So Oli, just so I've got this right, you are saying that all of these process help to tune up the PCs, thus BOOSTING performance way above the standard, lacklustre performance of the non-BOOSTED machine...???!![][][]

Gets coat whilst whistling quietly to himself....


[][]

 

[sawood12]

That's a low blow Nick - but I see your logic!!

Oli, i'm currently running 1gb RAM (upgradable to 2gb). Unfortunately my PC only has 2 RAM slots and was populated by 2x512mb chips so had to buy 2x1gb chips, but it still was only £28 so can't complain about cost.

I guess my logic regarding running off flash memory is that the whole of Windows can be installed and run off a CF card and the computer booted off the CF card. My understanding of how a PC works is that the RAM is used as a temprary buffer for the HDD as the processor works from data in RAM and not directly off the HDD as it's access speeds are too slow - which is why upgrading your RAM improves system performance because it reduces the number of times the HDD has to be accessed. Therefore if you effectivey substitue your HDD with flash memory with much faster access speeds then you will no longer be constrained by how fast your HDD is. So installing and running windows (and other applications) on, and booting up from a CF card should be much faster as you are buffering up your RAM from the CF card rather than your HDD. Unfortunately actually making this happen is beyond my rudamentary PC skills.

 

[zcacogp]

Scott - Your understanding is quite right - accessing from HDD is hundreds of thousands of times slower than accessing from RAM (literally.) More RAM means that more of the important stuff is held such that it can be quickly accessed, reducing the amount of accesses made to the HDD. The old addage was that when your PC 'chugs' (accesses the HDD - slowly, and making a 'chugging' noise), you need more RAM.

However, with enough RAM you should be making very, very few HDD accesses, therefore whether you originally got the data from (fast) CF card or (very slow) HDD makes little difference - it is all in (very very fast) RAM all the time.

Hope this helps - as I said, there are more knowledgable chaps on here who will probably give a much better answer, showing me to be quite wrong.

As an aside, I'd have thought that XP with 1Gb RAM would probably run OK. I know that on my old laptop, increasing it from 256Mb to 750(-whatever)Mb made a big difference, but on my new one the increase from 2Gb to 4Gb made very little difference.

How did you get on with TuneXP?

Nick - bu99er off! [] (Think of TuneXP as being a big pot of Blue S2 paint, designed to paint on Red Turbo's, thus making them quicker ... OK!)


Oli.

 

[smitty893]

An increase to 4gb is only any use if you are running XP 64.
XP 32 can only recognise 3.5 gb of RAM

 

[smitty893]

Unfortunately PC's are like cars - silly money to go faster.
If you want to reduce any HDD delays to a minimum you might try setting it up with RAID - probably easier and more reliable than relying on flash memory.

 

[xenon]

Using flash memory for the page file is perfectly acceptable, indeed with windows XP SP2 and later, it encourages you to do this when it detects a USB or Flash drive capable of holding the page file via the SpeedBoost technology.

RAID arrays are really for data integrity more than performance although it is perfectly true that you will get a performance benefit with an array providing mirroring, however that really is for systems with lots of parallel reads (i.e. a database being accessed simultaneously by many users) - the benefits on a home XP system would be negligeable.

More memory and an unfragmented pagefile is they way to go - if you can relocate the pagefile to a CF card, so much the better.

 

[zcacogp]

ORIGINAL: smitty893
An increase to 4gb is only any use if you are running XP 64.
XP 32 can only recognise 3.5 gb of RAM

Really?

I didn't know that - thanks! Will having exceeded 3.5mb be causing a problem? As in, should I think about reducing the amount of memory, down to 3.5? (Difficult, as there are 2x2Mb sticks in there.)

Ian, I'm interested in running the pagefile from a CF card. How and when does XP SP2 encourage you to do this? And how do I move it?


Oli.

 

[xenon]

Increasing to 4Gb will not do any harm but 32 bit windows will not see all of it unless you set /PAE, it will only see 2Gb.

If you plug a USB memory stick in that meets the speed criteria, Windows will ask if you want to use it for speed boost - however that's only on Vista. I thought for a minute XP SP2 did as well, but it doesn't. Anyway, you can still move your page file:

Let's say your flash drive is drive E:

Click on Start and right-click My Computer -> properties. Click the Advanced tab. Click the settings button in performance and then the Advanced tab again.

At the bottom you will see virtual memory - click change and you will see that the pagefile is located on your C: drive (probably). Remove it from the C: drive and place it on the E: drive instead.

Note that your pagefile should ideally be 4x the RAM - if you have 2Gb RAM the page should be 8Gb - which may be larger than the flash drive you have.

The speedboost in Vista sort of does the above automatically but will use any available space on your flash drive and prioritise it.

 

[zcacogp]

Ian,

Thanks, I'll try it. I know that it (XP SP2) hasn't automatically done it thus far, so will try the manual method.

You say that my PC will only see 2Gb of the memory (in which case the other 2Mb is wasted!) "unless I set /PAE". What does this mean?

Also, XP 64 is presumably 64-bit XP. Is this a completely different version of Windows, or an upgrade?


Oli.

 

[peanut]

ORIGINAL: sawood12



Just done the MS Config thing And sure enough, as promised, boot up is much much quicker now, though it is now clear that my anti-virus/firewall software is causing the computer to hang for a good minute or so

well done Scott.
re the firewall thing you might try Zone alarm free to download and use.
http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/catalog/products/sku_list_za.jsp
Its very good with a nice simple interface. Its important with these anti virus and firewalls that we check the sheduled tasks options.
All these programs invariably load a default setting to update and scan the moment we boot up. This can delays the boot process as it frequently occurs just as windows is loading and your internet access starts up.

This is also when MS Windows also checks for updates and patches to service packs and installs them.

I always switch off Windows automatic updates and select the manual update option which prevents Bill Gates taking over my computer when I boot up.!..

Start......Control Panel.... System.... Automatic updates....select .turn off automatic updating

Well worth getting some extra memory. Buy the fastest your PC will support which is as important as the total amount.
If you had say 512Mb of PC 2100 it might pay to buy 1Gb of PC 2700 or PC 3300 and remove the PC 2100 stick completly. I believe your memory will only run as fast as the slowest memory stick fitted so your PC3300 would run at the same speed as the PC 2100 . Someone more knowledgable than me will no doubt confirm this.

Warning: make sure you check what memory type your PC will support. Go to the Cruscial site and enter your PC spec it will tell you. Incidentally Crucial memory is guaranteed to work and for the lifetim of your PC and is very reasonably priced.
check here http://www.crucial.com/store/drammemory.aspx

If you need to know anything about your laptop or your PC download the free test and report program called Belarc Advisor.

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

its brilliant, non invasive, and tells you everything about the software and hardware of your PC including the software license numbers

 

[xenon]

ORIGINAL: zcacogp

Ian,

Thanks, I'll try it. I know that it (XP SP2) hasn't automatically done it thus far, so will try the manual method.

You say that my PC will only see 2Gb of the memory (in which case the other 2Mb is wasted!) "unless I set /PAE". What does this mean?

Also, XP 64 is presumably 64-bit XP. Is this a completely different version of Windows, or an upgrade?


Oli.

XP x64 is the 64-bit version which will address about 1Tb of memory, and you can upgrade the 32-bit version to 64-bit, assuming you have a 64-bit processor.

32-bit XP can see 4Gb as a maximum but the OS devides this between the user mode and system mode kernel so you'll only have 2Gb available for applications. PAE (physical address extensions) does some jiggery-pokery in the OS to swap this all around and make all the memory appear in user mode.

To turn it on run a coomand prompt and enter:

bcdedit /set pae

 

[xenon]

Hang on, I'm in Vista mode again - you can't use bcdedit in XP.

You need to edit the boot.ini system file manually and add /pae at the end of the boot string, e.g.:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /pae

 

[zcacogp]

Ian,

Thanks, I'll try it. Very helpful. I can almost forgive you for eating that KitKat ...

Interesting that you are so much into Vista mode, and actually making it sound OK. I have yet to come across anyone who uses it in anger - I thought the takeup was very low because it wasn't seen to be anything much better than XP.


Oli.

 

[xenon]

Simply because I'm the IT manager and I need to understand the Vista implications so have been running it personally for quite a while. PCs with XP are becoming scarce now so eventually people's hands will be forced.

Be careful editing the boot.ini file - if you screw it up your PC won't boot at all.... []

 

[zcacogp]

Ian,

Thanks.

I have just edited it, and rebooted ... and am managing to type this just fine!


Oli.

 

[xenon]

That's good. If you go to My Computer > Properties you should see all that lovely memory.

 

[zcacogp]

So you can!

Thanks ... lovely ...


Oli.

 

[sawood12]

OK update.

Oli - I had a good look at tuneXP last night and it looks a bit techy to me - though I sort of understand alot of the jargon I don't really fully understand what it does and therefore don't want to mess with it till i've done some reading up to understand the effect of any changes. I suppose I was expecting the software to sort of do it for me at the touch of a button. However I did have the courage to re-arrange the boot files and it chugged away for a few minutes, did a defrag and I did indeed notice even more improvement in boot up speed.

However tonight I got my memory (from Crucial - I have used them before), ditched my old 2x 512Mb 4200 SODIMM chips and installed the 2x1Gb 5300 chips. I am now maxed out on RAM and the thing now flies. It still hangs up on boot up for a minute or so due to anti virus software, but other than that it is pretty instantanious.

So yet again - thanks for your help chaps. This forum is indeed a wealth of information on a great many subjects!!