Dimension 2300 is sluggish.

I agree that 256 MB is not a lot, but, like I said, it used to run well with this same hardware configuration.

 

CPU usage is always super low when I'm not aksing it to do anything.  HDD light is not on all the time.

 

I pressed the power button on my computer this morning and went to pump my bicycle tires up.  Couple minutes maybe.  I came back and found just my desktop and my mouse icon.  Took another 15 seconds for my icons to appear.

 

BTW - I ran Adaware and Spybot scans.  McAfee, too.  Found very little. Disk has been defragmented and I ran the disk cleanup tool.  The computer appears to be fine, but it is still kind of slow.

256M of RAM is not much for Windows XP, but your system is pretty lean with a commit charge of only 200M. So memory might help a bit, particularly if you decide to fire up a few applications. Larger applications might load very slowly because you will quickly be out of RAM.

 

How long is "forever" to boot?

 

It is possible you have HD problem. Do you notice the HD light on and bright much of the time when the machine is slow? Or is the CPU usage high?

 

You should also check in the BIOS setup to make sure you are not in CPU compatibility (slow) mode.

 

I should add:  Good job providing such complete info with your original post! 

 

Peter

Did you check in the BIOS setup to make sure you are not in CPU compatibility (slow) mode?

 

If the HD light is not on much, then it means that you should be more memory/CPU limited.  Generally, during boot the HD is the limiting factor. 

 

One thing to remember is that 256M might have been fine, but if you load more software it will quickly be too little and even though the hardware used to work fine, it might become very sluggish with more memory being used.  In your case, I don't think memory is the main issue right now, but you should keep that in mind.

 

Disabling any startup programs that you can should help because:

 

1. You don't have to wait for them to load

2. They don't take precious memory from programs you actually want to run 

 

For example, I noticed hkcmd.  I generally disable that right away. 

 

I also set many services to manual from disabled.  You have the help service running automatically even though you haven't asked for any help.  When set to manual, it will load only when you ask for help (which you probably never do anyway).

 

Systems with Norton and McAfee generally run slow because they are notorious resource hogs. 

 

Peter 

I've already disabled a lot through msconfig.  I'll try to turn off more.

 

I don't have McAfee running in the backround--I turned that feature off.  Do you think it's still a resource hog even if it's not always scanning? 

Even though you don't have them scanning in the background, they do load some processes.  I noticed some that looked to be from McAfee.

 

In your case it would be more of a memory than a CPU issue.

 

Your system actually looks to be pretty clean.  I have a comparable machine that has a commit charge of 180M after boot.  You are at 200M which is pretty close.  (My I6400 that came with Norton/McAfee (not sure which) and all the other Dell crud used 540M after boot!  Less than 200M after I cleaned it up.) 

 

Peter 

My mom was reading her email with Thunderbird today and got the "low on virtual memory" error.  This nis definitely not right...

That is not necessarily wrong.  It depends on how much RAM you have and how you have your virtual memory set up.  If it starts very small and you use all the RAM you will get that message.

 

 If you hit Windows Key-Break and go to Advanced/Performance/Advanced/Virtual Memory it will show the settings for the virtual memory.

 

Is this the same machine?  If so, you will run out of RAM as soon as you start almost anything.  Then the question is how long it takes to use all the virtual memory. 

 

Peter 

I'd have to agree with the others here, 256 is hardly enough for xp let along any apps - its really a shame Dell sold computers with 256MB, 512 is really the least I would recommend. It also probebly doesnt help that thhe Dim 2300 is 4 years old... might be time to look at an replacement or at the very least a ram upgrade (ram is very cheap these days). When was the OS (Windows XP) was reinstalled? Its pretty common to backup and wipe/reinstall the OS every 2 years or so to keep performance up to snuff.

 

If you're looking for a cheap ram upgrade look at newegg - they have some of the best ram prices around. 1GB shouldnt run you more than $40-50.

 

http://www.newegg.com

That thing came with 128 MB when it was new.  I threw another 128 MB chip in there after we bought it.

 

It's never had a clean Windows install.  I may just replace one of the 128 MB chips with a 512 MB one and do a fresh Windows install. 

I got the virtual memory message again and looked at the Task Manager.  The VM usage for explorer.exe was at 300,000 K.  Jeez!

300M is not right.  I'm not sure what causes that.

 

Peter 

Booler,

You mentioned removing a trojan in your initial post. What trojan was it? My home-built Athlon system got infected with Vundo after I put a client's hard drive in it as a slave to recover data several months ago and that little bugger made Windows XP run ridiculously slow untl I removed it. The removal of some viruses causes you to have to delete Windows system files, which can end up requiring a clean OS reinstall to completely cure. I'd try running sfc /scannow first to see if the utility can automatically find & replace any damaged or missing system files. In addition, whatuusay1 is correct about RAM. 512 MB is widely considered the bare minimum to make Windows XP run at anything faster than a snail's pace in 'real world' usage. I'm shocked that you were able to purchase any Dell computer running Windows XP with only 128 MB of memory factory-installed. :smileysurprised: That should generate an illegal order configuration error IMHO.

 

BTW, explorer.exe is the Windows GUI so if that's hogging up CPU cycles you've got some rather serious issues. 

This machine did come with XP Home and 128 MB.  It was awful, that's why I doubled the RAM.

 

I'm just going to do a clean install.  Thanks for the help, everyone.