THSCC Forums

If you aren't doing anything that requires windows specific s/w, that PC is more than capable of running Ubuntu. If you mainly do web browsing, you would never even notice that you didn't have windows. Except for the faster speed, lack of viruses and lack of crashes.

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In need of car.

wow........ computer-nerd fight. IBTL

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BenchWarmer Motorsports

another one of those damn LeMons heads

just another Chump

we are an Autocross Club Dammit............

you're just jealous because no one ever wants to debate berber vs. cut pile

baahahahaha. there's always politics.

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BenchWarmer Motorsports

another one of those damn LeMons heads

just another Chump

we are an Autocross Club Dammit............

You don't need to uninstall anything. Open msconfig and start removing unnecessary items from startup. Everything that you've ever installed will try to load itself at startup and this is affecting your speed.

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Has no responsibility whatsoever.

It would help to know what you think is "slow." Wes has a good fix for "my computer boots slow." Whomever suggested chrome might have a good suggestion for "my web browsing is slow." Defrag'ing will help on application startup times. It can also help if you haven't defraged in 7 years and you're using a large amount of your page file (in task manager, there's a performance tab... PF usage is on that tab. Unfortunately "large amount" is somewhat subjective).

What I think would give you fair bang for your buck is adding ram. Things have gotten more intense since '02, and you're going to be filling your ram, resorting to your hdd as ram when you run over. And that's slow. If we were to put it in human terms, I think it's like you looking a word up in the dictionary vs taking a cruise to Europe to look up a word in a dictionary over there.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820141166 - I believe that fits in your computer. If you're up for spending a little money, get 2 and replace what's in your box (it's a really easy thing to do). I think you'd be happy with the performance boost.

That said, a full, clean install is the best route. I still think you'd benefit from more ram, though. If you didn't want the hassle of backing up data, you could get another HDD for your fresh install, but that's getting expensive.

Adding to the geek wars.... The PF Usage in Task Manager tells you little about your actual page file. That counter actually provides you an indication of your in-use memory, not specific to paging. You need to use Perfmon and monitor Page Reads/sec to get an indication of actual disk paging activity. The Commit Charge:Total in Task manager, when compared to Physical Memory:Total does give a good indication of how much of your memory is being consumed, however, and is worth noting.

As has been said, 1GB is minimal even for XP with modern bloatware, so a bit more memory could well be worth the few bucks.

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Dustin Fredrickson
-- I'm a nobody --

actually, Wes' suggestion of msconfig has been the most helpful so far. Amazing what runs in the background. I thought I new most of the exe's but that one I missed, good stuff....

I guess memory is next on the list along w/ Graham's suggestion on the reg cleaner which is what I asked for in the first place. Thanks for the suggestions so far.

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Rodney

'08 Bullitt mustang, CAM 7
Autox VP '09-'10, President '11-'12, interim President 2nd half of ‘14
proud recipient of the Bowie Grey service award '12
Now just a guy driving a mustang....

I just recently upgrade my old dell laptop to 2 gigs. The performance difference was amazing. I could kick my self for waiting so long. I'm running XP.

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Mitch Moore

How old? I have an early 2002 Dell with Pentium III and it appears limited to 512 Mb. Even going to that from the current 256 appears to require more than just swapping RAM. Specs say memory is SDRAM.

Crucial's website says:

Maximum Memory: 512MB
Slots: 2 (2 banks of 1)
Standard Memory: 128 or 256MB non-removable
USB Support: 1.x Compliant
The standard memory is installed in a socket which cannot be accessed by the end user. The second memory socket supports the end user upgrades. In order to reach the maximum you may need to have the standard memory replaced by an authorized service center

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Dick Rasmussen

FS 50 2018 Mustang GT

When they get dramatically slower I've generally seen memory issues. The PC starts using hard drive swap space as memory and performance goes down very quickly. Task Manager can be useful to see which processes are using your memory. Then kill the processes that you don't want or buy more RAM. A friend of mine had dozens of malware processes from not being too selective about where he hangs out on the Internet, and we fixed it by cleaning out all the crap in his "Run" keys in his registry, but you should be able to get it done with msconfig.

My wife ran out of memory because the database on her NetFlow server was using too much, so I went to Tiger Direct and got another GB of the stuff and put it in, problem solved.

I had issues when running too many virtual machines on my laptop, so I put 8GB in it and got rid of swapping to the hard drive. It's been running fast ever since.

Your PC specs are decent, so it shouldn't be slow when running normal PC applications. If you are using it for HD video editing, or cracking encryption algorithms, then you may want to upgrade.

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"Every ship is a minesweeper, once."

OK, based on everyones feedback, I've been trying firefox. When I installed it, I was asked if I wanted to port over cookies and favorites, to which I said yes. After the install, most everything was there and I was able to get to the THSCC forums and all my other saved links.

For whatever reason, I can no longer log into the forums using my account information in FF, but it allows me to log in just fine w/ IE. What am I missing? I don't see anything obvious about popups or such at the top of FF. What gives? It also autocorrects my login name to "rodneywright" instead of allowing me to enter "RodneyWright". Is that my issue? Is there a way to kill the autoformating?

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Rodney

'08 Bullitt mustang, CAM 7
Autox VP '09-'10, President '11-'12, interim President 2nd half of ‘14
proud recipient of the Bowie Grey service award '12
Now just a guy driving a mustang....

Buy a MAC x2.

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2008 Burnt Piston Award Winner!!!!

go into the firefox prefs>security>saved passwords and delete the thscc one(s). then re-enter them on the site and tell it to save.

or


abacus, charred wood and a stone wall.


mmmnmmnnmnn, water buffalo.

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BenchWarmer Motorsports

another one of those damn LeMons heads

just another Chump

we are an Autocross Club Dammit............