faster computer, how to Options

[Celicaca]

anyone have any ideas on how to make my computer any faster. I have a Dell Dimension 4400. its pretty old. i dont want anything to big, but stuff that will give it that extra oomph.

1.8Ghz
512 MB DDR SDRAM
Nvidia GeForce3 Ti 200
80 GB 7200 RPM Ultra ATA Hard Drive
Microsoft Windows XP Home

Thankey

[mr_dude]

anyone have any ideas on how to make my computer any faster. I have a Dell Dimension 4400. its pretty old. i dont want anything to big, but stuff that will give it that extra oomph.

1.8Ghz
512 MB DDR SDRAM
Nvidia GeForce3 Ti 200
80 GB 7200 RPM Ultra ATA Hard Drive
Microsoft Windows XP Home

Thankey
[right][snapback]319635[/snapback][/right]

#1: Windows. Either install XP Corporate or Linux if you feel daring. Look at sites and magazines about how to tweak windows to perform better (i.e. you can disable most of the processes that can be viewed under MyComputer->Manage).
The bottleneck for any PC nowadays is software, not hardware. Windows especially, and anything you install will eat away at your performance.

More ram or storage won't help you much.

Edit: You can consider setting up a RAID 0. It'll parallelize your hard drive access and thereby improve performance.

What do you use your computer for?


This post has been edited by mr_dude: Aug 2, 2005 - 5:46 PM

[Digndoug]

More ram will help if its slow when your multi tasking or useing more then a few operations. Also run spysweeper, that should get ride of any unwanted stuff thats running. The best thing would be to go into your systm config, and make sure you dont have to much stuff running. Like stuff you dont use.

[Celicaca]

anyone have any ideas on how to make my computer any faster. I have a Dell Dimension 4400. its pretty old. i dont want anything to big, but stuff that will give it that extra oomph.

1.8Ghz
512 MB DDR SDRAM
Nvidia GeForce3 Ti 200
80 GB 7200 RPM Ultra ATA Hard Drive
Microsoft Windows XP Home

Thankey
[right][snapback]319635[/snapback][/right]

What do you use your computer for?
[right][snapback]319642[/snapback][/right]

nowadays i just browse and what not, but im going to college soon and figure ill get into playing more computer games

basically, i guess i just want some programs you guys recommend to cleanse my computer of useless stuff and enhance performance and maybe get some basic hardware that is not too expensive that will help...for now

[mr_dude]

Well if you don't already, definitely get FireFox to replace IE. It will solve your spyware problems, unless you download everything porn sites tell you to.

I never leave a Windows install on for more than six months.
1. Windows is bad at memory management and gets laggy after a while.
2. Spyware and unused programs can collect and slow performance.
3. It forces me to back up my hard drive fairly often so if I ever have a hdd crash I'm in good shape.

Back your files up. Pop in the Dell Recovery CD. Reinstall Windows. It's painless and takes maybe a couple hours to reinstall what you need.

If you're going to college get a nice sound setup for your computer. SoundBlaster and 7.1 surround speakers will make games and music way better. Plus dorm chicks dig it. Not really. They get annoyed when your music is too loud for them to hear Trading Spaces.

Running spybot or spysweeper will remove some spyware, but will never get all of them and will slow your computer down (if they're always running).

[Celicaca]

Well if you don't already, definitely get FireFox to replace IE.  It will solve your spyware problems, unless you download everything porn sites tell you to.

I never leave a Windows install on for more than six months.
1. Windows is bad at memory management and gets laggy after a while.
2. Spyware and unused programs can collect and slow performance.
3. It forces me to back up my hard drive fairly often so if I ever have a hdd crash I'm in good shape.

Back your files up.  Pop in the Dell Recovery CD.  Reinstall Windows.  It's painless and takes maybe a couple hours to reinstall what you need.

If you're going to college get a nice sound setup for your computer.  SoundBlaster and 7.1 surround speakers will make games and music way better.  Plus dorm chicks dig it.  Not really.  They get annoyed when your music is too loud for them to hear Trading Spaces.

Running spybot or spysweeper will remove some spyware, but will never get all of them and will slow your computer down (if they're always running).
[right][snapback]319656[/snapback][/right]

i always reinstall windows hehe. i dont really care about sound; im ok with mine. how about something that clears up memory. or could u tell me some programs that are running on my computer that are unnecessary if i show u my processes list? and how to stop them from running?

[mr_dude]

Yup. You can Google them too. The problem is that you don't want to halt them every time you boot up.

To tell Windows ones not to start: MyComputer -> Manage -> Services
There's a list of stuff (you can sort it and see which ones are on).
Each has a brief description. You can guess at it, Google it, ask me, etc. But the vital ones are protected.

To tell Windows not to start various programs on startup:
Start -> Run "regedit.exe" -> LOCAL MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Installation/Run
/RunOnce
/RunOnceEx

I'm doing the path from memory so it could be a bit off.

If you see something like "iTunes" you can delete that registry key and iTunes won't start until you tell it to. Deleting the wrong thing here can be bad though.

And of course try and clear the stuff out of your system tray, most programs will give you that option, you just have to find it.

Good stuff, reinstalling Windows like a maniac. It helps.

[Celicaca]

To tell Windows not to start various programs on startup:
Start -> Run "regedit.exe" -> LOCAL MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Installation/Run
/RunOnce
/RunOnceEx
[right][snapback]319673[/snapback][/right]

im ahead of ya: i only got norton antivirus starting up already and thats it.

what i dont get is how i only have this firefox browser open, norton, and "system information" and it uses up almost 300mb ram. does that make sense. there must be some unforseen programs running amuck

[lagos]

defrag your hard drive too

the 300megs of ram space is normal. you have to remember that a whole OS is running in the background.

consider upgrading the computer sometime soon. 1.8ghz is pretty old by computer standards.

[Digndoug]

defrag your hard drive too

the 300megs of ram space is normal. you have to remember that a whole OS is running in the background.

consider upgrading the computer sometime soon. 1.8ghz is pretty old by computer standards.
[right][snapback]319691[/snapback][/right]

I have a amd 1600 xp.. thing is only a 1.4 and i only have 512 ram.. works fine for me. but then again it also depends on other stats, liek cache, fsb, and type of motherboard and such.

but then again i dont do much more then surf the net now.

[Celicaca]

defrag your hard drive too
[right][snapback]319691[/snapback][/right]

i do that a lot. disk cleanup as well

consider upgrading the computer sometime soon. 1.8ghz is pretty old by computer standards.

ehh i just want to make the best out of this processor for now. if i got a new processor i might as well get a whole new computer =/

[mr_dude]

I wager Norton is at least half of your memory usage. Not to say you don't want to be protected from viruses, but it's a very costly thing to have running.

If you have more than 5 gigs of hdd space free, it's not going to help much to defrag/cleanup (unless you have lots of processes going). If all the code you're running is in physical memory then cleaning up virtual memory isn't going to benefit much.

Anyone know if XP home is build around the Win32 or WinNT kernel? That could be a big one.

[celicast3sgte]

here is the best fix for a slow pc...

1) unplug the machine and put it in the back of your car
2) pick up a sledge hammer and put that in the back of your car
3) go out to the middle of a field
4) pound the **** out of it Office Space style.
5) buy a mac :-D

[lagos]

xp is basically the windows2000 32bit kernel with a buch of updates

[jojobombiest]

Here are some things to try:

go to start>run and type in msconfig. then go to the startup tab and uncheck all the things you dont want windows to start when it boots up... but be careful there are a few things that windows needs to boot up.

also like someone else mentioned, use the defrag tool under start>programs>accessories>system tools> defrag.

use spybot search and destroy, and adaware. you can download those for free at www.downloads.com.

and alot of people dont realize this but sometimes dust can build up inside your computer and lag it alot, so open up the case, take it outside and blow all that crap out. you might want to disconnect some wires and take out your ram/videocard etc. last time i did this i could really notice the difference.

[macavely]

you can store the programs you want in cache ... your computer will run super fast not wait time... but the downside of this will be .... really easy to Fook something up .... if you really want to know how to do it ... i can write a how to on it ... unless someone else wants to do it...

[mr_dude]

5) buy a mac :-D
[right][snapback]319740[/snapback][/right]

6) And pay way too much money for proprietary hardware and software. And don't expect to play any video games when you get to school.

Here are some things to try:

go to start>run and type in msconfig. then go to the startup tab and uncheck all the things you dont want windows to start when it boots up... but be careful there are a few things that windows needs to boot up. 

also like someone else mentioned, use the defrag tool under start>programs>accessories>system tools> defrag.

use spybot search and destroy, and adaware. you can download those for free at www.downloads.com.

and alot of people dont realize this but sometimes dust can build up inside your computer and lag it alot, so open up the case, take it outside and blow all that crap out. you might want to disconnect some wires and take out your ram/videocard etc. last time i did this i could really notice the difference.
[right][snapback]319761[/snapback][/right]

msconfig has all the things I mentioned and less.

Defragmentation makes your file accesses faster, a little bit faster. If you're browsing you don't access many files on your hard drive. Your computer uses virtual memory (temporary hard drive space) when it runs out of physical memory (ram). It doesn't use more than a few gigs of virtual memory so as long as you have a contiguous block of free space you're fine.

Spybot and Adaware are fine programs. The problem is they like to run in the background, hogging clock cycles. Also, there's a reason you have to download both. They don't get all your malware. Running Norton, Spybot, and Adaware will be agony on any Windows box (1.4 GHz - 3GHz).

Dusting your computer to make it go faster is an example of a placebo. Yes, a lot of dust builds up over time. Yes, too much could cause your CPU to overheat at which point your system will shut down. Up until this point it doesn't matter. The clock speed on your computer is fixed to whatever you set in BIOS.

[rocky2006]

http://tweakxp.com/performance_tweaks.aspx

i have used as many of these that i could, noticed a huge difference in overall performance. main thing is just get rid of all the crap running in the background.

[dahoman9]

upgrade your video card for gaming.
http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html <--Follow this to block most ads and get faster web browsing.
Also, go to Internet Explorer and go to tools/internet options/, in the temporary internet files section click on settings. change the amount of space to use for temporary internet files to be 20 megs or more. That will make the browsing faster too.

1.8ghz is plenty...if you do decide to get a new computer in the future, get a mac if you are not a hardcore gamer. A mac can run applications faster than a PC, but it is unix based and many games are not supported. However, if you know what you're doing, you can emulate Windows and/or linux.

Get an AMD if you are a hardcore gamer and wanna stick with PC. I run Doom 3 on the highest quality settings on my 1.53GHz AMD Athlon XP (1800+) with an ATI Radeon 8500 video card. My computer is outdated today and still running very good. For more bang for your buck, do what I did and build your own PC.

[Celicaca]

can someone give me a pix of their list of services (services.msc)? i was messing with mine and think i fed stuff up. can someone show me their defaults? ty