I just started my xp in over a month and it's awful slow loading windows, Is there any way I can speed it up a little. I've been deleting some of the things I don't need on my xp. I mean it's really slow. Loading the shortcuts seems like it takes 5 min. Thank you
Richard

When I boot up my XP, I might as well go get a cup of coffee while I wait! The disk is very clean, but it still takes at least 3 or 4 minutes. The hardware isn't the speediest and the disk itself is old, so I chalk it up to getting used to my new, speedy computer and forgetting how slow the old XP is.

Other than what you're doing, I can't think of anything.

Maybe the battery needs replacing?

Shovel some more coal in the boiler :-)

Don't you make fun of XP. There must be a reason why it's the Windows version with longest life span. Did you not read the news some weeks ago telling even Apple uses Windows XP for testing their brand new phones!

Richard, watch this to learn how to make your old war horse quicker!

Timo

kjos,

Excluding physical problems like dust coatings on fans and the motherboard, poor connections, and marginal power supplies, the usual things that slow down computers follow.

1) Defrag the hard drives! This is the most frequent cause of poor operation.
2) Check what is being loaded at startup. This can be done with a variety of programs inculding the WinXP utility msconfig. Unneeded programs being loaded or malware being loaded will cause performance problems.
3) Use a good computer virus checker or programs like Malwarebytes or Spybot. Some of these can also check the registry for problems that can reduce performance.
4) See how much memory is available (hardware, and assigned to virtual memory on disk). Consider adding memory.
5) Run System (in the control panel) and with the hardware manager look for any problems.

Report here what you find and if things get better or stay the same.

Robert

Good ideas all.. However, I've done all of them and for my system, it's just the nature of the beast. Still won't give up my trusty old XP though!

My XP installs take about the same amount of time to boot as Windows 7 does -- given the same computer and same hard drive.

A lot depends on what you've installed on the drive over the years, and whether you've done the maintenance Robert Gault suggests.

It also depends on whether your hard drive itself has become slower with age from remapping bad sectors to reserve sectors elsewhere on the drive. If some of the remapped sectors are storing boot information, it will slow your boot. Defragging doesn't help with remapped sectors. As far as the defragging software is concerned, the remapped sectors are still at their original location.

There can also be sectors that are weak and take longer to read. Utilities like SpinRite can help with weak sectors, but aren't free.

Interestingly, we cloned an older XP install onto a new hard drive and it booted and ran significantly faster -- even though it still had all the programs we'd installed on it and was certainly not a "fresh install of Windows." The two drives supposedly had the same specs, but the replacement was faster. We knew the old drive had some bad sectors at the end of the drive (not where Windows was), but it apparently also had weak sectors that were slowing it down.

I suspect that herein lies my problem, Jenny. This is the original 160 GB HDD that came in my old HP computer in 2004. It's living in a nice low end new build, but this is an old drive most likely with all the issues you mention. I'm thinking of grabbing a new 160 GB HDD and cloning it over.

My Windows 7 installation is on a SSD, so it boots up almost as fast as my Windows 8.1.

Yes, those SSD's are really fast. My brother has 64-bit XP on an SSD, and it also boots super fast.

Hi Fellow Boomers,
I see that Richard is getting used to his new WIN 7 computer. I still have my one and only trusty Dell Win XP machine, and it's doing just fine. So far I have been able to play all the new games without a hitch. The only exception is "Ethan Carter", which would not start on THIS PC as well as my wife's VISTA machine. GOG did their best to try and help me, but without success They made it up to me.
Sandy