At 01:46 PM 1/30/2007 -0600, you wrote:
>It does have Wild Tangent (spyware?) that I haven't yet removed (just 
>printed the removal procedures).  Can that be the problem?>>


It's possible. Some spyware will attempt continuously to "phone home" until 
it succeeds in transmitting whatever it's designed to transmit from your 
computer.

256Mb RAM is a bit small to run XP unless you are very careful. Causes of 
slow performance are many and varied.

NAV is a notorious resource hog, also Fast Indexing service if that is 
enabled. An overfull HD is another common cause---there should be at least 
500 Mb free for XP, 300 for W98. This would be for a barebones system, more 
is preferable for most graphics software.

Presumably the system has been regularly defragged.

Compaqs are notorious for loading a lot of unnecessary proprietary stuff at 
startup which clogs performance once you start installing other software.

If it's had a lot of junk running for a long time, it will very likely need 
a reformat to clear it all away. In the end, this will likely prove faster 
and certainly much more reliable than spending days or weeks trying to 
track down all the possible causes of bad performance, with maybe only a 
50/50 chance of fixing the problem.

Preferably, don't use the maker's "Restore" disk, as this will simply load 
all the proprietary junk back on. Much better to reinstall Windows from a 
clean disk.

Don Penlington


 From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland.
Computer tutorials, local scenery,  and other things at my website:
http://users.tpg.com.au/deepend/index1.html

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