At 01:11 12/30/06, Reggkay wrote:
>My mother-in-laws [128 mb ram] computer is running really slow...

Hi Regina

Most people would consider 128 MB to be way too little RAM
for WinXP. 512 MB is probably more reasonable for XP.

Also, you mentioned Norton. Programs like Norton Antivirus
(System Works, Norton Integrated Security, anything from
Symantec) are notorious for slowing down computers. The
same goes for McAfee and any AOL software. You might want
to uninstall such programs and go with one of the smaller
(and some are free) antivirus programs or firewalls.

Also, you mentioned several anti spyware programs. Running
them "actively" all the time will slow things down, particularly
if they are conflicting with themselves. I'd suggest that you
disable them all (at least temporarily) and just run them
manually once a week until you find what's showing things down.

You should check that you have enough free space on your hard
drive. I've heard that installing XP takes about 2 GB of disk
space but that if you run all Microsoft's updates, you can end
up filling 7 GB just with the operating system files. You should
check your TEMP files (the one at
C:\Documents and Settings\<your user name>\Local Settings\Temp
and the one at C:\WINNT\Temp) to see that they aren't taking
up a lot of space. (Maybe empty them once a day.) Check out
things like log files to see that none has grown unusually
large. (Do a search for "log" files and for *.txt files.)
You want a couple of GB of free space just for your swap
file (that's really important since you have so little RAM).
I know from experience that Norton Antivirus will choke if
it runs low on disk space. That's once example of what can
happen if you run low (less than one GB) of free disk space.

Check for programs that run at Startup. (Get and run
MSCONFIG.EXE, Autoruns, jv16 Powertools, or Startup Cop for
this.) Last week I noticed that my computer was slowing down
dramatically. It turns out that I had "acquired" a Flash
update checker (it was loading at Startup) that was trying to
constantly check for Adobe Macromedia Flash updates. As a
matter of fact, check all your programs (including XP itself)
to see which is trying to update itself automatically.

Just a few suggestions...

Regards,
Bill 

                         PCSOFT's List Owner's:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                       Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>