A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Banter Hall DESPERATE computer advice needed...

...from someone who REALLY knows what their talking about when it comes to computers


I'm running a Compaq Presario SR1710NX [1 gig harddrive--only about 20% being used-- running at 256mb RAM] Norton antivirus installed, windows XP home basic edition...i can give you more info if you need...
but, it's running impossibly slow... not just internet, but everything...it takes a good minute to refresh a page, and a good 10 minutes to start a game, or another program not related to the internet, up...

To be honest, this computer is a piece of sh**

My question: WHAT can i do to make this thing go faster!
there's a lot of unneccary programs and stuff, but i can't tell what's what!
like i said, the RAM is only 256MB RAM... should i just buy memory and install that in? buy a bigger hard drive?
I'm out of options
any advice would be greatly appreciated

--Mark--

when was the last time you de-fragged and ran ad-aware?

hi mark I also have a compaq presario pc. I did have 256 mg ram but I bought more ram and now i have 700 or 800 something like that for only 36.00 but you should get rid of your unnessary programs the ones you dont use like games, and programs like chating and stuff like that you should know what not to delete because it will have mirosoft and all that on it but when in doubt DONT DELETE IT! also have you defragmented your computer? just go to start all programs accesories system tools disk defragmenter click on it and defrag both drives but my computer has 80 gig hard drive but you problem sound like you need more ram mine needed more ram because jus tlike yours everything was runing slow the computer took forever to start up.

here is the website if you want it
http://www.newegg.com/

but try the other things first like deleting old programs and defreagmenting ur comp. hope this helps

mark, willy hit it on the head, and toposh confirmed it. run an ad ware/spy ware remover, then defrag (or defrag, run the program, and defrag again).

a compaq presario is a good machine, they just get old. but a 1 gig hard drive isn't bad and if you are only at 20% you probably don't have too many useless programs on it. i've got a 30 gig on this lap top and i'm at 85%. but it still runs pretty smoothly. it's a dell (the one willy got us thanks willy )

i should have added that i run ad ware and spy sweeper on a regular basis.

Mark, I have an old e-machine that my son customized for me with almost 1 Gig of memory and about 400 Gigs on my hard drives. My hard drives are ALMOST full now, but I use McAfee and regularly defrag and scan for adwares and my computer runs very well. My only problem is that I can't get my 3D accelerator to work. A good antivirus, regular defragging, and frequent adware and spyware scans are essential to GOOD computer performance. My son has around 2-3 gigs memory and a couple of Terabytes of hard drive space, but then he IS a computer tech.

Thanks for all the advice

I defrag on a regular basis, every 3 weeks, or so, i think...
I will run ad/spyware remover now, though

if you are defraging regularly, your problem is almost surely spy/ad ware. defrag after you run it.

I don't know but this might help... How about disabling all the unimportant startup programs

---If you don't know how to disable them---

1. Go to to Start --> Run

2. Type in Msconfig and hit enter

3. You System Configuration Utility should be open. Click on the Startup tab

Right now all the startup programs will be displayed in front of you, just deselect the unnecessary programs and click on OK

If you aren't sure what is necessary or unnecessary then click here
http://www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php

It's a giant searchable list containing all startup applications

P.s. It's easily reversible, just go back and tick the program you want to startup

Sorry Mark, I'm an apple user so the only advice I can give you is to buy a mac.

Thanks again for all the help and advice!

I ran a full comprehensive virus/adware/spyware scan, and came up with nothing...
I defragmented [ took 2 hours :Lol: ] and deleted alot of things that i'm sure i don't need :Lol:
i also ran a disk cleanup to remove temporary and unneccesary files

I'm going to order a 1gb ram chip from the website toposh suggested
I had found another one, at a cheaper price, from circut city.com, but it went off sale yesterda[ when i was going to order it ], and it's on backorder now anyway :LoL:
it's running somewhat better now, so i created a system restore point to this day lol:



--Mark--

Also try my suggestion It might end up better than before

let us know how its running once u do er thing