why my dell computer with XP runs very slow with programs not responding all the time?

Question

why my dell computer with XP runs very slow with programs not responding all the time?

Answer 1

Alot of things could be wrong. I usually spend an hour or more running virus/spyware scans on computers, installing updates, optimizing boot programs, running boot and file system defrags, etc when people are having this problem. If you don't know someone that can do this for you, then you should take it to Best buy or a local repair shop... assuming it's out of warrenty.

If it's in warrenty... call Dell.



(And for the fellow who thought it would be funny to say Windoze is slow... my computer which is getting on 3 years old with XP sp2 boots from cold poweroff in 16 seconds. It could be faster but I allow for a 5 second OS delay just incase i want to boot a diff OS. Slow is all a matter of how you manage your startup programs.)

Answer 2

It's a Dell thing!



But seriously, viruses, spyware, adware etc are the main causes of slowing down. Also, it depends on what computer you're running XP on. My comp is 7yrs old and running XP - it had to be formatted to remove all the viruses and as a result, it runs fairly slowly because it was designed with 98 and it's just not up to scratch with some of the newer machines.



Get a good PAID antivirus program that also removes spyware and adware. Trend Micro works well for me, but i know that Norton and McAffee have products that do the same thing. Don't rely on free downloads. Often they just FIND the viruses, they don't actually clean your computer - that's what got me in trouble in the first place!!!



Do regular Disk Clean-ups to remove unnecessary files and don't keep programs and large files that you don't need. If you're still having problems, get in touch with Dell or a local computer repair man. It may be more than just a build up of viruses - there may be some physical part that's gone bung!

Answer 3

Depending on the exact issue at hand, a thorough Google search may be be your best bet at resolving for yourself whatever is causing dysfunction. Nonetheless, as a computer technician who runs his own business troubleshooting, repairing, rebuilding, and optimizing computers... I can probably guide you in the right direction. However, without having your PC directly at my fingertips, I can only make general suggestions. In this case, I would surely check out the highly esteemed world-class Reimage software from https://reimagefix.im ..



When people come into our shop and drop off their PC for repair, the first thing we do is run an initial diagnostic. For this function, I use Reimage exclusively. In many cases, I am able to diagnose very quickly what is making their computer run slow, or is giving them the crashes/freezes/errors/grief that brought them to me in the first place. After the diagnostic, in a majority of cases, Reimage is able to remedy All problems and replace any corrupted Windows files. I then proceed to charge a handsome fee for my services that took me all but 30-60 minutes to complete. Obviously sometimes I must work more, but often this is all it takes. It is a very powerful tool that would likely put me and others in my industry out of business if more people knew of it. So don't tell anyone lol, and Good Luck with your PC.

Answer 4

You should have at least two anti-spyware programs on your computer. Go download Spybot and use it also. If your still having problems with programs not responding then you should go ahead and go to your START MENU > ALL PROGRAMS > ACCESSORIES > SYSTEM TOOLS > SYSTEM RESTORE. Pick a restore date of when you now your computer was running fine and restore your system.... Windows XP is a Very Very Smart Op. System and you might have something on there you shouldn't have.

Answer 5

Check to see how many background programs you are running by looking in your system tray (where the time is displayed). If you have a bunch of stuff down there, try right-clicking and closing some of them, and consider uninstalling them permanently.



If you have four different chats going at the same time along with several browser windows open and a game as well, that will slow you down.



Trojans and viruses as well as adware and malware will slow your machine - scan for viruses and download Ad-Aware Personal to scan for adware and malware.

Answer 6

Have you run antispyware, cleaned up temporary files, run disk cleanup and defrag? If you have completed all these and the computer is still unresponsive, see a professional technician. I recommend weekly maintenance that includes cleaning up the following:

Internet cookies, offline files and history (For IE: Tools, Internet options)

Antispyware of your choice (I like AdAware)

Disk Cleanup and Defrag (Start, Programs, Accessories, System tools)

Don't forget to do a weekly Windows Update check to stay current.



If you have accidentally installed XP twice, you will need to have a technician take the extra version off.

Answer 7

Hey dont get alarmed, its not because of 'dell' computer. Ussually there are many reasons behind a computer running slow.

1) Might be due to Malicious Softwares present on the computer which is controlling some of the important services of the operating system



2) Might be due to loads of temp files and cookies present on the computer.



3) May be due to unwanted startup items present on the computer.



4) May be due to unwanted softwares like toolbars and search bars which is taking more system memmory.



*******Work arounds****



1) Try a full system scan using some Antivirus softwares.



2) Try to run a disk clean up and disk defragment on the computer.



* To open Disk Cleanup, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Disk Cleanup.



* To open Disk Defragmenter, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Disk Defragmenter.



3) Try uninstalling all unwanted softwares from add or remove programs



* To open Add/remove programes click on start then run and type 'appwiz.cpl' without quots.

Answer 8

Various factors may impact your system's speed. Try to check your PC for viruses and spy-ware, also clean up your temp files. Another thing you may check is the free space in your hard disk, and if you have many programs installed that start up automatically, that could impact, too.



I hope this helps.

Answer 9

have you gone into add and remove programs? you'll usually find a bunch of junk in there you can delete. caveat: if a program you're deleting says removing the files may affect other programs, don't delete it. also, you can remove some items from start up which slow operations down. that's all besides the viruses and stuff. crap cleaner is good for removing dead end/unused links, etc.

Answer 10

you have a lot of errors, you need to scan for viruses, scan for spyware, clean the files sytem, scandisk and defrag, if it is too bad, and you have nothing worth saving, just do a restore on it so it is like new again

Answer 11

Solution

Answer 12

If try system restore. Go back to a date that it was running properly and restore it to that date.

Or if push comes to shove just reinstall things back to when you first got the computer, after you back up important files

Answer 13

virus ,spyware,startup programs,themes ,backgrounds,visual effects(in XP).can eat a lot of memory.

Answer 14

Because Windoze is slow.

Answer 15

check your task manager. turn off uneeded programs. If still didn't work, try to alter on the msconfig found on run option at the start button (Ther's a risk also, so dont try if you didnt know the consequences). if it still didn't work, upgrade to at least 512mb of ram and the cpu too.

Answer 16

you might have a hugh spyware problem get you a spyware program and run it

Answer 17

because Dells such get an HP...

Answer 18

If your PC isn't the speedster it used to be, chances are a bloated hard drive is to blame. Steer clear of PC bottlenecks by making the most of Windows' built-in maintenance tools. Just mouse over to your System Tools folder to fine-tune your PC.



Before you start mucking around with your hard drive, I strongly recommend that you back up your files. If you have Windows XP installed in your system, you can use the new Windows Backup and Automated System Recovery utilities to take snapshots of your healthy system; if disaster strikes, you can roll back your PC to the latest snapshot (use the link below for more info).



http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B320820



Note: Both Windows Backup and Automated System Recovery are already installed on Windows XP Professional systems; if you have Windows XP Home, you'll have to install the utilities yourself using your Windows install CDs.



Use the two links below for more info on installing the utilities:



http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302894/EN-US/



http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302700/EN-US/



The first bit of prep work is to examine your hard drive for file-system errors and bad sectors--areas where writing and reading data may be a problem. Open My Computer, right-click any drive, and select Properties. Click the Tools tab, and in the Error-checking section, click Check Now. Check one or both boxes and click Start. If you have more than one partition--or more than one hard drive--you'll have to repeat the process for each one, because Windows XP scans only one drive at a time. If you're prompted to schedule the disk check the next time you start your computer, click Yes and reboot. Or reboot later, if you prefer.



Either way, the utility performs the selected operations.



How much stuff sits on your hard drive? If it's like mine, you have many files of dubious virtue loitering in every nook and cranny--temporary Internet files, downloaded program files, and the like. To get an idea of how much space you're wasting, go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup, and Windows will calculate how much space you can free up by performing this step. When it's finished, you'll see a list of file types with checks next to the ones Windows proposes sending off to the bit bucket, along with the space occupied by each category and the total amount of space you can reclaim if you let Disk Cleanup erase each checked category.



To see what's in the files Windows wants to delete, highlight one of the categories and select View Files. If the figure represents a negligible percentage of total disk space and you're not sure you really want to dump anything, forget about a cleanup at this time. Or, open the Recycle Bin and sort its contents by date. Highlight anything older than, say, one month, and delete just the highlighted files.



The first few steps haven't done much to improve performance, but they have prepared your hard drive for the defragmentation procedure. As you create, delete, and modify files on your computer, over time the files become divided into pieces scattered around the disk. This slows things down because your hard drive has to search the disk to find the parts of a single file. The defragmentation procedure gathers all the pieces of a file and rewrites its data into contiguous, sequential sectors. As a result, the read/write head doesn't need to waste time scooting all over the drive to find each piece of a file.



Keep in mind, the defragmentation process could take hours, so it's best to let it run overnight. Select Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter. With a drive highlighted, click Analyze to see how badly fragmented your files are. The blue lines represent contiguous files. If you see a lot of thin blue lines scattered throughout the display field, you could benefit from a defrag. (You should also see a dialog that says "You should defragment this volume.") Just click Defragment to get started. Once that drive is done, try another drive letter. If the operation isn't necessary, you'll get a message reading, "You do not need to defragment this volume." (Volume is Microsoft-speak for the drive partition that was just analyzed.)



Tip

For a no-holds-barred way to speed up your system, consider a fresh install of Windows. Just make sure you create a thorough backup of everything first.



Once the defrag is complete, your system should run a little faster. If you want to eke just a little more speed out of the ol' beige mare, consider moving your swap, or paging, file to another partition. Also known as virtual memory, the swap file extends your PC's memory, holding information from real RAM on your hard drive as you work. By default, this file is written to drive C:, but you can improve performance and increase free space by moving it to a different partition. Right-click My Computer and select Properties > Advanced. In the Performance section, click Settings > Advanced and in the Virtual Memory section, click Change. Next to drive C:, the two numbers in the Paging File Size (MB) column indicate the minimum and maximum size limits of the current file.



To set up a new paging file on a different drive, highlight that drive letter and click either the Custom Size or System Managed Size radio button. The Custom Size button lets you specify the desired size. (Two to three times the size of your RAM is a good starting point.) If space is plentiful, set the initial and maximum sizes to the same value so that Windows doesn't have to dynamically adjust the file size. Or choose System Managed Size to let Windows do the job on its own.



Once you've configured the new swap file, click Set, then highlight drive C:. Click No Paging File to delete the old file on that drive and click Set again.



I hope this helps.



P.S. If your PC continues to run slow, after all of this then you're nest step would be to check for Spyware on your PC. Check out Windows Defender, it's free and in beta form and one of the best anti-spyware programs I've ever used. Use the link below:



http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx