Windows XP running Slow!

[pcowen]

We have a machine running windows XP and it's about 3 years old but should be a fast machine for running office stuff. No games etc. Windows itself takes about 5 minutes to load so you can actually click on the start menu. But the hard Drive just keeps chugging away. We have Norton on full protection, which includes scanning all running programs? as well as scanning all emails. Main problem is using outlook. I use 2 mac running OSX on the same network and emails come and go very quickly, but on the XP machine it takes ages for an email to come in as norton seems to scan them first. Is this how it should be set up. I don't have much knowledge of Windows, I've always used mac's but we do need this machine running XP or I'd have all macs.

What are some simple things to do to keep an XP machine running smoothly?

Keep your answers simple so I can understand them.

Thanks

[spitfire-ian]

pcowen said:

We have Norton on full protection, which includes scanning all running programs? as well as scanning all emails.

I think you've found your problem!

Prepare yourself for a lot of posts stating how large an arse print Norton has on your machine!

[road2ruin]

I agree Norton is one of the worst 'background programs' for hugging resources. However 3 years old means your PC is probably clogged up with rubish. Best thing you can do is download something like Ccleaner (google for it) its a free program that cleans up the useless files on your machine as well as all the chache's and history. It will also search your registry for dead or broken links and delete these too if you wish. I would also check your start up programs by going to start/run then type in 'msconfig' clcik on the startup tab and see what programs are in there that dont need to be. Untick any that you dont require and re-boot. I think Ccleaner may even have this option in it too to save you having to go into msconfig.

Good luck.

[ThePassenger]

3 years. I would also suggest you turn off Norton and unplug the machine from the network/internet. Then do a chkdsk /F on the drives. This won't do anything bad and I highly doubt NTFS is going boink, but it's good to make sure all the indexes are A-Ok.

Once this is done and you've rebooted as told to crank up the defrag utility (it's in Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools) and let it trundle through the disk(s) and sort stuff out.

Doing that AFTER you've removed all the cruft from the system (see the post above) should get you some speed improvements. However, yes, Norton is a pain, it can & will self-destruct but if your happy with it and we can claw your system back without removing it why make more problems

Obviously turn Norton back on before rejoining the network/internet.