How much RAM?

Hi,

I have 126 RAM, 20gig hard, 700mHz, and find XP to have slowed me down to about 300Mhz speed or worse.
Would adding 126 or 256 RAM help?

Cheers
Jay

 

Hi jaysam,
Before spending the money....try the free stuff first.
Off the top of my head....I'd say you most likely have too much running in the backgound.
Do a ctrl/alt/del and tell us what you have listed in the dialogue box.
You may have to go into msconfig, and under the start up tab, uncheck any unneccessary things from running at start up.
Here are two links to tell you what those items are:
(Start....run.....type in: msconfig....click ok......look under your start up tab)

Msconfig entries
and
More of the same

Daizy

 

Well, right now, 128MB PC133 is like 35 bucks. I say save up little bit of your spending money and upgrade to 256 MB. Besides, it wouldn't hurt to have little bit more RAM anywayz.

Earlkay

 

Jay,
I upgraded my second XP system (Celeron running at 525 MHz) from 128Mb to 256 and the real world improvement was maybe 25%. Not a lot but certainly worth the $50 AU. At a spead of 525 it wasn't worth installing any more RAM. My primary PC an Athlon 1.2Gig has 512 but for most use, 256 is also enough. Apart from a reasonable Video card with 16Mb+ of RAM I have a few suggestions to tweak windows XP. Use a registry cleaner(s) on a regular basis. EasyCleaner and RegCleaner are two that I use...

http://www.toniarts.com/index.htm

http://www.jv16.org/

With EasyCLeaner make sure you add Help to the skip dialog box under the Clean registry menu. Read the FAQ in the Toniarts website.
Use the installed Winows defragmenter at least every couple of weeks!

The default Windows XP installation has a lot of resource hungry "bells and whistles" by default, but these slow the OS down.
Right click My Computer|Properties|Advanced. Under Performance click settings, and under Visual Effects untick everything except the following:-
Show Windows content...
Smooth edges of screen fonts
Use drop shadows...
Use visual styles...

This will keep the XP look but get rid of the annoying features such as fade menus etc.

Paul

 

BTW,
JV16 Powertoys has an updated version of RegCleaner so I would recommend this rather than the older RegCleaner v4.3.0.780 . available from the same site.
Be carefull with the other bundled programmes in Powertoys they are powerful but potentially dangerous.

P.

 

First - thanks y'all for the input, yes I'm likely to go ahead and add RAM, no harm done at least.

Daizy, thanks but under ctrl/alt/del in the applications box - NADA
as in zip, zilch, nuffink, no one home.
And under msconfig, nothing I don't know or want in there.

Paul, cleaned out some bells'n'whistles, defragged (first time in months - must do it very 2 weeks!) and downloaded JV16's latest 'regcleaner' and ignored the Powertoys (that scares me even LOOKING at it, no offense Jouni). Regcleaner cleaned out 70-odd files, but I think XP is faster just after the defrag, so who can tell.

So that's it for now.

Thanks again.

Cheers,
Jay

 

Jay,
Glad to see that XP seems to run faster. I still recommend you download EasyCleaner 1.7f as E.C. and JV Power toys registry cleaners compliment each other in finding some alternative useless entries. EasyCleaner also has the useful "Unnecessary files" feature that cleans out a lot of junk and reclaims space.
As mentioned before be sure to add HELP to the skip dialog box in the registry cleaner to ensure full compatability with XP (see FAQ) and don't go near the Duplicate Files option as it's another dangerous one.
A final spring clean/speed tweak (yes there are more but I won't bore you) select search from the Start menu|All Files and Folders and enter "*.old;*.bak;*.tmp;*.gid;*.dmp" (without quotes) in the "All or part of the file name ". Delete everything that Windows allows you to. The usless DUMP files from system crashes can be real space hogs and totally useless except for Microsoft programmers and the like.

Cheers,

Paul

 

Thanks again, got rid of most of those "*.files" but I'm still leery about deleting unknown files....
I've set the defrag for once weekly, and still trying to download that Diskeeper but having troubles. Executive Software and I are working on it.

All for now...

Cheers
Jay

 

RE: video memory - FWIW, 16Mb is the recommended minimum but M$ has always tended to lowball their minimums. 32Mb is lots better and 64Mb won't hurt performance any either.

Also, great idea to get the latest drivers from the mfgr - and especially if you are running ATI or NVIDIA chipsets.

 

Regarding How much Ram? Certainly going to :Start" then clicking on "Run" typing in msconfig in small letters and deleting all not needed programs running in the back ground helps all windows programs.
It will increase system performance and help solve disconnection problems and other small issues.
RAM is a very important problem solver more than most realise, i have 768 Ram and have solved all that i have suffered from.
Get advice on which programs to uncheck in the background so that you don't have alot more to post here. good luck!

 

THE ANSWER !!!

Well folks, I tried evereything else, and in conclusion, I think deleting files/programs to be a desperate move which barely helps the situation.

The ultimate anser - in my case anyway - is to add RAM. I just doubled to 256, and there is a remarkable difference.

So here endeth this topic. XP needs more than the recommended amount of RAM !!

Cheers!

Jay

 

Hi jaysam,
So happy to hear you got it all worked out. I do hope you understood when we asked you to go into msconfig and clear out any unneccessary apps from loading at start up, that it in no way "deletes" the program. It only stops it from running in the background at boot up? As Malinoix has mentioned? Your computer can only thank you for doing it anyhow. Reguardless of how much Ram you have.

Daizy

 

Hi Jaysam:

Don't look for too much improvement, because I think you may be the victim of "BillyGate ".

I think Windows XP is the slowest, most unreliable O/S since "QuickDos ", for those who can remember that far back, and I am not even sure if that is true.

Good Luck and hang in there.