Defragger

Would it speed up a very slow XP system?

Could do if it's not been defragged for a while. The built in defragger is good enough. In any case, it can't do any harm to defrag the disk.

Most likely, but in conjuction with other tweaks.

Thanks both. It's an old machine with plenty of RAM but recently has become very slow to load. I doubt it's been defragged since new. Have run a full scan with Malwarebytes which was OK. Uninstalled a lot of old progs that are not used followed by a CCleaner file and registry scan.

Apart from running the defragger I'm out of ideas.

Is it slow to run or slow to start-up? If the latter have you checked what programs are trying to run at start-up - msconfig may be of use.

Thanks for that. Have checked msconfig/startup and dumped a number of files in the past.

Will run defragger when I get time to visit the machine owner.

I suggest that you also run CHKLINKS.exe

It certainly cleared out a lot of broken links on my previous XP PC when it had reached a similar slow-loading and running situation; and I still run it occasionally on my more recent ones.

It will probably find several groups quite quickly; and I recommend that you the Stop, Select All and Finish eac group.

Then try to leave it running for an hour or so, to "deep-cleanse" your XP PC (my phrasing).

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I use DEFRAGGLER for disk de-fragmenting, using its "Quick Defrag" option, otherwise it can take hours, especially on an XP or earliier.

You should run a "Dull Defrag" soon after, followed by occasional runs, say weekly to monthly.

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Coffee Breaks and Meals are handy times to do such Housekeeping.

CCleaner

Disable all processes not needed

Disable all services not needed

Tweak all services that can be (from auto to manual or appropriate) - NB check and double check via Black Viper or similar.

(PM me on processes / services if you like)

Set swapfile to a fixed minimum of appropriate size (I'm on Vista, so forget the best settings for XP). No maximum. Let XP manage that as required.

Delete as much carp off the system as possible and ideally get no more than 50% of C: in use. Look in places such as mail deleted folder, mail sent folder and other mail folders for opportunities to delete stuff, especially e-mails with attachments.

Clean out the system restore points, and set a maximum disk space for it, so that 4-6 restores are recycled. Anything more is probably a waste of space.

Un-install everything (which is obsolete, expired trials, never used).

Shift game installations to another drive if possible (best to un-install and re-install)

Zip up any files in mydox not accessed in the past year (deleting the original afterwards of course).

Remove fancy or large imagery from the desktop (convert big images to desktop size and save as smaller format/quality), and reduce the icons on the desktop. Get rid of pop-up taskbars which are rarely used, and add the used icons to the main taskbar (e.g Office start bar).

Ensure recycle bin size is set to a realistic size to free up disk space.

Disable Windows indexing

Disable or tweak scheduled tasks, such as Windows update (and another updates, such as Adobe, java etc), Anti-virus scans, defrag.

If using 3rd party AV and firewall, consider disabling Windows AV / firewall.

Lastly, Defraggler.

That ought to work.

In reply to a post by eckiedoo:

You should run a "Dull Defrag" soon after, followed by occasional runs, say weekly to monthly.

Is that for boring geeks? or used on grey winter days?

Ach, ah mean't tae say "Dreich"!