System resources

hi guys n gals,have a question or two for you.

my uncle has a pc with the following sig: amd duron 850mhz,512 ram sdr,10 gig h/d,cd wr,nvidia mx 440,running on a 17 inch monitor at 1280x1024.win 98 (not se )??

on using his system we are finding that system resources are running at 35%.
i had a quick look at the start up menu to find 18(i think+/-) processes running these being,norton system works 2003,lex printer,live update,antivirus+clean sweep and other software ie kazaa,realplayer ect.

i have shut most of them down but am finding it vary hard to get anyware near 50%,i have my system see sig: running at 84% off the net and 80% browsing and it hits a low 47% when using a p2p but thats to be expected.

now he wishes to do a format to get his system back with a decent heart beat,but i want to tweak it back up in stead.As he has spent alot of time setting things up+his duaghter gos flat out on p2p?

what can be done without reformating to get this system back up and running like its on viagra for him.

im an averrage tweaker but would appriciate some o/cers input

remeber at the end of hte day it gets dark!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The following article may be of some help to you...

System Resources FAQ

IMHO your uncle had the right idea. You can spend alot of time tweaking and problem solving or you can spend your time organizing how you back up your files. Once you get a good system down and do it a few times its amazing how easy it is to do a rebuild and get back up and running. Since I see that your uncle has norton system works on it (which comes with norton ghost) its even easier to get back up and running again(after building the image off of a clean install of course).

has he upgraded his RAM recently? i've found that you can actually have too much RAM under windows 98... i know this sounds a$$ backwards, but see if taking out some RAM improves his performance. also try running the norton systemworks disk cleanup and "one button checkup"... hope this helps. good luck.