The case of the MADDENING slow P3

[Zulu-1]

Hey all... I guess i haven't posted here for a while, but RL and an addiction to BF2 has limited my posting.

Oh and did i mention its my birthday tommorrow?

Here's the problem, my parents have an IBM P3 that's really slow. It's not spyware or anything... its just all the time, even when it's booting windows. The hard drive light goes on like it's loading, but it only spins every once and a while. It takes about 5 minutes to boot and about 10 minutes to log in.

It's an IBM P3 733mhz
40gig hard drive
256 of ram
and xp pro...

thanks in advance for all your answers!

 

[K15]

Hard drive only spins every once in awhile? You mean, it runs, loads some stuff, then the hard drive turns off? Then spins back on in a little while?
If so, sounds like the hard drive is going. It's not an IBM drive by chance is it?
If it just takes forever loading but the hard drive is spinning properly, probably a windows problem.

 

[dkim086]

hm...there's alot of possibilities:

1. Might be that there's very little hard drive space left, like 10MB-200MB left.
2. Install another 256mb stick or higher of ram and you'll notice a huge performance difference especially on older systems.
4. It can be a virus.

 

[Mooyo]

I second the ram increase, XP always tends to go slow on 256 megs of ram. At least from what I've seen.

 

[shellshock]

yep, its slow because of the lack of ram. I cant stand to work on a computer with 256megs of ram. its soo slow. shove another 256 or even 512 stick in. and it will be nice and speedy

 

[Zulu-1]

no no its not the ram
it used to run fine, but then one day it started doing this
the hard drive LED light is on, but it only reads every once and a while, making it take really long to load
it not a virus or spam... i checked...
thanks all, your suggestions are appreciated

 

[ghettocomp]

Having had the same sort of problems before I would suggest to get the hard drive utilitys for that drive and check check it out, I strongly suspect that it is about to go. If you dont have anything on the hard drive that you wont mind losing, just completely wipe and format, then reload the OS and see if that does not make it feel bettter for the time being.

If nothing else, just make sure the hard drive is defraged, sometimes the 'rents will just shut off the computer without the proper shut down procedures and stuff a drive with tons of lost files. a quick disk check will tell.

 

[godofgorks]

My vote goes for the hard drive. I'm thinking that either it's going out or it's just very fragmented, or both.

To those voting ram: Yes XP pro on 256mb will be slow, but not THAT slow so it's something else. I've ran xp pro on 258mb for a good while and only needed to upgrade because I put a tv tuner on that machine.

 

[demortey]

cleanup your harddrive if you're low on space, do a chkdsk and defrag, and if its still the same you prolly need to grab a new harddrive. before the harddrive, try swapping IDE cables...that MIGHT be the problem...unlikely, but worth a shot before buying a new drive. XP should run fine on that system. i have a p2 350 o/c'd to 416 with 256 and it runs XP alright. its a little sluggish but its quite useable.

 

[Zulu-1]

thanks all, i shall try all this stuff when i get back from church today
and w00t i got the tragically hip boxset for my B-day!