dell windows xp runs super slow?

celligraphy

Hi guys my dell latitude xp runs so slow and it's not over memory I don't think as it's has nothing saved to it like pictures or documents just use it for browsing. Any ideas to speed it up? Thanks

ED E

Windows XP really shouldnt be on the internet anymore (unless you're an IT professional). Time to get a new machine.

celligraphy

No funds for awhile so will have to do with the xp

ct5amr2ig1nfhp

What about upgrading to Win 7/8.1/10?

Or upgrading hard disk to SSD?

Have you defragmented the hard disk? Have you run anti-virus scans/checks?

Run a scan with malwarebytes.org or similar package.

unkel

ED E wrote: »

Windows XP really shouldnt be on the internet anymore (unless you're an IT professional). Time to get a new machine.

+1

And FYP. A pro should be able to fix most problems caused by a Windows XP system being injured on the internet, but they should never advise their customers to keep using XP machines connected.

I disagree with your statement of getting a new machine though. Many / most PCs from the last 5-6 years with a reasonable spec are well able to be upgraded for very little money so that they can run Windows 10 with a free full license.

eqwjewoiujqorj

In the absence of upgrading to a modern os, do a fresh install.

• Back up all your files,and settings.
• Get drivers for your laptop model from dell.
• Install XP and install drivers.
• Install all Windows XP updates then change the registry to get XP POSReady updates - to 2019.
• Get latest firefox browser, install UBlock, NoScript and other security addons. More here

biketard

OP, if you're just using it for browsing, and money's tight, would you consider putting something like Linux Mint on it instead of XP?

ED E

unkel wrote: »

+1

And FYP. A pro should be able to fix most problems caused by a Windows XP system being injured on the internet, but they should never advise their customers to keep using XP machines connected.

I disagree with your statement of getting a new machine though. Many / most PCs from the last 5-6 years with a reasonable spec are well able to be upgraded for very little money so that they can run Windows 10 with a free full license.

Thats if it is only 6yo though, laptop could be anywhere up to 14yrs old. OP could upgrade to 7/10 but chances are they'll have to pay somebody to do so correctly(driver detection is still mediocre) and at that point the economics of putting money into an end of life unit are poor.

Gael23

XP is no longer supported any more. If you absolutely can't afford a new machine you should be able to buy Windows 7 and install it on your current machine.

PropJoe10

I honestly wouldnt use XP on the internet these days as a regular user. Its had no security updates for nearly a year and a half and is well past its sell-by date now.

Firefox and Chrome can still be used on XP but I think Google are ending XP support fairly soon and I'm sure Firefox wont be far behind - once this happens, XP will be completely redundant for using on the Internet.

Maybe consider a Linux distribution such as Lubuntu? It'd be faster and way more secure than XP these days. Slight learning curve but nothing too drastic.

Fysh

I wouldn't use XP anywhere at this point, it's just a bloody liabilty. If there are no funds to upgrade or replace it, consider something like Ubuntu or Mint - personally I like Fedora with XFCE but that's partly because I used to work with Red Hat a lot. Ubuntu and Mint are tied for being the two OSs that I keep hearing happy noises about from people who aren't technically-oriented and don't particularly like tinkering for the sake of it.

I'd suggest trying a LiveCD of either one and seeing how it runs and how you get on with it - if that goes well, consider replacing your XP install with it. Just bear in mind that you won't be able to use your Windows software without setting up something like Wine (which can be quite frustrating at times).

PropJoe10

Fysh wrote: »

I wouldn't use XP anywhere at this point, it's just a bloody liabilty. If there are no funds to upgrade or replace it, consider something like Ubuntu or Mint - personally I like Fedora with XFCE but that's partly because I used to work with Red Hat a lot. Ubuntu and Mint are tied for being the two OSs that I keep hearing happy noises about from people who aren't technically-oriented and don't particularly like tinkering for the sake of it.

I'd suggest trying a LiveCD of either one and seeing how it runs and how you get on with it - if that goes well, consider replacing your XP install with it. Just bear in mind that you won't be able to use your Windows software without setting up something like Wine (which can be quite frustrating at times).

Just wanted to add to this - you wont be able to use your Windows software, but there'll likely be a free alternative to any Windows package you might be using, that will be just as good. Plus, the popular programs like Firefox, Chrome, VLC etc are all available on Linux Mint and Ubuntu with no complications.

Firewalkwithme

I can vouch for Lubuntu as being very effective on a system with limited resources. It's what worked best for me when I stopped using XP for a while before upgrading to a system capable of running 7 well.

Aimead

PropJoe10 wrote: »

Just wanted to add to this - you wont be able to use your Windows software, ….

Not always true. WINE can sometimes do a pretty good job. I’ve gotten a patched MS Office working it. Yes, it can certainly be dicey but it can sometimes really surprise you.

That said though, the software repo’s on distro’s like Mint/Ubuntu are pretty expansive if needed.

Irish Steve

14 replies, and no one has actually made a suggestion on how to resolve the OP's issue.

Have you tried clearing the browser cache, as that can slow things down if it gets to be large.
Has the disc been defragmented recently, that can also slow things down.
How much free space is there on the disc, if it gets below 10%, XP can sometimes get upset with that.
Have you scanned for Malware or Virus activity?
If you don't have an anti virus package running, and a firewall in place, then you are living very dangerously with still using XP, but I think you already know that.

There are a couple of free utilities that will help with this, Ccleaner and Defraggler from Piriform (no connection to that company) will help to achieve most of the above requirements, and Malwarebytes Anti Malware will run on XP and is capable of checking for any nasties that might have got it.

Don't use Internet Explorer on XP any more, it's no longer a safe browser due to the age and lack of updates, Firefox will work on XP at the moment, and is relatively close to IE in terms of operation, and can copy across things like favourites and saved sites.

unkel

Irish Steve wrote: »

14 replies, and no one has actually made a suggestion on how to resolve the OP's issue.

Perhaps because explaining to him that he shouldn't be using Windows XP anymore is better advice than to actually help him speed up his slow PC?

CatInABox

Irish Steve wrote: »

Don't use Internet Explorer on XP any more, it's no longer a safe browser due to the age and lack of updates, Firefox will work on XP at the moment, and is relatively close to IE in terms of operation, and can copy across things like favourites and saved sites.

It's pretty bad advice to tell someone that they shouldn't use Internet Explorer on XP any more, due to it's age and lack of updates, when the entire operating system that person uses is horrifically unsafe, due to it's age and lack of updates.

Irish Steve

I think the OP said NO FUNDS at present.

Horrifically unsafe is somewhat overstated, I am not seeing hundreds of "help my XP machine has been attacked" in the support boards that relate to XP and related operating systems. I have a significant number of machines here that are running everything from XP to Win10, and most flavours between, due to issues with things like driver compatibility on specific hardware, and the need to support some specialist systems, so I am very much aware of the implications of the issues. On occasions, I still use DOS 6 without windows for a couple of specialist tasks related to hardware repair and diagnosis.

There are of course parts of the web that are more vulnerable to compromising software, but I'm not about to tell the OP what sites to avoid, that's their decision. That said, it would not be inappropriate to mention that sites offering free or cracked versions of operating systems and applications are a significant risk of not getting what you were looking for, and getting something far less helpful instead.

There are for sure vulnerabilities in XP, but that problem is not limited to XP, hackers are finding issues in every operating system that's been released by Microsoft, and in other applications like Adobe reader that are used in pretty much every flavour of operating system, so the best way to deal with that is use good real time protection systems that are updated regularly, regardless of which operating system you are using, the use of 8.1 or 10 does not suddenly put a magic carpet boundary around the machine that makes it invisible.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who don't have bottomless pits of money for upgrades to computers, and even if the OP is going to move to a freeware distro of Linux or similar, which may be appropriate, to do that means using the existing machine to download it, so providing guidance on how to make that possible is not unrealistic.

In respect to vulnerabilities, I'd be more worried about the increased loss of control over MY machines that is an unavoidable part of upgrading to Windows 10, I've already had 2 situations where there have been issues with the way that 10 has installed and then run, and in the scale of the number of machines that I've allowed to upgrade, that's worrying, and the loss of real control over what Microsoft can or can not do without my approval is not comfortable. There is also the aspect that the overall size of the operating systems are more and more bloated, the larger the overall package, the easier it is to find points of weakness, and the harder it is for the supplier to really understand how it all interrelates.

unkel

I largely agree with your points, Irish Steve. Personally I had missed the "no funds" bit. There were suggestions about installing light linux systems which is the only safe solution if you have zero funds

Unfortunately, the OP hasn't come back on here to see if he / she would be willing to go the linux way, perhaps with a little help of some of us here

Fysh

Griping that we're being unhelpful is well and good, but back in post 11 I already suggested trying a Live CD of a couple of well-known and reputedly-simple Linux distros the OP could try out to see if they might be a suitable cost-free alternative to him. That in itself has enough relevant terms to lead pretty quickly to useful advice via Google, but if more was desired I'd have happily supplied it were it requested...

Irish Steve, trying to claim that because there haven't yet been reports of the XPocalypse means that somehow it's actually fine to keep using it represents to me a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of security vulnerabilities, how they are exploited and what they are used for. It's a pretty reasonable axiom at this point that the majority of users who have XP on personal, Internet-facing equipment are non-technical (because it's over a year out of support and this was discussed all over the place back before it went out of support). This means we can ignore any "I only boot it when I need this tool" use cases, because realistically those users aren't using XP for any significant amount of time per year. Another axiom is that anyone trying to exploit a security vulnerability on your machine wants to profit from you - either directly by making you part of a botnet which they sell as a resource to others, or by gathering your information to commit fraud against you. In either case, reducing the chances that you'll notice something awry is key, so anyone with weaponised zero-days affecting XP will be keeping quiet about them. For an idea of where to start, you could do worse than check every security update Windows Server 2003 got since XP went out of support, because XP 64-bit was effectively the same kernel as Server 2K3. And that's just for starters.

Since XP is out of support, nobody will be looking for these holes or paying much attention to their potential impact. This is axiomatically the exact reverse of the case with Windows 7 and later releases, and in fact of the situation with any OS that is currently supported by its vendor.

Gaining enough technical understanding to do at least a botched job of securing XP would be, in my estimation, more work than just moving to another supported OS - any OS. Linux isn't that hard to figure out when you can try it on a Live CD/USB stick, and once you have it running you don't usually need to fiddle with it anyway.

On this basis, I maintain the advice given in this thread has been optimal and on-point, and that muddying the water with "sure every OS has vulns" comments doesn't actually help anyone, because it encourages the OP to continue doing something extremely misguided (ie letting XP have full internet access).

Irish Steve

All I can say about the points raised is that through necessity, I was using an XP based machine on the Internet until March, for significant periods of time, and with appropriate protections in place, and it wasn't compromised. There were attempts to compromise it, but they were found, and blocked. That said, I wasn't using Internet Explorer, and there were very regular checks made for any form of Malware or other inappropriate software.

So yes, I accept that XP really is not appropriate for front line use on the Internet at this stage, and the changes being made by software providers in other areas are making continued use of XP even more problematic and dangerous.

Moving on to an alternative OS is a better solution, but I'm also aware that due to the dire situation that some people were placed in by the recession, spending significant money on computing may well not be an option at the moment.

I am also equally unhappy with the direction that Microsoft are forcing users to go in, things like forced updates, regardless of how convenient that may or may not be, is not being user friendly, things like being unable to power a machine off for a significant period of time because it's updating really is not being user responsive, if I need to power down my laptop, I don't expect to have to leave it running for possibly a prolonged period just to facilitate Microsoft. In the same way, a forced reboot can be a very inconvenient imposition, especially if the Internet connection is slow, or even not available for some reason.

I'm going to be looking into possible Linux based alternatives for some work shortly, simply because I'm not prepared to be so dependent on Microsoft going forward, W10 is insisting on doing things in ways that do not suit my choices, and as it's MY computer, not Microsoft's computer, I want to be in control of the decisions about how and when things change, as well as in control of the information that is given to Microsoft. W10 seems to be yet again changing the limits in favour of even more being given to Microsoft, and I'm just not willing to play that game any more.

allthedoyles

This might surprise you all , but there are many Irish businesses still using XP.

Surfing the internet would'nt be high priority ,as most pc's are running software programs vital to each business / email client

ED E

allthedoyles wrote: »

This might surprise you all , but there are many Irish businesses still using XP.

Oh we know, but in corporate environments 99.9% of users have limited perms and will always be behind corporate firewalls and endpoint protection. Apples and oranges compared to granny with her XP laptop receiving emails from a Nigerian prince.

Bayberry

ED E wrote: »

Oh we know, but in corporate environments 99.9% of users have limited perms and will always be behind corporate firewalls and endpoint protection. .

The Irish businesses that are still using XP aren't all running with limited perms and behind corporate firewalls.... The places that can manage to support users with limited perms, and keep firewalls up to date have, for the most part, figured out that the can't afford to keep running XP.

unkel

Was shocked to see today that Ulster Bank is still using XP in their branches

PropJoe10

unkel wrote: »

Was shocked to see today that Ulster Bank is still using XP in their branches

Bank of Ireland do as well, or at least they did the last time I was in there. Doubt if they have a LTS contract from Microsoft either. Very bad business practice.

beauf

http://blog.seattlepi.com/techblog/2014/04/07/dumping-windows-xp-not-an-option-here-are-some-survival-tips/#22248101=0

Reinstalled XP fresh will probably speed it up no end.

Run CCLeaner, uinstall all the apps you don't use. Remove anything you don't need from the startup and services.

I find most old machines are slow because browsers cache a lot of stuff these to the HD, (web sites being very heavy these days) and the HD is old and slow.

unkel

Browser cache into RAM Disk FTW

Bayberry

beauf wrote: »

http://blog.seattlepi.com/techblog/2014/04/07/dumping-windows-xp-not-an-option-here-are-some-survival-tips/#22248101=0

Reinstalled XP fresh will probably speed it up no end.

Run CCLeaner, uinstall all the apps you don't use. Remove anything you don't need from the startup and services.

I find most old machines are slow because browsers cache a lot of stuff these to the HD, (web sites being very heavy these days) and the HD is old and slow.

Run a Limited account. By default, Windows XP sets users up with administrative accounts that let them do anything. To be safe, create a Limited account, which restricts your ability to change the operating system. If you have to install a program, you can switch to the Administrator account. But stay in Limited for daily work, and it will be more difficult for malware to gain a foothold.

This may be the most important piece of advice that should be explained to the non-technical user who (for whatever reason) is still running Windows XP. Unfortunately, unlike installing anti-virus or replacing their default browser, it isn't something that you can just do for them. They have to actually understand why they shouldn't be using an Admin account, and why they need to stop and think before entering the Admin password when they are prompted to.

beauf

unkel wrote: »

Browser cache into RAM Disk FTW

+1

On an old machine they probably may not have the RAM to spare.

Dravokivich

PropJoe10 wrote: »

Bank of Ireland do as well, or at least they did the last time I was in there. Doubt if they have a LTS contract from Microsoft either. Very bad business practice.

Up until 6 years ago they were running nt4.

unkel

beauf wrote: »

On an old machine they probably may not have the RAM to spare.

Aye but even a tiny Ramdisk might make a lot of a difference. I've been browsing for a while and I have about a dozen tabs open and my Ramdisk is only using 100MB atm. Set the Ramdisk to 50MB if you can't spare any more...

unkel

Dravokivich wrote: »

Up until 6 years ago they were running nt4.

Maybe they should invest a bit more in infrastructure and a bit less in salaries?

Dravokivich

unkel wrote: »

Maybe they should invest a bit more in infrastructure and a bit less in salaries?

They also do in house software development. A lot of reason for the delay in moving to xp was due to dependencies in the software that were obsolete. Which will be an issue again moving up from xp. Depending on the changes they've brought since.

Irish Steve

Bank of Ireland IT is an unmitigated disaster, they got rid of all the people that understood their mainframe application, and then as things have had to be changed, just about everything has been grafted on external to the core application, a lot of the time in batch mode, and the result is a dogs breakfast that on occasions does things like show the same transaction on a user statement twice, because the batch update is running, and it hasn't yet worked out that the original transaction and the "new" transaction have to be merged. The functionality of the on line systems has been reduced in a lot of areas compared even to a couple of years ago, supposedly due to the requirements of SEPA, but more likely because they weren't prepared to spend the money required to properly implement SEPA in a real time manner, so much of the new processing is done in a batch manner on the edges of the on line real time systems that are at the core of the operation.

It's only in the last couple of months that they have managed to work out how to get their core business on line package to work with browsers other than Internet Explorer, and move it away from a fixed screen resolution of 800 x 600 (VGA), which went out of use back in the days of the Ark.

Don't ask them to put a unique transaction reference number on a lodgement made through an electronic teller in branch, they can't, so there's now no way to have an absolute audit transaction trail that cross references the slip from the machine with the entry on the statement, despite having had unique reference numbers on paper based lodgements and the statements for a very long time.

There are other equally annoying issues, but hey, Bank of Ireland don't seem to see them as being significant enough to change.

Grade 1 muppets.

And yes, I do know a bit about banking systems, I was working with on line real time banking when the UK changed over to Decimal currency a LONG time ago, and the branches were connected by 1200 Baud dedicated data lines to their computer centre, which was IBM 360 mainframe based.

Aimead

unkel wrote: »

Was shocked to see today that Ulster Bank is still using XP in their branches

You can understand why though. If you have a software suite deployed on a load of machines then an OS replacement becomes a problem. I’ve heard anecdotally of some cases where the original programmers aren’t around anymore (similar to what Irish Steve describes), so when the software doesn’t work on the new OS the technical talent needed to fix it just isn’t there.

---

The (really good) idea of putting Linux on the machine has been floated, but since the machine is pre-UEFI and pre-secureboot it should be easy enough to free up space for a partition and go dual boot. It just means the existing files will be accessible to Linux without needing to do a shed-load of copying, and the computer will still have XP if needed for the occasional XP-specific task.