A newer laptop for under $300 will soon be slower than your computer. If you
are going to spring for a new one, get something that brings a bit of
pleasure with it.

"Bill Bowden" wrote in message
...
On Jan 21, 9:21 am, "Ken Blake, MVP"
wrote:
On Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:47:16 -0800 (PST), Bill Bowden



wrote:
Trying to improve performance of WinXP Home system running on a
900mHz, 128 Meg, 20 gig drive system.

The system runs slow and requires 35 seconds to open the FireFox
WebBrowser. The page file (virtual memory) is about 250 Megs.
Sometimes, I get a message the page file is too small.

The disk has been defragmented with good apparent results, however I'm
having trouble with the disk cleanup utility and not sure what can be
safely deleted.

The cleanup report indicates the following:

Downloaded Program files - 664KB
Temporary Internet files - 43K
Recycle Bin - 5076 KB
Setup Log Files - 1250 KB
Temporary Files - 37466 KB
WebClient/Publisher Temp Files - 36K
Compress Old Files - 2227 KB

Can I safely delete all these files to improve performance?

Some of those can be deleted (temporary files, for example). Deleting
others (recycle bin, for example) has built-in danger. But most
important, deleting files will save you disk space, but will *not*
improve performance.

What else can be done to speed things up?

The single most important thing you *need* to do is add RAM. 128MB is
insufficient for good performance for just about everyone. How much
you need depends on what apps you run, but 256MB is the minimum
anybody needs.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

Thanks to everyone for the advice. Yes, I suspected the RAM was low,
but not sure this machine is worth upgrading with a slow processor.
I'm looking at newer model laptops for under $300 as possible
upgrades. This desktop machine was destined for the recycle bin a
couple years ago, and I took it home as a gift. It was setup by a IT
service company for low budget use. The customers subsequently bought
new machines and threw this one out. They also gave me another P2
machine, 250MHz, with WinXp and unknown RAM, that takes 5 minutes just
to boot-up. They told me not to worry if the screen went blank for
several minutes, as it would eventually start running.

-Bill