Windows XP

[vartican]

heh ive been running xp for well over a year now on a p4 2.4ghz 256mb ram , it doesnt really seem to slow down for me but then again theres times when it seems to get constipated and not want to do anything :lol:

[Wytter]

Well, you can always make your linux system slower by enabling all extra beautifications etc. - that might make it easier for you to use Windows XP

[obionek]

try to compare KDE with windows XP shell (run them on the same machine)... and then we can talk about things crawling. Leeloo no offense but, next time simply say "I need 8ghz to get Windows XP running fast" and there will be no problem

[Leeloo]

I have XP on celeron 1,3G with 128 mb ram and it is fast. With fast i mean that it loads up in like 10-15 seconds on start of computer and when you click some program it starts instantly. It also runs winamp, EL, internet explorer and word at the same time with no problem. On the other side my roomate on a similar computer has his XP so slow that i start to flip when i try to do something there but he is used to it When you click like internet explorer it takes like 7 seconds to show up , mine is up in half a second. The difference is that my copy of XP is pretty fresh but he has his on for ages now. What slows it down are viruses and the software you keep installing. The roomate has his Tray full of some crappy programs but i keep it at minimum and only install what i need and when i start the puter i close everything i wont be needing. But it also seems that no matter what you do, with time XP slows down anyway.. Im not a 'fan' of XP but it works for me and this is how i keep it fast enough.

No viruses (online-scanned a few days ago), no antivirus to slow it down, two icons in the tray, one being the one Outlook keeps putting down there, although it is already in the taskbar, the other is MSN Messenger. The software I install are mostly the stuff that I need to have installed for work, except for Gimp.

 

How can installing something slow it down anyhow? I install all kinds of stuff on my home machine, and none of it slows it down. Running it may do, but not installing it.

 

I know that XP (or any version of Windows after 3.11) slows down with time, but even after reinstalling, it's still too slow to work with.

[Leeloo]

try to compare KDE with windows XP shell (run them on the same machine)... and then we can talk about things crawling. Leeloo no offense but, next time simply say "I need 8ghz to get Windows XP running fast" and there will be no problem

If by "fast" you mean "fast enough to keep up with the keyboard, and not losing key-presses", ok. Or in other words, fast enough to get any work done.

[AuricRal]

leeloo... were u trying to get help to make xp faster or were u just flaming it?

if u need a guide i can find one...

[obionek]

If by "fast" you mean "fast enough to keep up with the keyboard, and not losing key-presses", ok. Or in other words, fast enough to get any work done.

I am not using my PC just for fun...

octave, cupl, C-compilers, UVision and similar stuff.. thats what i am using everyday, windows makes them run fast and stable. I am using gentoo also but i have growen out from "windows is so stupid, use linux","windows is lame"... thats a bit lame to me now every OS has its advatages and disad. but ihmo you cant tell that windows XP isn't

"fast enough to get any work done"

If it ould be this way then why so many people is using it at work ?

[SirKillAlot]

I have wME and 63mb ram and I can play EL (when nazi isn't on), listen to music, talk on saosin forum, talk on aim and msn at the same time. I must be leet.

[Leeloo]

leeloo... were u trying to get help to make xp faster or were u just flaming it?

if u need a guide i can find one...

If it can really be made to work that fast, I want to know how. But until I see proof, I don't believe it, you migh consider that flaming.

[Leeloo]

but ihmo you cant tell that windows XP isn't

"fast enough to get any work done"

If it ould be this way then why so many people is using it at work ?

Probably for the same reason that I am... Boss says so. I try to not care about wasting a lot of time waiting for it, but I still get irritated every time I need to stop what I'm doing, just to go back and correct something, because XP couldn't keep up with the keyboard.

[Malaclypse]

I had similar experience like Leeloo during my last job. We had windows machines there ranging from small clients with 512meg of ram to a few large server with 8 xeon cpus and 16gig of ram. But windows is always going slower and slower over time. Even if no more applications are installed, and therefore the registry didn't become abused by constant changing applications.

 

And compared to linux, I did made the experience that even with such a large desktop like kde, it runs much smoother than xp (assumed I do the same things, and have simiar apps running).

 

One way I have found to make xp and 2000 a bit faster is turning off your swap space if you have enough ram (enough for xp/2k to work without swap is imo at least 1gig). Windows has a tendency to first use as much as possible swap, and once it ran out of swap it uses ram. If you don't believe me, watch your taskmanagers memory tab for a while. Look at it some times during your daily work and keep an eye on how the different memory resources are used. I noticed that I had always lots of free physical memory, while swap gets more and more used up.

[Leeloo]

One way I have found to make xp and 2000 a bit faster is turning off your swap space if you have enough ram (enough for xp/2k to work without swap is imo at least 1gig). Windows has a tendency to first use as much as possible swap, and once it ran out of swap it uses ram. If you don't believe me, watch your taskmanagers memory tab for a while.

LMAO, That would explain a few things

 

Unfortunately, I have some pretty heavy processes running from time to time, so I can't really turn swap off. Not unless I'm willing to turn it on and off depending on when I need it.

[goatsgomoo]

Go to Start > Control Panel.

If your control panel has a blue background and 9 large icons, click on Performance and Maintenence, then double click System. If it has 35 small icons, Just double click System. Go to the Advanced tab, then click on the Performance button. Then, click on Adjust for Best Performance, then click on the Advanced tab. At the bottom, click on the Change button in the Virtual Memory section. Next, click on Custom Amount, then increase both numbers, and click Change. Then just OK out of all the windows.

[Paladin]

I'm sure Bill Gates's ambition is to know the last digit of Pi, e or some other trans-whatevertheyarecalled number, so MS programed XP to compute this and then log on the net and transmit the results.

 

I don't think the problem is just with XP, but with all the other programs that run on it. Must be a conspiracy between software and hardware developers. (i am half-serious)

[goatsgomoo]

Paladin, it's just the software developers. A Linux machine using the same hardware as a Windows machine runs much better than a Windows machine, right? It's Windows. They focus more on packing as many useless features in Windows as possible instead of building a stable OS.

[Leeloo]

At the bottom, click on the Change button in the Virtual Memory section. Next, click on Custom Amount, then increase both numbers, and click Change. Then just OK out of all the windows.

Increase? Malaclypse recommended to turn off swap, and you tell me to increase it. Besides, they are already 1140 and 2280.

[Placid]

Paladin, it's just the software developers. A Linux machine using the same hardware as a Windows machine runs much better than a Windows machine, right? It's Windows. They focus more on packing as many useless features in Windows as possible instead of building a stable OS.

AMD64, 3000+ (1.8GHz),

512MB RAM,

Geforce 440 Go (64MB)

 

Windows XP Home: runs like a one legged dog.

 

Gentoo 2003.2: runs like a panther on cocaine

 

Reason?

 

XP is a sucky operating system used to cater for a huge array of hardware and set-ups.

 

Gentoo is deliberately optimised for the hardware you give it (i.e. CFlags and the need to compile everything).

 

Basically GGM, your right.

 

[EDIT: Leeloo hilariously proved me wrong ]

Edited January 24, 2005 by Placid

[Leeloo]

Windows XP Home: runs like a two legged dog.

I actually saw a two-legged dog running on TV once. It had lost both right (or left) legs in an accident, but learned to run again. It was not slow, you do need quite a bit of speed to keep your balance like that. A bit like riding a bike I guess, if you stop without putting your feet down, you don't keep balance for more than a few seconds.

 

I don't think they showed how he got started though, if he could get up by himself, or needed help.

[Placid]

Windows XP Home: runs like a two legged dog.

I actually saw a two-legged dog running on TV once. It had lost both right (or left) legs in an accident, but learned to run again. It was not slow, you do need quite a bit of speed to keep your balance like that. A bit like riding a bike I guess, if you stop without putting your feet down, you don't keep balance for more than a few seconds.

 

I don't think they showed how he got started though, if he could get up by himself, or needed help.

lmao!

 

I cant believe you just proved me wrong

 

[Above post edited]

[crusadingknight]

At the bottom, click on the Change button in the Virtual Memory section. Next, click on Custom Amount, then increase both numbers, and click Change. Then just OK out of all the windows.

WTF would you want to slow down the CPU for GGM....? The rule of thumnb for windows is the opposite of linux... linux, you want as much swap as RAM, at least; on windows, as much swap as RAM, at most.

[Grum]

I don't know what the difference between linux' and windows' swap algorithms are, but if you're using more swap space than you have physical memory on either OS, you're doing something very wrong.

[kl4Uz]

*lol* don't talk crap...

Smeg you too. Why is it that some people claim that they can get XP to run so damn fast, but NOONE can explain how to actually do it, or even show me a machine that actually does run fast?

 

Ok, how about changing it to this? XP needs at least an 8 GHz processor to run at a reasonable speed, unless you know the super secret trick to get it to run faster on todays hardware.

why is it, that users always blame their machine?

Already tried defrag and scandisc?

[Kenneth916]

At the bottom, click on the Change button in the Virtual Memory section. Next, click on Custom Amount, then increase both numbers, and click Change. Then just OK out of all the windows.

WTF would you want to slow down the CPU for GGM....? The rule of thumnb for windows is the opposite of linux... linux, you want as much swap as RAM, at least; on windows, as much swap as RAM, at most.

I work in a help desk supporting over 10k users on Win2k and WinXP.

 

The disabling of the startup programs you don't need... I agree that will help a lot...

 

Frequent scandisks and defrags, absolutely.

 

I would normally allow Windows to manage it's own virtual memory, but for a performance boost you can set both the min and max VM to the same number and I prefer to place it on a second hard drive, Ideally on a seperate buss.

 

Windows takes a lot of time when it tries to reallocate the size of the VM.

 

Unfortunately with all Windows OS's performance will decrease overtime... It is a phenomenon called OS decay and is actually touched on by the MCSE tests. My understanding of it is kind of limited, but if I understand correctly it has a lot to do with a convoluted registry.

 

From what I've experienced you cannot really stop it... only slow down the decay...

 

For spyware problems, I recommend Spybot S&D (you can get it from Download.com for free). I've had good success with it.

 

I have never had a computer where any version of windows felt as fast as any flavor of Linux on the same hardware.

 

I hope that some of this helps someone...

[Leeloo]

At the bottom, click on the Change button in the Virtual Memory section. Next, click on Custom Amount, then increase both numbers, and click Change. Then just OK out of all the windows.

WTF would you want to slow down the CPU for GGM....? The rule of thumnb for windows is the opposite of linux... linux, you want as much swap as RAM, at least; on windows, as much swap as RAM, at most.

Actually, the rule for Linux is swap = total need - RAM, unless you're running certain versions that had problems with memory management, and allocated swap for everything that weren't swapped out.

 

So, if you need 128 MB, and have 64 MB RAM, 64 MB swap should do. If you only have 32 MB RAM, you need 92 MB swap.

 

Usually you want max 2*RAM, simply because otherwise it gets too slow (buy more RAM instead), but for certain kinds of loads (big processes, small working sets), you can have much more swap without problems.

[Wytter]

Currently I have 1GB memory and 512MB swap. I could really just skip the swap file and use ramfs to create a small swap-file in memory (increases performance, rather than having no swap at all).