Check the UDMA mode that the disk interface is working in, under Control
Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager

If there have been a number of occasional disk errors over a long period of
time it may have reverted to non-DMA operation, and that will make the
computer very slow. An issue here is that there is apparently a disk-error
counter, but is it never reset, so a series of very infrequent errors (which
are of no great significance) can trigger a downgrade of the disk performance.



--------------------------
"This is a wonderful computer. It''s 20yrs old and absolutely reliable.
And, in all that time it''s only had four mobos, six processors, two cases,
seven OS''s ...."


"sweetp5555@yahoo.com" wrote:

> I repair computers for my friends. I receive a lot of computers that
> my friends say are “slow”. It used to be that a cleanup of Spyware and
> startup programs would speed things up. But more often lately this
> does not work. I have had 3 computers in the last month that are slow,
> that is when you press the start button it takes a long time to draw
> the start options and switching between windows is slow, you can
> literality watch the windows being redrawn.
> After re-installing XP on 2 of the computers, things worked fine and
> they were MUCH speedier. This slowness has nothing to do with
> networking, local programs are slow. I am working on a 3rd computer
> now with same issue,
>
> I have checked all of the following and have nothing else left to
> check and I am almost ready to re-install XP again:
> Ad-aware is up to date and runs clean
> Spybot S&D is up to date and runs clean
> Norton AV is up to date and runs clean
> 80 gig HD, 40 gig free
> HD is not fragmented
> Removed all not needed programs out of startup via msconfig
> No errors in error logs
> Scan disk runs clean
> Indexing is off and set to manual
> 256 meg RAM
> (one of the other PCs with same issue only had 256 and after XP re-
> install it was fine)
> XP sp2 installed and up to date on all XP updates
> Only one FW enabled, that is Sygate personal FW
> Pentium 4 CPU
> taskmanger shows CPU is not over worked, 70-90% idle
>
> I am getting tired of re-installing XP to fix this issue, any ideas,
> please HELP!!!
>
> I am suspecting that in these cases maybe the registry has grown too
> big over the years. But I do not trust registry cleaners, I’ve had bad
> luck with them in the past.
>
> Or may rootkits are the issue, aren't they undetectable?
>
> Thanks for any help!!!
>
>