Computer Freaks

[Simon Pieman]

I know - so do I  

[magicroundabout]

Ok mate, apart from some active x controls that you might want to delete, you largely look ok. It also seems like you have a seperate graphics card which looks good. What hard drive do you have and how full is this (right click the c: in my computer and select properties to find out). It might be worth a defrag if you haven't already done so. When is your pc slow (playing games, upon startup, or just in general)?

ok cheers. Which Active X controls should i get rid of??

my C: drive is 40gig and has about 16gig remaining. did a de-frag on it last week. I also have an external harddrive (not sure if this matters?)

it might be my graphics card as a while back i rolled it back to an older version as (for some reason) Limewire doesn't like the new graphics driver and therfore wont open properly. All limewire support says is roll it back to a previous version.

When my machine is slow is when i'm sub-closing programmes etc. The shortcuts on my desktop dissapear for about 10 seconds and then slowly 1 by 1 they reapear. it's annoying.

Also with the intergrated graphics. is just dissabling enough?
As on my mates PC he had on board graphics and when he installed a new graphics card his on board dissapeared from his Device Manager/Display adapters. Where as mine is still there (just with a red X through it)
When i'm home i shall upload a picture to show you what i mean.

[Batch]

Firstly you have a P4 2.8Ghz with 1Gig of RAM should be more than fine for everyday surfing, IPOD/music managing, word processing and so forth and more. No point in upgrading yet!

IIRC, the Dell 2400 has on-board(integrated) graphics. This may struggle with recent graphic intensive games/mass photoshop work. But if you don't do this there shouldn't be a problem. FYI: I may be wrong but I don't think there is an AGP port to plug a new graphics card in anyway. you could go PCI, but a better performing AGP card which would be a mobo upgrade or new PC.

The 'slowness' (icons,etc) to me doesn't seem to indicate this is a graphics card problem as such, unless it isn't working properly. We'll wait and look at your screenshot.

Best guesses:

1. Your PC is filled with 'crap' (spyware, etc) which is slowing it down. This seems to be discounted due to the above.
2. Your PC is not configured correctly (device driver error/ conflict)
3. Something else, probably Windows getting into 'a mess' which may or may not be resolvable by someone who knows what they are doing with Windows (I don't).

Before upgrade as a last result you could try trashing your PC by wiping everything and reinstalling (assuming you have the required disks). This is a major pain, normally I forget that I needed *something* that I just wiped out -  a serial Key, a link to where to get a program,  etc, etc.

[magicroundabout]

so all i'd need to format it is my XP disk and anyother programmes i want to keep etc.

burn them onto CD's before formating??

[magicroundabout]

p.s. will i need to format my external Harddrive also?

[Batch]

I'd only do this as a last result, i.e. when you are so fed up you are going to chuck it out anyway so have nothing to lose.


Let others try and get it sorted first! You may get away with upgrading a driver or reparing Windows


However, you only need to copy anything you need to keep from the XP disk. The external disk can be unplugged.

Keeping programmes. Generally they install all sorts of info in all kinds of places. So really you need to keep the install program in order to reinstall it on the PC from scratch.

[magicroundabout]

i have a feeling i've fucked up my pc myself

A while ago i tried upgrading my XP Home to XP Pro.
it didn't work so had to reinstall XP Home without formatting the C: drive.
I've just been told my XP has probably overlayed it's self onto the previous version and could be screwed so therefore not running my pc at it's best.