Old Computer Runs Slow but has Nothing On It?

[microzee]

Hey everyone! I've got an old computer, dell dimension 2400, which has pretty much nothing on it(as i just wiped it). Anyways i was expecting it to run a bit faster, but surprisingly it seems to run just as slow. The one thing i noticed, is when it starts running slow, the hard-drive grinds a lot as with many computers. Is this just because its reading/writing to the windows pagefile?

It currently has 1GB ram, and stock celeron processor. i actually just bought a pentium 4 3Ghz processor for it, only because it was 15 bucks i know it probably wasn't worth it, but i do plan on selling this old thing for atleast 75, so i can say processor has best one you can get for it.

Anyways, next question. would getting a faster rpm hard-drive help at all? I've heard that it really doesn't help with speed, but the grinding is killing me.. I do plan on maxing out the ram to 2GB as well.

And last question, can i buy a better gpu for this? i know its got the integrated crap intel one in it, but could i get a cheapo one that would still be a lot better? suggestions?

 

[jmacavali]

What OS did you put on it?

 

[microzee]

Oh just good ol' windows xp thanks for the quick response!

with sp3 and all updates

 

[DogSong]

Do this. Put win. 7 on it and upgrade the RAM. Problem solved

 

[microzee]

Wait your saying windows 7 will run better on a 6 year old computer than windows xp? That doesn't sound right... And also I can only upgrade to 2GB which isn't that much.. I guess I could buy a 2GB thumb drive and use the ready boost option. What exactly does that do though?

 

[Celegorm]

Wait your saying windows 7 will run better on a 6 year old computer than windows xp? That doesn't sound right...

And it isn't. Performance wise, Xp is your best choice for that assuming you don't go to linux.

RPM does make a difference in terms loading of speed. Part of me is wondering if it is so slow just because the hard drive in there is old and the mechanics are wearing out. You could go out and get Seatools and have it run tests to see how healthy that drive really is.

In terms of a video card, it's almost always impossible to upgrade on a laptop. I've worked with a few exceptions in the past where it was an addon card, but those were all upper-level workstation replacement units. I doubt this laptop will allow you to change the GPU.

 

[microzee]

If I didn't mention, this is a desktop. Thanks for your input, I think I might buy a new HD anyways with more space. My current one is, however, 75GB

 

[jmacavali]

If you are going to be trying to sell it, then you better factor in the cost of the HDD. I really wouldn't want to upgrade anything and end up with a P4 with 2GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive and then not be able to sell it for the cost I put into it.

However, XPSP3 on 1GB of RAM isn't going to be overly speeding anyway. Also it depends on what you are comparing it to. Time the boot up and then the way I like to test speed is to right click My Computer>Properties and see how long it take to display the system info (where it shows the processor and RAM amounts). The first thing I would do is put in the extra GB of ram and see how that improves it.

Any AV running? Anything else running in the background that might slow it down?

 

[setishock]

http://www.computerforums.org/forums/cyber-safety-computer-security/pc-cleanup-toolbox-219988.html

Run the tool box on it and see if that helps. Besides the hardware being slow cleaning up the software side of the systems helps.

 

[microzee]

Like I said I just wiped this, so I don't need to run any sort of clean ups. The only thing running in the background is an av.