I'm trying to set up an old PC with XP for one of the kids to occasionally use. The registry test on AVG free shows a few thousand problems. And the computer is insanely slow.
When you do a search for registry cleaners, it feels all sorts of shady. Can anyone recommend a good free registry cleaner/fixer?
CCleaner has a registry fixer portion, nice open source software, I use it on all of my computers.
They also have some other very useful free computer maintenance type software, definitely check them out.
I generally don't recommend those things, they can do more harm than good, and registry problems don't cause much slowdown...if you have the original Windows CD maybe give it a shot and then clean install if it doesn't work.
CCleaner has a nice one I use. I also have had them speed up severely borked computers, too.
I've also used ccleaner over the years, with good results.
That said, none of them fix the inherent Windows problem of filling itself up with trash. The trash is what slows it down. So if this is a old machine, filled with trash, if you've got the oem disks, a clean start will be far better.
It also eliminates accidental surprises of the kids finding things you totally don't remember being there.
It's time for a format and re-install. No cleaner is going to take care of that short of Winston Wolf.
Allow me to be the first to suggest that, if they don't need Windows-specific software, you wipe it and install one of the myriad Linux distros. Ubuntu just released 12.04 LTS (long-term support) this morning.
02Pilot wrote: Allow me to be the first to suggest that, if they don't need Windows-specific software, you wipe it and install one of the myriad Linux distros. Ubuntu just released 12.04 LTS (long-term support) this morning.
Was gonna say this, I'm glad someone else made themselves look like the Linux nut this time 
Ccleaner did seem to help a good bit.
I think I have the Dell/MS disk but it is telling me that it can't do anything because there is a newer version already installed?? So maybe it's not the right disk
The PC has been passed around from the BIL to a "living room" computer for all to pollute, then up in the attic for the past year, and probably won't see much use. But the other day when I first started it up it was taking a good 10 minutes to boot and finish loading all the stupid little programs that were added over the years. By uninstalling almost everything, and using Ccleaner it is down to about 2 minutes. I can live with that.
I was thinking about Linux, but I really don't think that would work well for her.
Hocrest wrote: I was thinking about Linux, but I really don't think that would work well for her.
What would said person use the computer for? Casual web crawling? Word processing?
Ubuntu is perfect for such things.
Yeah, Ubuntu is about as good as it gets for loaner and children's machines: preloaded with everything you need, basically no malware, increasingly simple interface, and free. If they manage to break it, wipe it clean and reinstall from a flash drive.
GameboyRMH wrote:02Pilot wrote: Allow me to be the first to suggest that, if they don't need Windows-specific software, you wipe it and install one of the myriad Linux distros. Ubuntu just released 12.04 LTS (long-term support) this morning.Was gonna say this, I'm glad someone else made themselves look like the Linux nut this time
+5 !! I have been using Ubuntu on a (now) 10 year old laptop since 2007. It boots and is surfing p*rn (I mean the GRM website) before my Vista machine is done booting.
How full is your hard drive? I know you uninstalled stuff, but a file system is slow if it only has room to store fragments of files. I'd suggest taking a look at that, and if it's more than about 3/4 full, look at backing rarely used stuff up to an external and going scorched earth on anything that's useless. I've "saved" many computers this way, including mine.
Another thing that shaves milliseconds off boot times is a good defrag with optimization. I use iolo Smart Defrag, a free program. The first time I run it, I do a deep optimize and just go to bed. Normally, it takes hours, especially if the drive is close to full. It used to be thought that the NTFS file system didn't need to defrag, but I can assure you that it does. Not as much as FAT16 and FAT32, but it still needs it to be done.
I'm assuming this is a desktop. Pop the case open and see how dirty it is inside, especially the heat sink. It it's dirty, use your air compressor regulated down to about 30PSI to clean it out. Don't do this if you have condensation issues with your air gun.
In order of most likely to least likely to make a system slow (IMO, of course):
If all of those things check out, the computer is likely as fast as it will ever be. If you need a slight upgrade, you can look into RAM, but you're probably back to DDR1 or even PC133. If that's the case, the RAM will either have to be second hand (dirt berkeleying cheap) or you'll spend more than a new computer on it. If you can post the specs (hard drive size, amount of data on drive, CPU speed, and RAM amount, we can help determine if an upgrade is a better value than a new computer. If you could use some of the parts I have, I'll send you some, gratis.
The hard drive is about 20 of a 110 gig.
I already cleaned out the dust, it wasn't too bad inside.
The ram is low at 256 mb. How do I ID what kind it is?
It's a dell Dimension 8250, with a Pentium 4, 2.4ghz.
With only 256MB RAM, if you install a Linux distro go with Lubuntu. In fact that's the only modern OS that will run decently on 256MB RAM. That's not even enough for XP to run decently.
Check the manual that came with the PC (or mainboard) to get the RAM type, although finding old RAM will be hard.
+1 on CCleaner if you want to go with a registry cleaner.
GameboyRMH wrote: With only 256MB RAM, if you install a Linux distro go with Lubuntu. In fact that's the only modern OS that will run decently on 256MB RAM. That's not even enough for XP to run decently. Check the manual that came with the PC (or mainboard) to get the RAM type, although finding old RAM will be hard.
Yeah, that RAM is pretty limiting. Lubuntu should work; "A Pentium II or Celeron system with 128 MB of RAM is probably a bottom-line configuration that may yield slow yet usable system with a standard lubuntu desktop." Puppy Linux might also work.
It probably has four slots, with two 128meg chips in. Two more from newegg would be $16, roughly and bump you to 512meg. If you can find denser, you can get up to 2Gig on the board with PC800 memory.
Puppy will run with that low RAM.
Damn Small Linux is another option.
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