Computer is terminally slow.

[Shaun]

Check that the page file is big enough and that the system disk is not full. My C: drive was filled up by iTunes music a few weeks ago, by accident, and the PC dropped to an absolute crawl until I freed some space.

If it's not already, set it to System Managed (may need a reboot).

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[Globalti]

Thanks everyone! Plenty to be going at here!

 

[ian turner]

Except that given your pc has none of the proper motherboard drivers installed it's probably that which is causing it to crawl.
The pagefile size will default either to system managed or 150% the size of RAM when a fresh install is carried out.
How much RAM is installed in the PC ? 512MB would be the minimum to run XP with SP2 at a reasonable speed.
Problem with checking the system task manager is that the default columns don't indicate whether something is hogging the harddrive. Select processes, click view->select columns and add I/O Writes and I/O Reads. If the harddrive is being hogged by one process then it amy appear that nothing is happening when processes are competing for disk access.
I'd try something like http://www.driverguidetoolkit.com/ and see if it lists any drivers you need as I still rate that as the most likely source of your problem.
Nice to see folks are sticking to the usual tendency of repeating suggestions already made.

 

[Globalti]

Except that given your pc has none of the proper motherboard drivers installed it's probably that which is causing it to crawl.
The pagefile size will default either to system managed or 150% the size of RAM when a fresh install is carried out.
How much RAM is installed in the PC ? 512MB would be the minimum to run XP with SP2 at a reasonable speed.
Problem with checking the system task manager is that the default columns don't indicate whether something is hogging the harddrive. Select processes, click view->select columns and add I/O Writes and I/O Reads. If the harddrive is being hogged by one process then it amy appear that nothing is happening when processes are competing for disk access.
I'd try something like http://www.driverguidetoolkit.com/ and see if it lists any drivers you need as I still rate that as the most likely source of your problem.
Nice to see folks are sticking to the usual tendency of repeating suggestions already made.

Thanks again. Our office IT bloke has agreed to take it home this weekend and I have offered to copy all your suggestions out for him.

 

[Globalti]

Well the verdict was that the computer was clogged up with "orphan" bits of software whose "parents" had naffed off and left them there, if that means anything to you. Also the hard drive was in desperate need of a defrag, which took several hours.

Will plug it in at home and see how it goes but he says it's massively faster.

 

[HaloJ]

If it's got 512Mb of memory there is also a problem caused by microsoft update. An annoying issue where the update system eats so much memory that the system pages itself to death becoming almost unusable. You can test this by stopping the automatic update service. If it speeds up then temporarily disable the Microsoft Update section of windows update by doing the following :

Open IE (only) to Microsoft Update website | Click on Change Settings in left-hand menu | Scroll to bottom of page | To Stop Using Microsoft Update | Disable Microsoft Update software and let me use Windows Update only (check this option)

For more information on the 512Mb Microsoft Update system crippler (which I've seen on half of our machines in the office) visit here :
http://social.answers.microsoft.com...9a9a03b/#44e80262-9a91-4ddb-9770-63810962cb8c

Apparently Microsoft are working on a fix but this has been on going for a few weeks now.

Abs

 

[ian turner]

Dubious that it would need a defrag and be filled with orphaned software links if it had been recently reinstalled by a computer shop of ill repute