So, this might be a stupid question but to be honest it's just not something I've ever really done! Out side of the usual defrag/cookies et al, what can be done to speed up a machine that's not been formatted for 8 years? Any ideas folks?
cc Cleaner defrag all drives. uninstall crap you dont need so you have a decent size chunk of HDD space disable uneeded startup items such as adobe update, nero drive check etc etc (msconfig) use a low footprint AV run anti-malware and virus scans (you never know) run XP on best for performance (looks like windows 95 !)
avg (free) is a good av. spybot search and distrony. good to spyware malwarebytes is great to malware and virus. run and remove I don't keep this on my pc just use it to check if I'm given a pc or repairing it. if you can get yourself a copy on avg pc tuneup (not the freebe) its a great program that will remove lots of stuff thats not needed (temp files) if you can search temp in the search and make sure you have all files selected and hiden files and all that and delete it all.
+1 for CCleaner MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) is a very lightweight AV and integrates well with Windows.
Since no one else has mentioned it. Increasing the page filing might also help or at least setting the minimum to the same value as the maximum. Also dont setup pagefiling on the same HDD as your windows installation. I dont know your PC specs so results may vary Hes a guide for multiple tweaks you can do for better performance: XP Tweaks
I've used XP for years before finally making the switch to Win 7, after 8 years the amount of junk left in there just can't all be cleaned. They'll be registry settings and other crap left behind by stuff uninstalled etc etc, not worth the effort since you wont see much change imo.
This. Use the start up feature in CCleaner and using Bleepingcomputer work out what you do and don't need to start up. You'll find there is a lot of shite that you really don't need to start up.
On the defrag issue, I've tried 'em all and O&O is the most comprehensive by far. Use the free trial and see what you think. I'd also recommend Auslogic Registry Cleaner, again more comprehensive than that in ccleaner. Lastly, run msconfig.exe and manually check each item that loads at startup and every service. That could speed things up no end.
I think XP is getting quite slow with the years. At least mine today is running quite slow and this is mainly when I open sevral browser and do not close them during the whole day. To speed it up a bit I could recommend going through your list with Windows services. There are a lot that could be stopped. There are some tips about this on the Internet.
