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Thread ID: 55790 2005-03-19 19:43:00 Painfully slow laptop jcr1 (893) Press F1
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335836 2005-03-19 19:43:00 I have a HP ze4520ap, 2.4 celeron, 256 mb ram, running XP Pro.

It is so slow it's a proper pain. I run nortons (updated all the time), same for adaware - they show the system as clean.

I notice from System Properties, in Control Panel, that 192mb of ram are allocated, which means, I believe that 64 mb are allocated to graphics. Apparently this can be throttled back from within the Bios? I wonder if this is true, if I cut it back to 32mb, whether this would make much difference?
There are probably implications.
I do all the other stuff; defrag etc.

I am seriously contemplating a clean install. But that is a decision I take "not lightly".
jcr1 (893)
335837 2005-03-19 19:57:00 Hmmm... this might be due to RAM shortage, try installing FreeRAM XP pro (www.download.com) , it can tell you real-time CPU usage, RAM usage and virtual memory usage. How old is your Intel Celeron laptop? Another reason to your laptop lagging is that you are running too many programs at the sametime. Go to STart > Run > type in "services.msc" (without the quotation mark) and press enter. Disable the services that you don't require. Good luck! Renmoo (66)
335838 2005-03-19 20:32:00 How old is your Intel Celeron laptop?


Thanks James. I bought it brand new in October 2003; so it's not that old.

But it runs like a dog compared to my 1.6 intel machine, which also runs XP Pro.

I'll try those suggestions of yours.
jcr1 (893)
335839 2005-03-19 22:13:00 Do remember to post back your findings. Renmoo (66)
335840 2005-03-19 22:23:00 If it's a laptop, does it have some sort of battery saving CPU speed setting? Are you running it on mains power? PaulD (232)
335841 2005-03-19 22:32:00 another 256 Mb SODIMM ram should only cost about $100 and could quite possibly improve performance markedly KatiMike (242)
335842 2005-03-19 23:02:00 I have a similar model, and upgraded to 512 MB, but for most applications the difference was not noticeable.

It runs fine, therefore something must be amiss in your case. Can we assume that it used to run OK?
godfather (25)
335843 2005-03-20 00:02:00 It runs fine, therefore something must be amiss in your case. Can we assume that it used to run OK?

Not really, I've always been a bit disappointed in its performance.
But I've put up with it as I have another machine which I use mainly.
jcr1 (893)
335844 2005-03-20 00:38:00 maybe its time for that yearly format, back up and format the beast :thumbs: that will clean out all the junk Prescott (11)
335845 2005-03-20 00:53:00 firstly has it always been slow?

if so format/reinstall will most likly not make it better .

you really need to find whats making it slow, ie running to many programs at once, running to many unneeded services, slow hardrive, speed controll slowing CPU down .

also what cpu is the other pc? the laptop is a celeron which do run very slow .
tweak'e (69)
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