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General discussion

Gutting Windows Xp

Mar 16, 2004 1:52AM PST

I have a Dell Inspiron 3700 laptop, was running Win 98, upgrade to XP. I was told is was easier and quicker. Since then the performance has been down. I done all the upgrades of drivers and what not, that was recomended after the install.

Should i wipe the system and put on xp from scratch??? OR can i just start stripping it down??? If so what are the major performence areas???

Discussion is locked

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Windows Xp (and NT/2000) will be slower than 98.
Mar 16, 2004 2:08AM PST

I've yet to see XP "win" on performance on the same hardware. But I see XP "win" on stability. So that may be the performance that is better. You decide.

To get XP to act a bit more snappy, turn off all that eye candy in the desktop. Knock it down to about what you see in 98/2000 and it will see faster. Even with that and BLACK VIPER's help, without 512M ram, it still may not feel as snappy.

Bob

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Re:Gutting Windows Xp
Apr 11, 2004 3:36PM PDT

Personally, I have never really seen any actual "upgrades" work very well, especially moving from the FAT file system (Win9Cool to NTFS file system (WinXP). I have always been a fan of completely uninstalling (or formatting) and starting from scratch. Even if you only have the upgrade CD, you can always install from it, and it will ask for proof of an earlier version. I have had the best luck doing that. Good Luck!

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Re: Gutting Windows Xp
Apr 11, 2004 6:31PM PDT

I'd agree with "WillyRam," if you can do a complete clean install this will give best performance in the end. If your hard drive is 10 gigabytes or greater (most likely these days) you really should use the NTFS file system, there is no (and never was any) benefit from using FAT32, that is a contradiction in terms. Regarding RAM; if your laptop uses some of the system RAM for the graphics output, 256Mb will just be enough for XP Home, but certainly not sufficient for XP Pro. And, to get the best performance from either, you should not be using an Administrator enabled account all the time. Once you've configured XP just how you like it, create a lowly User Account for normal usage and if you need to tweak settings or install software, either; logoff and then logon as an Administrator, or use RUNAS. Logging on as a lowly User means you won't be running all the security and system overheads an Administrator account needs to access all areas, this alone makes XP appear to run faster. Regards