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General discussion

Slow/sluggish performance on Dell Dimension 4700

Nov 26, 2009 11:12PM PST

My father's Dell Dimension 4700 has slowed to a crawl for basic functions like looking at the disk size (40-60+ seconds) and the mere opening of Internet Explorer 7. I've uninstalled unused programs, eliminated a number of unused start-up/background programs via msconfig, checked for spyware (clean) using MS Defender, and defragmented the hard drive, and would very much appreciate suggestions on what else to do. It's got a 2.79 GhZ Pentium processor, 33 GB of disk (of which 11.3 GB is free) and 248MB of RAM.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

Discussion is locked

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RE: Slow/sluggish performance on Dell Dimension 4700
Nov 26, 2009 11:15PM PST

Forgot to mention, the system is running Windows XP Home Edition, with Service Pack 2. Thanks again.

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We have plenty of slow PC discussions.
Nov 27, 2009 12:24AM PST

But here's a few tips.

Go get HIJACKTHIS. Do not do a thing but research each item in the report so YOU know what each item is doing.

A 33GB hard drive sounds old now. You could try performance tests like Everest and then compare the scores to what this machine is getting.

What I find is most owners do not want to fix the machine. If I find a slow hard drive, they want a free fix. Go figure how to cure that.
Bob

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We have plenty of slow PC discussions
Nov 27, 2009 3:52AM PST
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Slow/sluggish performance on Dell Dimension 4700
Nov 27, 2009 4:35AM PST

Have you cleaned all the junk out? Temporary files etc? Here is an excellent tool for this. I wouldn't use the registry cleaner though.
http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/
The hard drive can also be upgraded. I went from an 80gig to a 500gig using Acronis Migrate Easy7. If there are no virus or spyware issues I would put my money on adding more RAM.

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RE: We have plenty of slow PC discussions
Nov 27, 2009 5:49AM PST

Thanks very much for the suggestion about adding RAM. I just purchased and installed 1 GB of RAM and the system has gotten noticeably faster. Seems like that's done the trick for now. The advice is much appreciated as it looks like the problem's solved.