11-30-2007, 02:18 AM
She likely has many things trying to autoload at once upon startup. Cleaning that up will probably show a huge increase in speed.
Start the machine in Safe Mode (press F8...or rather 'tap it' about once every second...upon starting the computer - if you press and hold onto it the whole time, the BIOS may not recognize a keyboard attached). Once you come to a menu with many options...choose "Safe Mode" to boot with (no network option needed).
Once you are in XP...go to the Start Menu and choose "Run..." (or press the Windows key and "R" together). Type in msconfig...once that opens up, go to the StartUp items tab and start unchecking programs that are loading. You will be able to tell, by the folder paths, just what is what typically. You can actually disable everything and the Windows will still run okay...so no worries if you end up doing that.
Another way to clean out Startup Items is to manually go into the Registry...go to the "Run..." prompt (like above), and type regedit....once that opens up, navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run...in there you can delete those keys (paths to startup items) freely. Also make sure to check here to and delete items in there too: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Once you are done...restart the computer normally and see if there is a huge speed difference or not (there should be, and definitely will load faster).
After that...run a Disk Defragmenter, which ma help too since it likely has never been done: (Start menu\Programs\Accessories\System Tools
Start the machine in Safe Mode (press F8...or rather 'tap it' about once every second...upon starting the computer - if you press and hold onto it the whole time, the BIOS may not recognize a keyboard attached). Once you come to a menu with many options...choose "Safe Mode" to boot with (no network option needed).
Once you are in XP...go to the Start Menu and choose "Run..." (or press the Windows key and "R" together). Type in msconfig...once that opens up, go to the StartUp items tab and start unchecking programs that are loading. You will be able to tell, by the folder paths, just what is what typically. You can actually disable everything and the Windows will still run okay...so no worries if you end up doing that.
Another way to clean out Startup Items is to manually go into the Registry...go to the "Run..." prompt (like above), and type regedit....once that opens up, navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run...in there you can delete those keys (paths to startup items) freely. Also make sure to check here to and delete items in there too: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Once you are done...restart the computer normally and see if there is a huge speed difference or not (there should be, and definitely will load faster).
After that...run a Disk Defragmenter, which ma help too since it likely has never been done: (Start menu\Programs\Accessories\System Tools