Some good advice here. Here's a couple more. Delete cookies. In Internet Explorer go to tools/InternetOptions/general/ Unplug from the Internet and turn off your anti-virus. See if that solves the slowness. If so, change to the free Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus. Do the same as above with your software firewall. Microsoft's free Windows Defender firewall seems to work fine. If your computer is old it may be that the cpu and hard drive just aren't fast enough for the newer software you may have installed recently. Fast, big hard drives are cheap but migrating to a new hard drive can be a pain. First things to try are the defrag, clean-up, online free virus/trojan/malware tests, delete cookies and test anti-virus drain by turning it off (unplugged from Internet).
Delete all temp files regularly. Run disc cleanup weekly thereabouts. Close any programs running in the quicklaunch bar which you are not using ( right click - exit program) Perhaps buy Uniblue Registry Booster Many Antivirus programs are virus's themselves, causing more issues with slow access times than what they solve. In Contol panel\Administative tools\Services there's a whole bunch of shit which you can shut down from running. This is for Win XP Don't defrag SSD's ( solid state drives)
a) Right-click "My Computer" -> Properties -> Advanced -> Performance -> Settings -> "Adjust for Best Performance" (or similar if on Vista) b) Settings-> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services find everything that says "Started" and Stop & Disable most of the crap, especially "Indexing Service" and ALL Update Services! c) Press control-alt-delete to see what processes & applications are running and look each one of them up on the Internet, understand what they are and "if" they're needed and get rid of the crap! d) Download and run AdaWare http://www.lavasoft.com and do clean-up as recommended e) Go to www.mozilla.com/firefox download and install that Browser and "NEVER USE" Internet Explorer again! f) When all of that is done, open Windows Explorer; right-click on each of your Hard Drives -> Properties -> Tools -> Check Now and schecule a Check Disk for the next time you Reboot, then reboot! g) Open Windows Explorer again each hard drive -> Properties -> Defragment Now h) Finally ctl-alt-del again, see what's running prune & tune as needed Good Luck!
For those intersted, here is some information I've written to myself when I run into certain XP problems. PROBLEM: FTP client won't talk to server after login and hangs at "LIST" and Ultra download won't work. FIX: Windows firewall seems to be missing some services and is locking up the communication of these programs. Set service "sharedaccess" to "disable" and reboot computer. PROBLEM: Computer hangs and runs erratic. Some taskbar icons don't load. FIX: Turn the followin services to "disable": srservice upnphost ssdpsrv Upnp devices also turning these off will speed up computer wuauserv Win Update BITS Helps Win Update cisvc Indexing Service messenger network function pmldriverhpz12 HP useless driver ersvc Error Reporting PROBLEM: Windows XP SP2 Update gives Error about IE Userdata Enable This suggested registry fix did not fix it. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\wuauserv\Security and DELETE the "Security" key to reset permissions. PROBLEM Internet connections run slow Flush the DNS and renew the IPs: At Start>Run, type in cmd -->OK. At the comand prompt, type in ipconfig /flushdns and press Enter. At the command prompt again, type in ''ipconfig /renew and press Enter First Common method is Defragment.. To speed up your hard disk speed we need to configure a special buffer in the computer's memory in order to enable it to better deal with interrupts made from the disk. This tip is only recommended if you have 256MB RAM or higher. Follow these steps: 1.Run SYSEDIT.EXE from the Run command. 2.Expand the system.ini file window. 3.Scroll down almost to the end of the file till you find a line called[386enh]. 4.Press Enter to make one blank line, and in that line type Irq14=4096 Note: This line IS CASE SENSITIVE!!! 5.Click on the File menu, then choose Save. 6.Close SYSEDIT and reboot your computer. Done. Speed improvement will be noticed after the computer reboots. Note: The most speed improvement is visible with IDE drives, however there are reports that this tweak also does good for SCSI disks. In any case, it won't harm your system, so why not try it yourself and let me know what you find.
sorry pspr â System.ini [386Enh] IRQ14=4096 Myth - "Adding IRQ14=4096 to the System.ini file improves performance." Reality - "This is a made up nonexistent command that does absolutely nothing. The System.ini and Win.ini files are provided in Windows XP for backward compatibility with 16-bit applications (MS-DOS-based programs). They have no effect on any Windows XP settings or 32-bit applications which are stored in the Registry." from 'XP Myths': http://home.comcast.net/~supportcd/XPMyths.html
You can always buy a new more powerful computer. For $700, I recently bought an HP with an AMD Phenom II 820. I only need 1 monitor with a resolution of 1920 x 1080. What kind of set-up do you have?
He is right. Computers are so dirt cheap that if you are a profitable trader, there is no reason not to get a new one in every 2 years. Unless you have a made to order super machine with extra specifications, but then you wouldn't ask this question....
Good advice! But unless it's a dedicated algo computer, I have to have font edges smoothed. And I actually prefer IE.
I like IE too, but every time I use it....swoosh, in comes another virus or two and so now I only use Firefox, which for some reason "never" has that problem.