1200mHz chip running slower than a 266
 

Just been called to a neighbours house to look at their pc - it's a HP mx70 with 1200mHz, 128meg RAM with XP and it runs slower than my old 266 laptop... I had a good look round and can find no reason at all.... any ideas? They aren't consumate fiddlers, so them messing around with the settings isn't an option. Appears to be a RAM issue from what I can see (like, WTF do I know...)

check that the motherboard jumpers are set up the correct way

I'll have a look...

The pc has run correctly before and started it's slow down about 2 weeks ago. Apparently this problem occured at some point last year too and they had to do a restore at day1 to rectify the fault - strange that it came back. There's no dodgy software on there that I can see (well, after I got rid of the 2 diallers that were in there!).

you have the virus W32/WindowsXP :Graucho

seriusly, install 2000pro or upgrade to 256mb ram and you'll get much more happy :)
my brother had to add more ram to his pc because XP has drained all memory. XP is bad thing

128 RAM ? thats really not much for win xp

i've got 512mb ddr, works pretty fine for xp.

Cheers, I'll tell her to get her <s>tits</s> purse out

Might as well check out the wattage on the power supply while you are at it, the powersupply may not affect the speed but I have seen several HPs with under rated power supplies. Like a 850 meg celeron 30 gig hd 128 meg ram cd rw ect with a 100 watt power supply

Nbritt

You could try running a full test here: http://pcpitstop.com/ The test will measure many different things on the pc, e.g. how fast the ram is etc. And it will suggest solutions if there is a problem.

:thumbsup I forgot about that - nice one :)

The system is running too hot.. you need to dunk it in a bucket of ice.

Seriously though. Check to see if they have it in a well vented area. A hot system runs slow.

Maybe it might need a defrag?

The answer is.... It does have 128meg of RAM, which is good for, umm, Word or some shit.... and it only has a built in graphics card with 1meg of RAM that it shares.

Fuck - I used to rate HP :(

the cpu is overheating (cooler died?) and the bios is loweing the speed to keep it alive

heat doesnt affect speed.

it affects stability.

never seen any BIOS do that.


maybe on a laptop....

Can't you adjust how much memory the graphics card is allowed to use in BIOS or something?

1st I would check what programs are running in the background.
i.e. a dozen different TSR and spywares doesnt help.

I would probably format. and increase the ram to at least 256mb

you can check BIOS for AGP Aparture(sp?) Size

I've got an ATI 32meg card and a stick of 128 in my bag of spares :)

1meg of on board graphics?!?!? lol

format c:

look at the systray. If it takes more than half the taskbar, with only 128 ram that comp is in deep shit

Actually, with Intel chips (Pentium 4 and later), heat *does* affect speed. If the Intel chip is overheating, the CPU speed will slow down to a level that lowers the chip temp to a tolerable level. It's a built-in protection mechanism, and is actually a good feature. An AMD chip will just run at full speed if it's overheating and will burn itself out and start smoking and fry itself.

Checking the CPU fan on an Intel chip is a wise move with an Intel chip that is running really slow. As is uninstalling all of the useless crap (screensavers/extra cursor programs/misc memory resident programs), as well as running an anti-virus program. Systems with integrated video suck, but not by the amount that the original post lists the performance to be.