speed up this laptop how?

[smartegyptian]

Laptop Centrino duo 1.83/ 2GB RAM 80GB RPM HDD overall is slow msconfig disabled all unused items I can’t see big difference still i also ran spysweeper no spyware

Any advice?

[Rivas]

Try defrag HDD, and remove startup programs what you are not using.
Take a look how many processes it's running.Also run antivirus and ad aware SE + spybot search & destroy.
Hope it helps, wait for more advices from other members.

[smartegyptian]

defrag now i did all the above

[YeOldeStonecat]

Flip XP into performance mode.

The laptop probably came pre-bundled with Symantec or McCrapee antivirus (and possibly the full software firewall suite)....which will bog down anything.....I'd suggest a lighter, and better, antivirus product, after fully uninstalling and removing traces of them.

One of the biggest contributions to laptops running slower...is the budget and even medium priced products only come with 4200 and 5400rpm hard drives. When purchasing a laptop, if you're concerned in the slightest bit about system performance...always always always get a 7200rpm hard drive. If you already have your laptop, it's still wonderfully easy and quite inexpensive to replace that drive with a faster one, purchase a 7200rpm 8 meg cache drive and Apricorns PCMCIA EZ Gig cloning kit.

Spysweeper is a decent removal product, but its real time protection bogs down the browser quite heavily, disable that if you still have it running.

[smartegyptian]

I’m trying to get XP to speeeeeeeeeeeed I have my own windows on it and it does have 7200 HDD

[Mark]

how are you testing it's speed ?

just a general "seat of the pants" feeling or what ?

[smartegyptian]

yes booting is slow, IE7 slow...etc is there is a software i can test with?
should i just format?

[TonyT]

adjust the services, set to manual or disable the unneeded ones, will speed up any xp comp by 25%.

[YeOldeStonecat]

I’m trying to get XP to speeeeeeeeeeeed I have my own windows on it and it does have 7200 HDD


Sooooooooo....how about the other things listed above? Performance mode, antivirus/software firewalls, etc.