Enhance my Windows XP Performance

[William Singley]

I just replaced the hard drive and reinstalled
Win XP on my Dell 4400 desktop. Over the years the system has become slow and sometimes herky-jerky. I'm wondering if some hardware changes,like a faster CPU and more RAM, would make a noticeable improvement in performance? Dell does not subscribe to hardware changes beyond their original specs, but I've read that some experienced users have gone beyond that envelope. Currently my system has a
80531, 1.7G, 400FSB processor and 1G RAM.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
note: upgrading to another OS is not an option.

 

[Outlander_04]

More RAM will help [ if you can find any DDR2 that is compatible ]
2 x 2 gig maximum is what you can use


but ideally just replace the computer with any budget prebuilt . It will perform better

 

[USAFRet]

Reinstall of the OS.
Over the years, gunk accumulates. A fresh install often fixes this.

 

[Eximo]

Might have driver issues with a late model pre-built trying to run XP.

I have had nearly 100% success with application compatibility and 32bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8. Usually just UAC issues to overcome (and you can disable UAC if it comes to that)

 

[geofelt]

1gb is too small. Upgrade to at least 2gb, 4gb will not cost much more.

The best single performance upgrade will be to replace the hard drive with a SSD.
You will be amazed at how quick everything is.

 

[Solandri]

1gb is too small. Upgrade to at least 2gb, 4gb will not cost much more.

The max memory for his system is 1 GB.

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/compatible-upgrade-for/Dell/dimension-4400-series

1 GB is fine for XP. When it was current, most systems only had 128 MB, and 256 MB was "comfortable". Nowadays I'd say 256 MB is a minimum and 512 MB is comfortable for XP (antivirus alone usually takes up about 120 MB).

You'll only encounter problems with 1 GB if you run a lot of programs at once or keep lots of browser tabs open. Chrome in particular spawns a new instance of itself for each tab, so can quickly climb over 1 GB. Normally in this case I'd suggest a SSD since you can store the pagefile on it and it'll let you go over 1 GB with a much smaller speed penalty than a HDD. However, this system is so old it I'm finding reports it many not even have SATA ports. You really need to upgrade to newer hardware to eek out more performance.

If upgrading to another OS is not an option due to some specialized software that depends on XP, have you tried running it in a virtual machine?

 

[geofelt]

Wow, that is old.
1gb max.

Moreover. reading the product manual, it looks like it supports only IDE drives.
There are some ide ssd drives from kingspec and transcend, but they are pricey.
Really, it is time to upgrade at least the basic hardware.

 

[Outlander_04]

Wow, that is old.
1gb max.

Moreover. reading the product manual, it looks like it supports only IDE drives.
There are some ide ssd drives from kingspec and transcend, but they are pricey.
Really, it is time to upgrade at least the basic hardware.

No doubt they are also very SLOW since they would be limited by the connection .

 

[geofelt]

The big value of a ssd is in the low latency of small random reads and writes.
Even a IDE ssd would make a big difference with that.

 

[Outlander_04]

Lets be very clear about this: the only thing that is going to change the ability of this old computers performance is to add more RAM .
Sadly though even that will have only a minor performance boost .

Replacement is a better option at this point, as it would be for any other 10+ year old computer. Todays phones have more processing power than a computer from that era , so throwing $150 at a still relatively slow IDE SSD just doesnt make sense .

On a very low budget this makes sense $270
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883159300

and for a bit more then this is a great deal $380
http://www.newegg.com/Special/ShellShocker.aspx?cm_sp=Homepage_SS-_-P4_83-798-809-_-03232016&Index=4

 

[Solandri]

The big value of a ssd is in the low latency of small random reads and writes.
Even a IDE ssd would make a big difference with that.

The reason I would discourage an IDE SSD is because it's basically useless once you upgrade your system. If you're going to buy upgrades for a computer this old, it'd be a lot better to get upgrades that you can re-use in a future computer purchase. So a PCI SATA controller card ($10-$20) + SATA SSD would be preferable. (If this computer doesn't have SATA ports.)

 

[geofelt]

The OP says that the pc has become slower over the years.
WHY???
Normally, it might be malware or such, but the OP has reinstalled XP so it is not software.
Likely it is the nature of today's apps which use more ram.

Since the motherboard is not capable of using more than 1gb of ram, there is little that can be done.
The use of a ssd, even a IDE one will speed up the I/O to and from the page file.

At this point, it is probably cheaper and better to buy a used pc for $100 than it is to spend $100 on a IDE ssd.

 

[William Singley]

Thanks to all the contributors for their inputs. I was hoping to see some recommendation like a faster CPU ,say 2.4G and
increased RAM, but no one was emphatic about either, so I guess there are no significant gains to be had. I"ll continue
on with my current hardware and try to find alternate means of improving performance.
Bill