Putting some thought into it

[Maxamillian1]

Lately our main shop pc is slowing down, for instance, when I click to change customers in our management screen, the hourglass shows up for a couple seconds instead of just flipping right to the next customer. It acts like there is something running in the background that is slowing us down. What should I look for? My system is: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.4/3 GB DDR2/233GB WD SATA/Windows XP Professional 32-bit SP3

 

[zdbc13]

Make sure your anti-virus is up to date and run a full scan. Also run malwarebytes, there is a free version. You can see what is running by right clicking on the bottom bar and choose Task Manager. You'll see what applications are running and you can click on the "processes" tab to see the processes that are running. Click on show processes from all users and click on the cpu column header to show which are using the most resources. Use Google to find out which program uses the top resources. Then decide if you need those programs. They might be trojans or hijacks.

 

[tiny voices]

How full is your HDD?

 

[bryonhowley]

Well that would depend on what POS your company uses and the requirements that it needs. Does your shop PC keep a database of customers? It could be that the database, if the POS software is keeping one, is just getting to large to handle the what you are doing.

You can check task manager and see if there is something running in the background taking up CPU time it is possible that there is a task running that is eating your CPU. What antivirus are you running on it?

As for building a new rig it would help to know what your price range is and are you running custom software that would keep you having to run Windows XP?

 

[macten]

Lately our main shop pc is slowing down, for instance, when I click to change customers in our management screen, the hourglass shows up for a couple seconds instead of just flipping right to the next customer. It acts like there is something running in the background that is slowing us down. What should I look for? My system is: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.4/3 GB DDR2/233GB WD SATA/Windows XP Professional 32-bit SP3

In addition to what these guys said, remember that if this is a machine that you want maximum performance from at all times you need to limit what you install on it. Especially these days when it seems that everything you install is wanting to be started up at boot time and run in the background, or install it's own notifications in the task bar.