On Monday, March 31, 2014 2:24:28 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 31 Mar 2014 09:45:51 -0400, "Mayayana"

wrote:





| Even in 2002 the machine he has would have probably

| had about a 1 Ghz CPU and maybe 500 MB RAM. That's

| more than enough for most uses.

|

| Ridiculous. I recently retired a secondary 1 Ghz XP machine

| with 1 GB of RAM and it's performance was pathetic compared

| to any current basic PC. It's pathetic compared to the 3 year

| old PC I'm using as my main PC.

|



There is a caveat: It won't be fast if you don't run

it clean. XP starts out with dozens of unnecessary

services running by default. Then installed software

often loads at boot without asking. If you run anti-virus

you're adding a huge load with doubtful benefit. When

you install hardware it will often load unnecessary

startup programs. All of that can drag down any

system.

On numerous occasions I've had friends ask for help

because their computer is running in slow motion. It's

not XP that's the problem. And it's not old hardware.

Once the software "barnacles" are cleaned off those

machines run fine.



|

| But XP is zippy on old hardware, and does just fine with 256

| MB RAM for most uses.)

|

| It's also being EOL'd by MSFT. Why would anyone who wants

| more speed invest more money in a 12 year old PC, running XP,

| with a dying disk?



The OP may not want to. I was trying to describe

his options. If he really wants to stay with what he's

using his best option is to replace the hard disk. If

he's happy moving to Win8 then he can do that for

as little as $300. It's up to him. To my mind, replacing

the hard disk is certainly a viable option. It's the

part most likely to wear out.



XP EOL could certainly be an issue. If you just want

to buy a box and have it work then it makes the most

sense to simply buy new PCs when the old one seems

inadequate. But if you don't mind spending some time,

there's no reason they can't be maintained. And XP EOL

really means very little. I run XP with SP3 but don't -- and

wouldn't -- ever allow AutoUpdate to run, installing a

constant drip-feed of barely tested changes... But that

gets into security issues, which is a whole other kettle of

fish.



I recently built myself a new box. I have XP on it.

I built it with cheap parts from TigerDirect. I always buy

older models of motherboard and CPU because the

technology far outstripped the need years ago. I see

no sense paying hundreds for the latest CPU when a

model for $65 is still incredibly fast. I put 4 GB RAM

into my new box, but only because that was the cheapest

option. Win32 can only use a bit over 3 GB, and 2 GB

would have been more adequate.



I do some photo editing, some web design work, and

I write Windows software. (I make most of my income

as a carpenter/contractor, but also have a sideline writing

shareware, freeware utilities and components for use

with scripting.)

I've got a dual CPU, super-duper Dell in the other room

that was given to me. It has Win7 on it. I don't like Win7.

I prefer XP. Win7 is a bloated, spyware mess to my mind.

It's salvageable, but barely. Win8 is worse. I use the Win7

box for testing software.

Both the Win7 dual CPU box and my new XP box, with

"mediocre" AMD A6 2-core, respond instantly. I keep them

clean. If you find you need a high-power machine for

speed to do things less intensive than video editing then

you probably have a lot of crap weighing down the system...

And you've probably been reading too many mainstream

media articles written by tech journalists who depend on

hardware and software companies for ad dollars. The world

of tech survives on a dizzying pace of forced obsolescence,

so if you go by what the media tells you you'll end up

replacing gadgets as fast as you buy them.



Computers of that age have another common failure mode that slows them

to a crawl - leaky caps. Take a good look at all the electrolytic caps

on the motherboard. They all have score marks in the end. If the end

is convex instead of flat or slightly concave, the cap has failed. The

K marked caps are generally less likely to fail than the X marked

ones, for some reason.


How does a bad cap slow it to a crawl? The caps are there to smoooth
out the power, no? I can see a bad cap causing it to freeze, or not
boot, but how does it wind up slowing it down?