Fresh Install of Windows XP Professional, computer is now ultra slow?

Orangematz

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Jan 7, 2014
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Hey guys, I've just put a new fresh install of Windows XP Pro on a computer. Computer boots fine, however it is incredibly slow. 1 GB of memory is installed, however now it shows as 800 MB. The machine used to work fine with web browsing and videos on YouTube, however now its awful and barely does anything. It freezes constantly while doing some light we browsing, and YouTube videos are laggy and unresponsive. I went ahead to the website and downloaded some drivers, however these seem to have no effect on the problem.

The machine originally had Windows XP Home, but I dont think installing Pro would effect the performance of the computer would be this devastating.

Please keep in mind that this is an old budget eMachines tower.

The computer has a single core AMD Athlon 64 2650e at 1.6 GHz.
It says that there is 896 MB of RAM installed, however I looked inside the computer and there was a total of 1 GB.

Any ideas on how to fix this computer? Could be that one of the parts have gone bad, or I've messed up somewhere. Thanks.
 
Have you installed all the chipset drivers for the motherboard?

Also, it's a good idea to run Memtest to look to see of the memory has issues. If it's using an integrated GPU, that would account for the memory showing lower than whats installed as it would be reserved for that.
 

cklaubur

Distinguished
On the Processes tab on Task Manager, are any processes excessively loading the processor?

As for the memory "issue", are you using integrated video? The reason I ask is because integrated video will take some RAM, and that gets subtracted from the amount installed to give you the number that Windows is showing. In your case, integrated video would be using 128 MB (1024 MB - 128 MB = 896 MB)

Casey
 

Orangematz

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Jan 7, 2014
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I am using an Integrated GPU (NVIDIA GeForce 6150, terrible, I know), however on my other PC it shows 3 GB of RAM installed and none subtracted even though it uses the same Integrated GPU. I'm not sure if it just varies on the OS, however if I remember correctly, this computer used to have a total of 1GB no matter what.

For the processes, three seem to be really pushing the processer. There is "svchost.exe", System Idle process, and when idle, MpSigStub.exe.
 

Orangematz

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Jan 7, 2014
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I've downloaded the drivers, however when I try to open the setup.exe, the entire computer freezes and then I am forced to End Task, otherwise it just stays there frozen. I can keep trying and get back to you, though I doubt I will be able to get past the freezing.