very very slow machine

Hi,
I was asked by a friend to look at their PC - they had bought a rebrubished Packard Bell Machine with a Celeron Chip running windows XP. But it was running extremely slow and crashing occassionally,

Firstly there was only 128MB of RAM installed so I changed thhis and installed a 1GB card. Secondaly I defragmented the hard drive. It has Norton antivrsus running and its showing no issues. The PC is manily used for office applications so nothing too resources hungry, so now I am confused.

wHAT IS THE NEXT BEST COURSE OF ACTION TO TAKE? Rather than just replacing the machine!

Yeah thats what I thought you'd say! but unfortunately I'm not sure they have all the necessary installation CD's. I have a copy of XP but if I re-install it will I have to then seperately download drivers?

Just download all the drivers before you reinstall... (Chipset, Graphics, Sound are the essential ones. And don't forget a decent virus protection...)

Norton antivirus is an issue! Get rid of Norton!, it can slow down the machine, and get decent virus protection.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Norton_R [...] d4749.html

Yeah...Norton is a royal bog fest....well its auto protect is.....you can try to disable that and see if you notice an improvement.

My vote goes for AVG Free
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/

Yeah get rid of, God help me, Norton. Go with AVG or Avira as said. Just curious, what Celeron chip and how much did they pay for it? right click on My Computer and click properties, it's on the general tab.

Totally agree, I have found that Norton can cause more problems than some of the virus's its supposed to stop. Thats usually one of the first questions I ask when someone asks why their computer is slow. "Do you have Norton or McAfee Antivirus?". Also, I have also found the Norton doesn't pick alot of things up. Almost every computer I have replaced Norton on I have found a virus once I installed another AV. I personally prefer Trendmicro's Pc-Cillin, but its not free. Its light on a system compared to alot of others and includes a firewall that is ranked as one of the best. And for the 50 bucks you buy it for can install it on 3 computers. So, unless you go for a free one, I'd recommend Pc-Cillin.

I agree with the "remove" norton thing. It's a hog.

Goto "trend micro house calls".....google it ...... do what you have to do to get the free online scan running, and let it run until completion. It really does find things other scanners don't.

Also, it sounds like it's an old machine. After using higher quality hardware and going back to something "ancient", it may only seem to be slow. .. ?

Goto microsoft and update everything.

Lastly, some people are in denial about how "good" there machines are. Some think they should last forever and refuse to move up. Hardware goes to hell after a while. And from what I've seen from dell, hp, and those "cow" people....................... you get junk to start with.

some ISPs also include anti-virus as a service.

you can also check how many programs are running on the start up, memory hogs are stupid to have, how many video players does one need to watch internet content, the only thing that should be running visibly on the notification area.

You can also try crap cleaner if you don't want to manual check the registry {make sure your make back ups of the registry so you can restore them if something happens to go FUBAR}, It pretty much does a disk clean up and registry clean.

also run an Antispyware like "Spybot search and destroy" or "Adaware"

You can use your xp cd if the you can Find the xp serial code sticker on the Packard Bell Machine, you will have to go online and do a part by part check for the lasted drivers {or you could use the windows default }

and how full is th HDD, to full and no matter how much defragging you do you'll have to do it all over again once you free some space

How much did they pay for "Packardstein"?

Call me crazy...but did you say Packard Bell? Didn't Packard Bell disappear about 12+ years ago (when it became HP)? That thing is a dinosaur. I'd donate it to charity for a tax write-off and build a new one for around $400.00. There are plenty of sites that can show you how to do that.

Note: Statements made here are not those of an expert...just somebody reading the forums thinking "Holy crap! Did he just say Packard Bell???". Listen to the others, not me.

well I am tempted but actually the machine was purchased new just over 3 years ago..
I just think it should be fine for what it needed for, using Word and Outlook!

See, problem (almost) fixed just by removing crap software! Now as for the fan, are you talking the CPU fan here?

It gets louder when you run more applications because the CPU is doing more work and getting hotter. The fan is thermally controlled, so the hotter the CPU gets, the faster the fan spins (within a limited range of speed of course). Now if you have been running these applications before and it didnt get as loud, it is possible that the afn is dying, but it may just have some dust clogging it up. Also if your ambient temperature is high it will also mak the cpu hotter and make the fan spin faster. It could also be caused by the PSU beginning to fail, because if its getting stressed by a hard working CPU and old age, it could be putting out more voltage than it should be, thereby making the fan spin faster and make more noise. However, the cpu fan voltage should be fairly well regulated by the motherboards voltage regulator circuits, so that is unlikely, but still possible. If you find that case fans start to get loud and the fans are plugged into the PSU directly (and not into a motherboard fan header) then I'd definitely be thinking that the PSU could be failing.

EDIT: A failing PSU can also cause low performance as components like the video card somtimes throttle when they dont receive enough power.

ya just like everyones saying, uninstall norton, use avg or somthing
NORTON SUCKS lol
and then contact HP and ask for a re instilation cd, and reinstall windows