[waynf]

I managed to reset my search engine as Google by going to Firefox Help site, but my toggle at right hand side of task bar is still inoperative for hiding and displaying rarely used programs . I will try and go to Windows web help page and find what i need there.

Will be continuing on as time allows and let you know when i get to the end of it all.

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my toggle at right hand side of task bar is still inoperative for hiding and displaying rarely used programs

Do you know which program that you downloaded to do this with?If so just re-enable it in your start-up.

[rockmilk]

my toggle at right hand side of task bar is still inoperative for hiding and displaying rarely used programs

Do you know which program that you downloaded to do this with?If so just re-enable it in your start-up.

[waynf]

Guess what! Just as I was reading your last transmission I noticed that the toggle is back

[rockmilk]

[Macboatmaster]

waynf

Possibly NOT the cause of all the perceived slowness, but most certainly the cause of some of the slow and unacceptable performance is this

Total Physical: 446 MB

Available Physical: 75 MB

Effectively, whatever is accomplished here by my colleague rockmilk, the reality of the situation is that Windows XP with SP3 and all the other programs you have cannot be run smoothly and with a really acceptable level of performance with 512 of ram.

Especially when you do not even have that to start with as 64MB is used by your graphics.

At the time you obtained the report from Speccy, you had as you can see just 75MB available.

Windows is setup to use 1.69GB of HDD space as virtual memory, but the read speed of data on the HDD that would, if you had more physical ram be written to the ram, is always slower than that on ram.

My strong advice is to increase the ram to at least 1GB.

I am postive you will notice a great difference.

Pruning the start up items, clearing temporary files, optimizing the disk from the aspect of defrag, clearing browsing history, pruning add-ons and other BHO`s (Browser Helper Objects) may all assist.

It will not however solve the base problem and that is simply lack of ram.

[Troy]

Hello, mind if I put my 2c worth in here?

First up I would like to say (echoing Mac's post above a little bit) that while Rockmilk may be correct in that some settings tweaks here and there may improve performance, it will be minimal overall because the system as a whole is a very basic computer. Without some hardware upgrades performance will never be more than, say, mediocre. All comments about "improving performance" below are to be taken with a grain of salt - i.e. considering that for this machine, a really fantastic performance gain will still only result in a computer that can be rated as, perhaps "not as slow as it once was". I will make some suggestions below however, consider the total of hardware upgrades and how much that could go toward something newer and better performing. With that being said, a little improved performance may make you wonderfully happy, so we are glad to help with however which way you choose to go about it.

Going from the hardware specs in Post #12:

• Memory: Low total of RAM as discussed above - minimum 1GB would be good, however also considering the rest of the specs I would not go for any more than 1GB either. Note that the Speccy shows 4 RAM slots however looking up your motherboard shows it physically only has 2 slots, you are using one with a 512MB module so I would suggest considering adding another 512MB module.
  
• CPU: Sempron 3000+ processor (these are the most budget AMD range and have quite poor performance overall). You may be able to find a better CPU to fit in, if so it could improve performance also. If you have v1.0 of the motherboard (mentioned below), any of these processors will work in the motherboard. Notice your current processor is 2nd from the bottom! If you could find any of the Athlon 64 x2 range of processors, one of these would give you a great jump in performance.
  
• Motherboard: PCChips A13G (there are 4 versions of this motherboard, A13G v1.0, A13G v3.0, A13G+ v3.0, A13G+ v3.0A). This motherboard (all variants) is a very basic motherboard with limited features. You have 2x RAM slots, 1x PCI-Express x16, 1x PCI-Express x1, 2x PCI, 2x SATA, 1x IDE, 1x Floppy, etc. Considering your DVD Drive is SATA this means you should have one spare SATA port. You have a very basic integrated graphics chip which is using some of the system RAM. Also there is a BIOS update available which we may consider.
  
• Hard Drive: You have a Seagate 7200.10 series 80GB (quite old now) PATA or IDE hard drive. This has a limited transfer rate when compared to a SATA hard drive, which your system can support. Hard drives are mechanical devices which wear over time. You will find that a new SATA hard drive with a fresh install of Windows will give a very good performance upgrade. Also as discussed previously, the % free space is low and this will affect performance to a degree. The purchase of a new hard drive will typically be minimum 500GB or thereabouts, which will give plenty of space.
  
• Graphics: As mentioned under Motherboard, the graphics is integrated into the motherboard and therefore uses some of the system resources to process graphics. Even the most basic PCI-Express graphics card will free up those system resources and move graphics processing to the separate card, which (if nothing else) will improve performance simply by freeing up system resources for other areas. On a best case scenario it will also improve computer performance in areas such as 3D games, however this doesn't seem a likely use for your machine given the current specifications.

Also take note we have no idea what Power Supply you are running, how old it is and the quality of such. Time and again I see the effects of a poor-quality PSU. It can cause all kinds of problems, ranging from catastrophic to those "little nigglies" that just annoy you. The only way to tell is to physically have a look inside the case, if you want assistance with this please ask.

Anyway, that's just some "food for thought" for you, and of course not meaning to step on anyone's toes in here.

Kind regards,

Troy