Streamlining my old IBM Thinkpad?

[Monkeyleg]

I have an old IBM Thinkpad, probably circa 1999 or so. All I need it for is to run Internet Explorer, Excel 2003 and every so often Outlook Express. It has a whopping 512 mb's of RAM.

I had a copy of Windows XP, so I installed that. I also installed IE8. It's now overtaxed, and running really slow.

I'm sure there's a ton of stuff I don't need for what I'm doing.

Can anyone suggest items to ditch to get this dinosaur moving?

Thanks for any replies.

[Ben]

XP should actually run fine on 512meg. I have several old computers at work w/ 512 and XP and they run fine for web surfing and office apps. How particularly is it running slow? What apps, or what are you doing when it bogs down? What processor is it running  P3, P4, Celeron)?

[Jim147]

Try Google Chrome for a web browser. If you have done your XP updates you might kill the search indexing that it does on startup.  I'll agree that I have run a few systems with less then 512 without any problems for browsing or smaller spreadsheets.

jim

[RocketMan]

Dick, how much of the memory is being set aside for the video on that system?  It could be something like 48MB or 64MB, and that is subtracted from the 512MB system memory and is not available for Windows or applications.
Bumping your memory to a gigabyte, or even two if the laptop can handle it, (doubtful at that age) would be helpful.  In truth, 512MB may be the maximum, but it would be worth checking.

[Monkeyleg]

I have to run IE in order to use a personal security certificate. No other browsers.

The only thing I'm running is IE by itself, or with Excel 2003. It's been months since I switched to XP and IE8, so I don't recall if it was running as slow as it is now.

It can take five or more minutes just to quit IE. Everything crawls. Maybe it's the hard drive going, as I hear more noise than I did in the past.

[RocketMan]

It can take five or more minutes just to quit IE. Everything crawls. Maybe it's the hard drive going, as I hear more noise than I did in the past.

I've seen failing laptop (and desktop) hard drives significantly slow both boot up and shut downs, not to mention just general operations at times.  If the system is having trouble reading from the drive because of its impending failure, the whole system slows.
I just replaced a drive in a client's laptop for this very reason.  Very slow most of the time when booting or closing.  SMART check of the drive showed serious problems with it.

[Jocassee]

They usually put Hitachi DeathStar (tm) HDD's in those too. If you had problems they wouldn't surprise me.

The University IT dept where I worked for five years had a contract with IBM for years. All but the latest models seemed to suffer from performance problems. Then again we loaded them up with Novell and other client software.

[CNYCacher]

All I need it for is to run Internet Explorer, Excel 2003 and every so often Outlook Express.

Could the above statement be accurately translated to this?

All I need is to browse the web, do spreadsheets, and every so often get email.

[Monkeyleg]

Could the above statement be accurately translated to this?

Yes, except that I absolutely need to have Internet Explorer so I can have the personal security certificate required for my online store. I got the laptop only because I can't leave town without having internet access.

[Ben]

Try the" IE Tab" Add-on in Firefox and see if that will both speed things up and let you read the cert.

From what I'm getting so far your slow down is really during internet access and page loading versus stuff like Excel. I don't know what IE 8's minimum requirements are, but it sounds like they're taxing your machine.

[AZRedhawk44]

Back in 2002 or thereabouts, I had a smallish celeron computer as my secondary PC and I started playing with XP on it, with 512MB RAM. 

It was dog-slow and I noticed it using inordinate amounts of CPU cycles just sitting idle.

Turns out it loaded a crap driver for the integrated Intel graphics adapter.  Once I updated the driver, it ran much better.

Update all your drivers.

Given the original computer manufacture date of 1999, you might consider stepping down to Windows 2000 if you can't find a working solution on XP.

[Ben]

Given the original computer manufacture date of 1999, you might consider stepping down to Windows 2000 if you can't find a working solution on XP.

I actually just did that with a circa 1997 Gateway PII  laptop with 128meg I had lying around. It actually loads Win2K faster than my just replaced P4 loaded WinXP. Stuck a wireless card on it and keep it in my reloading room/shop at my folks' place so I can look stuff up online when I'm having a "how does this go back together again?" moment. :)

[Monkeyleg]

I'll try updating drivers. I got the laptop used (and cheap) with Windows 2000 on it. I need Excel 2003 at minimum, though, to create spreadsheets to import into a database.

[Perd Hapley]

Gewehr98 and other cranky nerds always talk about turning off the pretty on the XP desktop, to improve performance. 

[Monkeyleg]

I'm primarily a Mac guy, Fistful. What's the XP pretty? The desktop background?

[stuckonpolitics]

You might consider installing a lightweight linux distro on there.  These days, there are even pre-made scripts to install IE on there if you absolutely have to have it, via WINE. 

If you're technically inclined, I'd throw Archlinux at it, and use LXDE or Openbox as a desktop environment.  If you just want it to work, try the most current version of Xubuntu. 

[Perd Hapley]

I'm primarily a Mac guy, Fistful. What's the XP pretty? The desktop background?

It's the whole look of the desktop, icons, windows, dialog boxes, etc.  I think to start with, you just change the "theme" to Windows Classic, but I think there are other tweaks as well.  I can't tell you how to do it, as I really really like the pretty.  

But if I were you, I'd try to go back to Windows 2000.  Then again, I think M-soft stops supporting 2000 this year.  

[Monkeyleg]

Stuckonpolitics, are those real words you're using, or did you just make them up?

I can't use Windows 2000 because I need Excel 2003 or later in order to import the data into SQL databases.

Since I'm using so little on the machine, I'm saving some stuff to CD, and then I'm going to format the disk and reinstall. If things still move slow after that, I'm just going to assume a bad drive and get a newer laptop. The machine was nowhere near this slow when I installed XP. A couple of hours ago it took over five minutes for Google's home page to load when I started IE.

[Ben]

You can run Office 2003 on the following operating systems:

    * Windows Server 2003 or a later version
    * Windows XP or a later version
    * Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) or a later version
    * Windows Vista
    * Windows Server 2008

[lee n. field]

XP should actually run fine on 512meg.

Not on a ten year old computer.

[RocketMan]

Download the latest version of SpeedFan and use its SMART readout function to get a good estimate of your hard drive's condition.  If it's throwing a lot of read errors, and if it's used up a lot of its spare sectors, it's time for a new drive.

[Gewehr98]

Monkeyleg,

Fistful speaks true.

Go to Start/Settings/Control Panel/System/Advanced/Performance/Settings/Visual Effects/Adjust for Best Performance

Click on "Apply", then "OK".

Your desktop will change to something with fewer bells and whistles, freeing up system resources to run your important apps more quickly.   

[Perd Hapley]

Monkeyleg,

Fistful speaks true.

I feel so special.   

[Monkeyleg]

A quick clean install of the system software and deleting everything else on the drive did it. I only needed to copy a couple of things to CD and then replace them.

Too much junk on the drive.

[CNYCacher]

I need Excel 2003 or later in order to import the data into SQL databases.

Who told you that?