Shoutbox

quote:

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Originally posted by Fourjays
A lot of things cause slow XP loading times.

Memory is the main one... remember that XP uses alot, and for optimal operating speed of it, you should have 512Mb (my friend has 256Mb, and it takes about 10mins to load, as well as it being slow elsewhere). XP eats memory for its brekafast.

Having loads of fonts installed can make it slow on boot-up too.

Also I have heard people say that keeping the HDD defragged helps it go faster, but then an equal number of people say defragging makes no difference to the computers performance.

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Defragging does help your computer's speed because it lets the read/write heads on the harddrive find and get data faster by shuffling everything so that all of your files are contiguous(all of the file is in one place, not spread out over your harddrive). Remember that one of the biggest bottlenecks in a computer is the speed of the harddrive, since they are mechanical. So if it takes a long time to find something on your harddrive, then it's adding insult to injury. You should defrag once a month if you don't use your harddrive heavily (eg. Little to no P2P, BitTorrent, etc.) and more often if you do.