How can I restore the my (work) PeeCee's speed?

[Filliam H. Muffman]

Oh, never do a Nuke and Pave unless that was done as part of the deployment procedure. It is too easy for people that don't understand installing a retail version of Windows likely means forever losing the OEM drivers for the hardware.

[Racer X]

If you are on staff, and slower production doesn't affect your paycheck, just deal with it. If it is a Dell, you can quickly open up the side panel, and see if you can sneak in some extra cheap RAM.

But if it DOES affect your pay, start squalling on a regular basis.

[Bimwad]

It doesn't really affect my productivity in the strictest sense, it's just mostly an annoyance :-)

It is a small office, and IT is handled by a part-time consultant. A lot of times, I'm the one providing basic IT support for more common issues when required. I don't mess with the server setup, network configuration, and things like that, nor do I have a desire to.

Past practice when any problems struck was to physically swap out a machine, and leave the problematic one in a corner to be attended to later, even for the smallest issues. Personally, outside of hardware failure, I see physical swaps as a last resort, and try to rectify the problem so that the user doesn't have to reconfigure. I like to tweak my tools to a high degree, so there's even less desire on my part to resort to drastic measures, unless absolutely required. No such luxuries as preconfigured disk images to work with. I don't even know where half the software licenses originate from.

Considering the circumstances, stuff still works fine most of the time. But those making the ultimate IT decisions don't understand technology, or have just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

As for the machine, it's an old Dell with ~3GHz C2D, and 2GB of RAM. The 320GB drive is less than 1/3 full. Not the latest and greatest, but it did seem to run Win 7 decently before and is perfectly adequate for general office tasks. I do have admin access.

[mrlynn]

Assume you have run CHKDSK and defragmented the HD. If not, that's a good place to start.

Then try Malwarebytes and see if you can eradicate any nasties lurking in the Registry.

/Mr Lynn

[cbelt3]

Ah... Definitely more RAM. Run general cleanup utilities, latest Windows update, dump caches and internet exploder memory, blow or vacuum the dust out of the cabinet, and give it a general spring cleaning.

2GB of RAM is no way near enough for Win 7. 4G is adequate for general usage. If you're doing anything difficult, 8-16G of RAM is obligatory.

After adding RAM, the next thing to do would be to add an SSD to the mix. But RAM is the best place to start.

[Bimwad]

Ran CHKDSK, and with the scheduled defrag, the analysis says the percentage is zero.

Turned of the Security Basics as a dupe, and allowing the other program to do a scan now.

But I have a feeling that it will take some hardware (RAM) to make a real difference, and part of it is just the general Windows experience.

Gonna run Disk Cleanup once the scan is complete.

Thanks all.

[mrlynn]

If you open Task Manager, you can see how much CPU power all the processes are using. Could be one that's just a hog, and maybe can be deleted or turned off.

/Mr Lynn

[Racer X]

Bimwad wrote:
It doesn't really affect my productivity in the strictest sense, it's just mostly an annoyance :-)

It is a small office, and IT is handled by a part-time consultant. A lot of times, I'm the one providing basic IT support for more common issues when required. I don't mess with the server setup, network configuration, and things like that, nor do I have a desire to.

Past practice when any problems struck was to physically swap out a machine, and leave the problematic one in a corner to be attended to later, even for the smallest issues. Personally, outside of hardware failure, I see physical swaps as a last resort, and try to rectify the problem so that the user doesn't have to reconfigure. I like to tweak my tools to a high degree, so there's even less desire on my part to resort to drastic measures, unless absolutely required. No such luxuries as preconfigured disk images to work with. I don't even know where half the software licenses originate from.

Considering the circumstances, stuff still works fine most of the time. But those making the ultimate IT decisions don't understand technology, or have just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

As for the machine, it's an old Dell with ~3GHz C2D, and 2GB of RAM. The 320GB drive is less than 1/3 full. Not the latest and greatest, but it did seem to run Win 7 decently before and is perfectly adequate for general office tasks. I do have admin access.

A machine of that era should take either 4 or 8 gigs of RAM, and its pretty cheap. A solid state hard drive would help too.