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My friend asked me to fix his (corporate) PC for him. It has Windows XP installed on it and he doesn't have the install disc anymore, so I can't really format and reinstall it.

What are some other steps I can take without reformating the PC? It basically works, but is just slow. He'll be giving it to another member of the corporation.

What I've done so far is that I've removed all user accounts completely and created a new, fresh user account for the new owner. I'm wondering whether there's anything more I can do.

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Defragment the drive. – Randolph West Sep 24 '12 at 17:24
XP usually needs a defrag of the hard drive, but run a chkdsk /r on the drive before you defrag. Might need a memory upgrade also, minimum of 1 gig. – Moab Sep 24 '12 at 17:25
Also defragment pagefile and registry hives and check the Autoruns. – Ansgar Wiechers Sep 24 '12 at 17:28
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If this is a company PC, the company should be doing the work. At the very least, your friend should ask his IT dept if he can allow someone else to work on it. – Keltari Sep 24 '12 at 17:28
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Before doing anything, try to figure out why it's slow. Is the CPU 100% hogged? Or is it being throttled due to overheating? Is the RAM full and programs being paged to and from disk constantly? Is the hard drive heavily fragmented? Something else entirely? And finally, if your friend is to give the computer to a colleague, then your company's IT department should wipe the hard drive anyway and put a clean OS image on it (as well as perform any other necessary maintenance or upgrades). Why exactly is he asking you to fix it? – Indrek Sep 24 '12 at 17:33

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