Getting the most out of an old PC

Question

I'm currently using an IBM Thinkpad T30 as my main computer right now, and it's really quite old. This thing is really quite slow and I'm not able to purchase a replacement at the moment, so I'd like to ask what are some of the things I could do to improve its performance and thus extend its usefulness?

Here's a quick rundown of the specs: - Pentium 4 M, 2.0 GHz - 768 MB of RAM (It came with 512, but I managed to scavenge a 256 MB module from another laptop) - 30 GB Hard Drive (which is now down to around 800~ MB free space) - Onboard ethernet is shot, replaced with a single PCMCIA card - Onboard wireless is also shot, replaced with a USB wifi adaptor - DVD Drive - Windows XP SP3

In the background I'm running Online Armor, Notebook Hardware Control, AVG Free, and the TortoiseHG RPC Server (I'm not entirely sure I need that running). I've deleted pretty much everything I don't think I need, I've run msconfig and made it so that only the programs I need run at startup, defragged the hard drive (twice), disabled Windows Update, and disabled all the visual effects, but what else can I do?

Startup time from power off -> login screen is respectable enough, but login screen -> desktop time is pretty poor. It takes a full 2.5 minutes, and even then applications like Firefox and anything Flash related (Facebook games, youtube, etc) run rather slowly, and even browsing the file system can take a few seconds to get going.

Answer 1

The Pentium 4 M is quite a decent processor, however, as the bottleneck in your system i suspect the 30 GB hard disk which is most likely only spinning at 4200 rpm (get the drive model from the device manager and look up the specs to be certain), upgrading to a 5400 rpm drive will yield quiet a boost (or maybe a 7200 rpm drive, a solid state disk might be too big an investment for such an old laptop).

A fresh Windows installation often works miracles, especially when properly tweaked, visit blackviper.com for a service tweak guide and manage your startup routine with Autoruns.

If you don't want to waste your precious (and rather scarce) system resources with some memory resident and permanently active "security suite", you may have a look at Sandboxie. if you can spare, say, 128 MB RAM, it's getting even better, you can use a RAM disk as sandbox container folder, benefits: the convenience of not having to clear the sandbox manually and your browser speed will experience quite a boost (as caching will all happen in the system memory rather than on the comparably slow hard disk). that said, you should run regular scans (e.g. with A-Squared Command Line Scanner or ClamWin).

Answer 2

I've done recent work on PCs of that vintage and configuration. They're certainly usable once they've been cleaned up a bit.

Firstly, make sure they're not infected with anything. Of course, a fresh install never hurts. After the initial scan and clean-up (if any), I have tended to stick with MS Security Essentials. Sure, it's not the most effective option, nor the most lightweight, but it integrates tightly and works well enough once you've got a clean PC, and it's one of the few free options that will do real-time protection.

Grab a copy of Revo Uninstaller (free edition) and CCleaner. Use the former to get rid of any old and/or unused apps that are installed; use the latter to clean out application droppings like tmp files, cache files, pre-fetch files, etc.. You can reclaim a surprising amount of space this way.

If you're confident in your configuration, you can disable "system restore" to flush the system config snapshots, which can add up over time. Then re-enable and take a fresh snapshot. That will likely clear up a few GB for you. Please consider the implications of this and proceed with caution.

Get the latest and greatest BIOS updates and hardware drivers. You want to make sure your hardware is running a its best. Things like making sure DMA is being used on IDE devices, good video drivers, etc..

Select "For Best Performance" in the System settings, since disabling all the GUI bells and whistles will result in a noticeably more responsive interface. Sure, it'll look like Windows 2000, but is that a bad thing? :)

You've already cleaned up the autorun list, so that's good. Keep an eye on it, too -- things have a way of finding their way there and wasting system resources. Also check the list of services for lame/useless stuff like update notifications, as you can check for updates on your own. There are entire tech articles and HOWTOs for trimming the services running for the average home PC.

Maxing out the RAM, of course, is a relatively cheap way to eek more useful life from an old machine. You'll never be play new game titles or HD video on such a machine, but it'll help with typical programs and web browsing for sure. For XPsp3, the difference between 512M and 768M is the most dramatic boost; anything above that is icing on the cake. Hit crucial.com for a configurator to tell you what specs your machine needs in terms of RAM, then hit Pricewatch or Newegg for getting a decent deal on such memory. Given the age of the machine, I'd just buy the cheapest generic stuff you can find, provided you can return it in the unlikely event it isn't compatible w/ your machine.

Answer 3

Try loading Ubuntu Linux on it. It'll run well on that spec. What's the exact wireless USB adapter? That's the only thing that may or may not work.

Answer 4

Replace AVG Free with a more lightweight antivirus. I suggest Panda Cloud, which runs the actual AV engine on their end.

Answer 5

Oh, come on ... this is not so old as to be unusable. Quite the opposite.

I would probably at this moment just upgrade the HDD to a little bigger model. Get the fan cleaned up (this can often mean a difference). Maybe scavenge another memory piece, but ... that's it really.

Answer 6

I find that a reinstall of the OS helps performance, especially on Windows, provided that one has been running the system and installing/uninstalling software for over a year. The perception may be purely psychological, but I do feel better after doing so.

Assuming you have a valid Windows XP license, you could do some research into TinyXP to get some pointers for turning off services and other resource sinks that aren't benefiting you.

Answer 7

First I would free up some space on that hard drive. The OS needs more than 800mb for swap and temporary storage.

Next I would look at putting some more RAM in it if it is fiscally possibly/feasible.

Answer 8

I would agree wholeheartedly with the suggestion to reinstall Windows XP.

But barring that drastic step, you might be able to free up some valuable disk space by running SpaceMonger: a utility that graphically shows your hard disk utilization. A free version that works just fine is located here. You can often find large video files or the like that you didn't know you had.

Answer 9

Following fahadsadah's lead, if you know what you're doing (e.g. can take care of malware and know where to download safe software and can spot scams and all that), remove your antivirus. I'm not running one myself. If you still want one but don't want to have it run all the time try ClamWin AV and do some tweaking so it doesn't run with Windows. Then you can just invoke a scan from an Explorer context menu if you're suspicious.

If you don't want to dump AVG, though, at least turn off real-time protection. I think that should save some CPU cycles (that's unscientific, chime in if you have better info, thanks).

Answer 10

Try installing Ubuntu on a flash-drive and using it for a while with your laptop.
All you need is a USB Boot path -- even that can be worked around.

It is likely to give you better performance over the present XP installation.
You can,

• do this without scrapping your present laptop setup
• check compatibility of the Ubuntu setup
• compare the performance difference

---

Update: Plug in a USB flash device before you boot.
Then press F8 or F12 (probably the latter) while booting to generate a boot-menu.
If your bios can boot through flash, it will show up on that menu.

If this does not work, there are two things you can try:
1. Upgrade your BIOS -- this sometimes helps
2. You can setup a boot path that starts from your harddisk but continues to boot from your USB (this does not require a USB Boot capability).

Finally, if you tried Ubuntu from a LiveCD,
it is not the correct comparison.
I use Ubuntu from a flash-boot path on a old 512 MB Pentium M where I get good performance compared to the installed Windows XP (which has also been optimized).

Working off the USB should also move you away from any hard-disk limitations (that Molly refers to).

Answer 11

I decided to answer my own question like this because I took suggestions from each of the answers above and there are a lot of good ones in there, so here's what worked for me:

1. I started disabling services, a quick Google brought these two sites up and I used them to disable all unnecessary services.
2. I uninstalled AVG and replaced it with Panda Cloud.
3. I used WinDirStat to find the files that took up the most space and clear out the ones I don't need anymore and I've gone from 800 MB free to around 3.5 GB free.
4. I used MyDefrag's "Optimize Monthly" script to defrag my hard disk.
5. Using msconfig, I stopped some programs from starting up with Windows.
6. I went to My Computer->Properties->Advanced->Performance/Settings and adjusted the settings for "Best Performance".

Now the PC responds a lot quicker when browsing the filesystem, startup time is down to around 30-45 seconds from 2+ minutes and all the applications I've tried start up and run faster. Of the five steps, I think steps 1 and 2 gave the biggest performance increase (assuming of course, you're not pressed for HD space) mainly because of AVG and it's realtime protection, but I could be wrong. I'm planning on doing much more to the PC, I've gone out and started looking for a better hard drive, and I'm looking to see if I can get another 512 MB module to max out the RAM on this thing.