Software or hardware problem?

[imported_sphinx]

A friend of mine has a Gateway PC with a 2.7ghz Celeron with 512mb ram, on-board video and Win XP Home. I thought it was the on-board video so we switched out the 256mb that came with it and put in 512mb stick thinking that would solve the problem it didn't. He is using Anti-Vir virus scanner. He said it didn't start to slow down till he had updated it to v7.0 which is why we did the ram upgrade. But it is running so slow that, now I am thinking it could be a HDD problem. I say that because it is running too slow. There is not much running in the background. I disabled everything that wasn't needed including the virus scanner. I can't figure this thing out. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Markbnj]

If it is just running slowly, then it could be nothing more than having only 512m in the box. With that amount of ram XP is going to have to swap to the disk cache a lot.

 

[cKGunslinger]

Define "slow." Screen refresh and drawing is slow? Apps loading slowly? Mouse response is slow?

 

[imported_sphinx]

So 512mb is to much. Or am I going to have to change some settings?

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: sphinx
So 512mb is to much. Or am I going to have to change some settings?

 

[imported_sphinx]

The mouse is fine, screen refresh is fine. It is loading to slow. It boots up pretty quick but when I am on the desktop. it runs to slow. Programs take forever to load in the system tray. I would right click on the desktop and the menu takes forever to load.

 

[PuppettMaster001]

Disable the antivir see if it is the 7.0 that is causing the slowdowns. If it is try using a different free antivirus program. Run some hijack this to see if you have any spyware.