Comments on: How to Speed Up Your Computer Running Windows XP – Part 1

By: chien

chien — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:06:35 +0000

Your post is really helpful. Especially the one about the dumprep.exe! I really hate it when the stop error screen shuts down my pc when I am playing plants vs. zombies and this is a BIG, BIG help! A bunch of thanks to you! And, I will try your tips to make my old computer work faster! (at this moment, I only have 4.43 GB left in my hard drive. Lol)

By: Jeramie

Jeramie — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 19:39:05 +0000

I’ve found that having network shortcuts (ie, UNC path shortcuts usually to servers that are offline at the time) on my desktop SERIOUSLY slows down lots of programs when they try to present a save box or anything starting on the desktop. It also seriously slows down the Windows picture preview. I take all my network shortcuts and put them in a subfolder on the desktop, and viola, long pauses gone. No idea why, but read it elsewhere and confirmed it was true.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 19:41:07 +0000

“Compress Old Files”, I have done the same as Michael. How do I remove them ? thanks

By: Michael McLaughlin

Michael McLaughlin — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 02:03:45 +0000

Do NOT choose “Compress Old Files” — while this will free up some disk space, it will also make your computer much, much slower.

I have been compressing “old files.” How do I uncompress them. Will they uncompress the next time they are accessed?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:37:01 +0000

I came across the Eddie on everything website and I figured you were a very knowledgeable source of reliable information. So my question is….Im running Win XP and have been having a problem opening a few files. Example…I go to my documents folder and find that once I click on the folder I want to get into (movies) it opens up just fine…and about 2 second later it closes by itself. And this happens everytime. How can I fix this? I have run all sorts of adware and spyware and trojans software to get rid of anything on here. Still no fix.

By: Ryan Ferneau

Ryan Ferneau — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:29:11 +0000

What can I do if I already compressed some old files and want to decompress them?

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:48:18 +0000

Cool ! Clearing the desktop was amazingly effective. I have a networked machine with a lot of cranky old legacy databases, restoring my ‘puter after a reformat takes days and days. Every time I run a registry cleaner I loose at least a days productivity trying to get everything back. Thanks for that.

PS – when is your “we all hate vista” post coming out. Dell shipped me a vista “powered” laptop and it is unbelievably annoying.

By: The Shadow

The Shadow — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 15:15:43 +0000

Once you’ve reinstalled everything and have it A-OK, running Norton’s Ghost 2003 from a boot floppy or CD will make a compressed image file of C: which you can tell it to burn to a DVD. Ghost will put the boot floppy on the DVD for you, making it a bootable restore disk. With a Ghost DVD handy, you never again need to go through the agonizing job of reinstalling XP and all your apps, data, drivers, etc. I make several new Ghost backups every week, so I always have a current backup in case of a major HD crash.
Ghost Rules!

By: The Shadow

The Shadow — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 15:00:41 +0000

Computer security and efficiency is my occupational specialty. I found your Part 1, very interesting, albeit a bit basic. (but good, and safe, for the beginner)

Eagerly awaiting Part 2.

By: Charles

Charles — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 22:33:46 +0000

Thanks, you made my day with your fix.I had dumprep.exe running in triplicate on numerous occasions and always deleted it in the task manager to solve the problem, but now: BEG ONE
PS:When is “How to Speed Up Your Computer Running Windows XP – Part 2″ coming? I’m looking forward to it.