I was tuning a customers XP system (a 2 year old system with 512MB RAM).

It should be fast enough, but was using 380MB ram while idle, and I’m told it it can sometimes take 10 or 20 minutes to pop up an internet banking website.

So I do the usual: clean out temp folders (one has 3000+ files in it), clean out the IE cache (and I install cache sentry), remove rubbish startup applications, do a registry cleanup (using jv16 powertools), defragment, etc.

After about 1.5 hours, the system seems to be running even slower…

I left the itunes/ipod services running, as they get a lot of use, and norton is also running (which, as usual, slows down the PC startup by a few minutes).

I look at doing an MS windows update (to update the hardware drivers), but the update just sits at 0%.

Ah, I’ve seen this before. Its the norton firewall.

I disable the firewall, and the updates start.

Unfortunately, I inadvertently start the office update as well (which take 20 minutes to run 🙁 )

While waiting, I talk to the customer, and he decides to remove norton (as he has also heard bad things about it).

Once the updates complete, I remove norton (another wait for 15 minutes). I install antivir, winpatrol, spyware blaster, windows defender.

After all that, the system is only down to using 320MB… still more than I would like for this type of system (about 220MB – 270MB is about right).

But the system feels faster, and the customer is very happy with the huge (to them) gain in speed.