I guess there are two areas to consider here.
 
1- did the games run ok when you 1st got this PC?
2- Do you join in with most of us and spend hours tweaking and fine tuning?!
 
To be honest I'd rattle through the most common scenarios. Off the top of my head:
 
Scan for viruses, spyware, trojans etc. etc.
Run scandisk ('Error Checking' in XP)- right click your hard disk in My Computer -> Properties -> Tools tab -> Error Checking -> Check Now button.
Do a defrag (I use Diskeeper) but he XP one should be ok.
Download CCleaner -removes junk files.
The same goes for Spybot and Ad-aware.
 
Google can find these for you (its our best friend)
 
So that's the files/disk/nasties sorted -I have probably forgotten something- I am sure someone will suggest other things you can do
 
Next thing is maybe you have excess tasks running in the background. These are typically programs that can hog resources- so called 'update' utilities are one- anything that is hovering by the clock needs checking out. Of course there are genuine ones too.
 
Next is Antivirus- try to find the option to scan 'recommended' files when doing a real-time scan. Your PC could be scanning every file it opens.
 
An update of the graphics card drivers is always a good idea- go to the vendor's site for these.
 
Same goes for the motherboard- get the latest chipset drivers.
 
Maybe you can find a guide about how to setup DirectX and OpenGL - you might have all of your settings set to high quality which may be making things appear slower.
 
A slightly more risky operation is disabling unneeded services. Be really careful with this as it can all go very wrong! (Of course don't hold me responsible!). Black viper's guide is useful since it has a 'safe' option.
 
You can try out a few of the many tweaks for XP- typical ones are turning off the Themes in XP, not using a large desktop image etc.
 
Of course backup the Registry so you can restore if you make a mistake. If you get scared at any point just give it a miss or do some research to work out exactly what you need to do to accomplish something.
 
I guess that's the basics.
 
To be honest it could be anything nibbling at your system. Hopefully one of the above will sort that out. Good luck!
 
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ScinteX gave an excellent run down on what to check. But, to be honest, your processor is slow comparatively and the MX card is outdated. The enemy of all computers is heat. It does take its toll. Things are going to slow down on these machines. Further, despite the best of care, it seems that some kind of "dry rot" sets into the OS. With a lot of installs, the registry gets bigger and entries are left in that need to be removed. Nvidia drivers that are supposed to be removed aren't. Sometimes the only thing to do is a clean install.

Thats certainly something to bear in mind- something that I do (that I'd highly recommend) is to get your hands on a copy of Norton Ghost.
If you do a complete rebuild then you can create an image of your new work of art and then that can act as a reliable backup when required. Also good for those 'its going a bit slow and I havent a clue why' moments!
I create a separate partition (thats a slice of hard disk that has it's own drive letter) so it's a fairly simple affair to restore this image should it be needed.
Then I create another partition that holds all of my personal files.
Therefore drive C: just has XP and installed programs/games on it.
I recently tried Service Pack 2 for XP and when it went a little wrong I simply restored my Norton Ghost image and the machine was back to how it was previously.
 
I see heat was mentioned- this is so true! Airflow is always a good thing. Maybe worth having a peek inside your PC and giving it a quick vacuum since the case fans probably dont have dust filters on them.

erm...best not use a vacuum to get rid of the dust.
 
Vacuum cleaner = static
motherboard + static = not good
 
If you haven't got enough of your own puff, try a compressed air can
 
Rgds
AndyF

A:\>Format C:
 
lmao
 
Okay, I know this is probably the first thing you've tried, but it is something that is really important. In the games, try going into the graphics menu, and turn everything wayyyy down. Try running the game in 640X480 resolution with 16 bit color, turn off all the uneccesary details. Then, see how the game runs. Play it for about 5 minutes to see how choppy it gets. If it's a lot better, then just experiment with different graphics settings until ya get what you like.
 
I'm running an AMD T-bird 1.2 gigger, with 384 megs of SDRAM (PC133) and Geforce4 MX440. The graphics card is the PCI edition. And I get pretty good speeds in most programs. I can run GTA3 at full detail just fine. Unreal Tournament 2003 can have most graphic options fairly high. Every game I try runs pretty smooth.
 
 
 
You might also want to try screwing around with the system paging file. Go to control panel/system/advanced/performance settings/advanced/change. In there, select the box that ays specify your own amount or something. Set the minimun amount to about 10-15 megs less that the amount of RAM your comp has, and the maximum can be about 100-150 megs above that.

THANKS ALL U GUYS 4 YOUR REALLY GOOD HELP AS I WILL TRY ALL YOUR GREAT IDEAS 1 BY 1!!!
 
 

hi Charnel
 
Iv gone into the memory settings you said about and couldn't work out how 2 do it!!
 
cuz i have winXP its different.
 
On the C: drive it says:
 
Custom settings
Space available: 29565 mb
 
Initial size (mb): 768
 
Maximum size (mb): 1536
 
Then to tick boxes saying:
 
System managed size:
 
No paging file: with a settings button next to it
 
 
Total paging file size for all drives:-
 
Minimum allowed: 2mb
 
Recommended: 766mb
 
Currently allocated: 768mb
 
 
 
ANY USE?

hi Charnel
 
Iv gone into the memory settings you said about and couldn't work out how 2 do it!!
 
cuz i have winXP its different.
 
On the C: drive it says:
 
Custom settings
Space available: 29565 mb
 
Initial size (mb): 768
 
Maximum size (mb): 1536
 
Then to tick boxes saying:
 
System managed size:
 
No paging file: with a settings button next to it
 
 
Total paging file size for all drives:-
 
Minimum allowed: 2mb
 
Recommended: 766mb
 
Currently allocated: 768mb
 
 
 
ANY USE?

98% of the time people should let Windows manage the page file automatically.
 
So just leave it be for (generally) better performance.
 
It would probably be more beneficial to disable the indexing service, clean unneeded temp files, and defragment your hard drive.