Windows 2000 Pro speed problem
I have recently installed Win 2000 Pro as I heard that it is faster than my Win98 i had previously. But i found that it runs much slower and often takes like a minute or so to open an app or change between apps while they are alredy open.
I have recently installed Win 2000 Pro as I heard that it is faster than my Win98 i had previously.
But i found that it runs much slower and often takes like a minute or so to open an app or change between apps while they are alredy open. During this time I can hear the HD working overtime.
I defragmented, run Norton SystemWorks, installed RAM memory management programs but there is no difference.
My system specs:
IBM ThinkPad A21m
PIII 750
20gig HD - Win2000 running on seperate 6gig partition
128 RAM
Does anyone know why it is so slow and are there any ways of speeding it up. Any tweaks?
Thanks
But i found that it runs much slower and often takes like a minute or so to open an app or change between apps while they are alredy open. During this time I can hear the HD working overtime.
I defragmented, run Norton SystemWorks, installed RAM memory management programs but there is no difference.
My system specs:
IBM ThinkPad A21m
PIII 750
20gig HD - Win2000 running on seperate 6gig partition
128 RAM
Does anyone know why it is so slow and are there any ways of speeding it up. Any tweaks?
Thanks
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I thought I would throw in some experience. I know someone who had a AMD K6-2 350MHz processor, he installed Windows 2000 on it which at the time had only 64 MB RAM. It ran alright, he isn't a heavy user, mostly running Microsoft Word, Microsoft Access, Internet Exlporer, Nero, and Winamp. When RAM became cheap it popped in a 256 MB RAM module to up the RAM to 320 MB, and all of the older programs executed noticeably faster and disk swapping became less frequent.
So...if you upped your memory you would have a better performing system, but as ChristianB says, running Windows 2000 Pro on a Pentium 200 is not common nor is it a good idea, it is like asking an old 386 to run Windows 95.
So...if you upped your memory you would have a better performing system, but as ChristianB says, running Windows 2000 Pro on a Pentium 200 is not common nor is it a good idea, it is like asking an old 386 to run Windows 95.
while i agree that more than 128 mb of memory for win2k is optimal, win2k can run just fine on 128mb.
i got a desktop p3 450 with 128 and a IBM a20m laptop with 128mb. Both running win2k just fine.
on average i run a minimum of three applications at a time with little to no slow down due to file swappin.
i've run win2k on a p200 with 128mb of mem before as well and just for the record "IT WORKED GREAT!", faster than win98 when running multiple apps.
No, not as fast as my dual 1 gigger with 2 gig of memory, but damn, it worked alot better than you would normally assume. Much better than i anticipated.
BTW, my laptop is similar to the original posters, and win2k works great here. Something is janky with his install. Its not just memory or a slow laptop hard drive. My laptop is a notch slower than his and is very responsive.
i got a desktop p3 450 with 128 and a IBM a20m laptop with 128mb. Both running win2k just fine.
on average i run a minimum of three applications at a time with little to no slow down due to file swappin.
i've run win2k on a p200 with 128mb of mem before as well and just for the record "IT WORKED GREAT!", faster than win98 when running multiple apps.
No, not as fast as my dual 1 gigger with 2 gig of memory, but damn, it worked alot better than you would normally assume. Much better than i anticipated.
BTW, my laptop is similar to the original posters, and win2k works great here. Something is janky with his install. Its not just memory or a slow laptop hard drive. My laptop is a notch slower than his and is very responsive.
Quote:I'm not trying to offend anyone either but when I upgraded to Win2K pro, I had 512 meg memory and my once speedy system turned into a dog.
Disable the pagefile. You speed will increase.
Disable the pagefile. You speed will increase.
Quote:I'm not trying to offend anyone either but when I upgraded to Win2K pro, I had 512 meg memory and my once speedy system turned into a dog.
Okay well that could be for a lot of reasons. First off I can't infer whether you are describing one or two separate upgrades. 1. from some lesser quantity of Ram, 2. an upgrade to Win2K Pro, or 3. Both.
If the answer is both you really are comparing apples to oranges. Adding more RAM can slow a system down, think about it, it has to address more memory therefore it has to search more "mailboxes" before it finds the right one. However most programs fit into 256 Megs of RAM (not to say that 512 isn't better for complex games and graphics) therefore an upgrade from 256 to 512 would probably slow down the execution of say MSpaint, but I can guarantee you that if you start running complex applications and several of them simulataneously you should notice an improvement with 512 megs vs 256 or any value below that.
Now on the other hand if you originally had 64 megs of ram and upgraded to 512MB there should be a 100% chance that everything will be faster, because Windows 2000 Pro takes up about 100 megs beneath the OS and drivers.
As for upgrading to Win2K and having your system perform more slowly that could be due to a myriad of reasons:
1. You have a Sub Pentium II class system
2. You have more applications and or more bloated versions thereof running simultaneously (in your system tray for example)
3. The drivers your hardware vendors wrote for Win2K reflect a half ass quickie job and aren't as optmized as the drivers they wrote for prior OS's
4. You need a benchmark, because you still don't believe me
Quote:Disable the pagefile. You speed will increase.
Okay that's a particularly bad idea for anyone with less than about 1.2 gigs of RAM. If you disable your pagefile, and try to edit some complex graphics or run a whole bunch of programs at once you'll run out of memory. Not to mention that Windows will be less stable, because you're running a nonstandard memory configuration. Nonetheless I may try this just to see how things go, but really if you do this and start getting out of memory errors use your brain and re-enable your pagefile.sys.
Okay well that could be for a lot of reasons. First off I can't infer whether you are describing one or two separate upgrades. 1. from some lesser quantity of Ram, 2. an upgrade to Win2K Pro, or 3. Both.
If the answer is both you really are comparing apples to oranges. Adding more RAM can slow a system down, think about it, it has to address more memory therefore it has to search more "mailboxes" before it finds the right one. However most programs fit into 256 Megs of RAM (not to say that 512 isn't better for complex games and graphics) therefore an upgrade from 256 to 512 would probably slow down the execution of say MSpaint, but I can guarantee you that if you start running complex applications and several of them simulataneously you should notice an improvement with 512 megs vs 256 or any value below that.
Now on the other hand if you originally had 64 megs of ram and upgraded to 512MB there should be a 100% chance that everything will be faster, because Windows 2000 Pro takes up about 100 megs beneath the OS and drivers.
As for upgrading to Win2K and having your system perform more slowly that could be due to a myriad of reasons:
1. You have a Sub Pentium II class system
2. You have more applications and or more bloated versions thereof running simultaneously (in your system tray for example)
3. The drivers your hardware vendors wrote for Win2K reflect a half ass quickie job and aren't as optmized as the drivers they wrote for prior OS's
4. You need a benchmark, because you still don't believe me
Quote:Disable the pagefile. You speed will increase.
Okay that's a particularly bad idea for anyone with less than about 1.2 gigs of RAM. If you disable your pagefile, and try to edit some complex graphics or run a whole bunch of programs at once you'll run out of memory. Not to mention that Windows will be less stable, because you're running a nonstandard memory configuration. Nonetheless I may try this just to see how things go, but really if you do this and start getting out of memory errors use your brain and re-enable your pagefile.sys.
Disabling the pagefile does help speedwise, but Photoshop complains about not having one (at least PS6 did) and some other apps might too. Also, Windows is a little slower about releasing RAM when requested, so while you might "see" that you have extra RAM available, Windows may not agree with you and proclaim that you are out of resources. The best way to know is to use a performance counter and check to see how much swap file usage there is over about a week. Then, you can either resize it or remove it completely. This has worked fine for me with systems of 512MB RAM or more. This behavior with *needing* a pagefile seems limited to Windows and its apps more than anything else, as various Linux distros I have used (RH, Debian, etc) never even bother with it on my systems with 512MB and 1GB of RAM.
