My PC is so slow that it takes 8 minutes to boot up! (upgrade RAM or new PC?)

Okay, I am really pissed at my PC beause it is insanely slow! It crashes a lot! 2-8 times a day! (not anymore)
Here are the specs:

AMD Athlon 1800+ @ 1.53 GHz (released in 2002)
256 MB of RAM
40GB Hard Drive
Running Xp Pro SP2
NVIDIA GeForce 3 or 4 440 MX (just updated the driver plus Direct X 9)
Asus a7v999 motherboard

It takes 8 minutes or so just to boot up! My parents are always yelling at me about how often I use the computer. Okay, the only reason why I use so much is because my PC is very slow therefore it slows down my progress of finishing my work! That and it's queit loud. I am so fustrated with this PC.

But now it is somewhat better. I do kinda run Xp smoothly with 256 MB of RAM. I use something called SmartRAM to clean my memory so I ca get around 128-180 MB of RAM which is free. I can record video off my screen (watch my YouTube video) and somewhat edit videos.
So what is better?
UPGRADE or wait half-a-year (6 months and up) for a new PC (which might suck and might be slow OR I might end up waiting until the Back-to-School sale (8 months and UP)! My dad takes forever when getting new stuff. He waits at the alst minute. Like when he said that he will apply Internet on my PC (last year: Christmas, then he postponed it to March Break, then Summer, then again this year for Christmas and I still don't have Internet on my Pc! Therefore Me getting a new PC might be postponed until the Cristmas Break (next year)!
So should I beg for an upgrade in RAM of wait for a new PC whihc migh be poseponed for another year!
And when I do get a new PC, I will burn the hell the of my old PC! Well, after giving some parts to my dad's PC.

So what will it be?

UPGRADE in RAM (2GB Consair or Kingston or some other brand for roughly $50-$80
or
Wait for 6-12 months for a new PC?

I need your help ROmulation Community!

P.S. I've tried everything to speed up my slow PC. Watch my video and you will understand what I mean!
YouTube User: thedailynewspost (the name came from a school newspaper that I created!)
From CCleaner to Advanced SystemCare to cleaning up the start-up programs, everything without spending money.

Oh yah, I almost forgot, can DDR2 memory go into a DDR slot? Because DDR2 is both better, cheaper and has more capacity than DDR. I need that info before buying DDR or DDR2 RAM.
Oh yah, My motherboard: Asus A7V333!

 

Re: My PC is so slow that it takes 8 minutes to boot up!

You need 512MB of ram for XP to run it smooth

 

Re: My PC is so slow that it takes 8 minutes to boot up!

LOL, I somewhat un XP smoothly, even without 512 MB of RAM! I've done so much tweaking wiht the regestry so my PC won't crash (as much, now it's about 3 times a week!)

I can still play games, etc. But my PC doesn;t have Internet so I cannot update from that OC but i can dwnload them off the download page of microsoft.com and I knwo what is needed to be downloaded. Now my PC is somewhat updated (probably 2 or 3 updates not there yet). Still, at TigerDirect.ca (yes, i Canadian!) DDR RAM, highest capacity: 1 GB for $40-60! When I do get my new PC 96-12 months from now) I will give the DDR RAM to my dad's PC which I think also has DDR ram slots!

 

At school we also use computers from the prehistoric but they still work pretty fast, go into CTRL + ALT + DEL and send the open procceses
It could be junk that makes your pc run trassy
Al the Registry Easy's and often shit don't speed your up , but it ruin's your pc

I shouldn't spend money on this computer any more

 

DDR only fits into DDR slots, DDR2 only fits into DDR2 slots, and DDR3 only fits into DDR3 slots.

Honestly, today's computing needs would require you to upgrade pretty much every aspect of your computer, so my suggestion is to just get a new one.

My netbook owns your computer.

 

First of all the AMD Athlon 1800+ has a Socket A(Socket 462). You will be hard pressed to find a CPU now days that will even fit. Even if you do your CPU may not be supported by the motherboard.
Your motherboard also doesn't support more than 2Ghz so upgrading the CPU isn't really a good idea since you are fairly close to the limit to begin with. So if you want to get your computer to go faster you will have to get RAM.
Your motherboard does not support DDR2 RAM. The only ram your computer supports are PC2700/PC2100/PC1600. Look each of them up to find some good RAM. You can get up to 3GB of RAM which will speed up your computer.
However I agree that you should just buy a new computer. Even a netbook would obliterate your current PC. Those generally run from around 300$.

 

Hi, you can speed up your computer by the following ways:
1.run a antivirus software to scan your computer fully.

virus usually impacts the speed of computer.
If there is no virus, see the possible reasons that make computers slow down and solutions.

2.Registry is the centre database of your computer operating system which contains information and settings for hardware, operating system software, most non-operating system software, and per-user settings. You must load the registry whenever you launch any programs on your computer. If the registry is too fat or with some errors, computer's performance will seriously be impacted. So, you need to clean up registry and fix its errors.

If you are not familiar with registry, don't remove files away from it and clean up it easily for you may delete important things that will make your computer in trouble. You'd better choose to use a professional registry cleaner,personally,I like wondershare registry optimizer,it's safe to operating system.

3.There must be too many programs start up automatically when you start your computer.Run a registry optimizer or cleaner to stop those unnecessary start-up programs.

4.Have you ever clean up your computer since you bought it? If the answer is never, I am sure that there are lots of junk files on it. Junk files is also one of reasons that will cause computer slowing down. You'd better delete them regularly.

2,3,4 can be realized by a registry optimizer.

5.If a registry optimizer doesn't work, add RAM or do a fresh reinstall of windows. Before you do a reinstall, please remember to back up.However, you should know that frequent reinstall is harm to hard disk.

6.Put programs on other drivers ,not C driver, because commonly C is for operating system. And defrag hard disks every 2 months.

7. do not run too many programs at one time
Good luck.

 

Try to get CCleaner if you don't have it. Defrag your HDD.

I personally use Tiny XP Beast Edition, and it runs perfectly.

My PC Specs.
Dell Dimension 4300
1.6 ghz
256 mb ram
160 GB HDD 100GB for Tiny Beast and 60GB for Mepis Linux.

Upgrading your computer will not be worth it, if you don't want to try a different OS, then just get a new computer.

 

Frequent reinstallations of an OS is not harmful to the hard drive.

 

True, I've installed XP and Linux on one of my (now external storage) HDDs countless times and it's 4 or 5 years old.

 

Format your hard drive, and install something like TinyXP (as someone mentioned before). Actually, 256 MB RAM is just fine if you're doing average stuff with your PC (not playing games, no HD video of course). That'll buy you some time until you get a new PC.

 

Here are my answers to the questions/solutions above
1. I’ve scanned my PC weekly using AVAST! Anti-Virus. I was able to find a Trojan but I knew what it was. It was win32/induc. This virus was detected by AVG before (which was in July of 2009). It was located in the program files of IOBit Security 360 Beta. I remember that someone encountered a problem like this. I’ve removed the virus months ago and the constant crashing stopped and I was able to use my computer more productively but it was still slow. I enjoy using AVAST! That and I can use it until 2018! (Teehee)
2. I used Advanced SystemCare 3 (by IOBit) and it fixed up my registry. I put the settings to Top Performance, therefore it’s faster than before.
3. I’ve literally stripped down my PC on start-up items. The only thing that is on is AVAST (the shield thingy) and ctfmon.exe (<- what is this??) and that’s about it. I used to have RocketDock there but I removed it from the start-up.
4. Yes, I’ve cleaned it by like a lot. Temps, logs, etc, I removed them using Advanced SystemCare 3 (oh wow, free promotion!) which I do weekly (or twice a week).
5. I am begging for RAM but I can only go up to 3.2GB because my XP is 32-bit (either way, I can only get 1-2 GB of RAM because my parents won’t buy that much (e.g. 3GB) I clean installed in July of 2009. I had to re-install everything and re-configure everything. (MOAN!)
6. Yes, I do put my Program Files in other drives. I have three separate partitions, C, D and E.
C:\WINDOWS; Documents (such as files, pictures, music, etc.); Program Files
D:\Pictures ; videos ; back-up (which is very small, I stuffed it all In SkyDrive and DVDs
E:\Program Files ONLY
7. I barley ever multi-task and I know that doing that will slow down any PC, even if it is a fast one. All I really do if play games! Yes, it is amazing how my PC can actually play 3D games, etc. followed by making videos (see my YouTube account: thedailynewspost). I too am frustrated with my computer but I’ve made faster than before so I wish to share it to the world(as in YouTube, over 1000 views and up!) I will change the first video you see to “How to Speed up your slow PC using 5 Easy 2 use Tips!” I hope you enjoy the video!

P.S. Happy New Year! 2010! Yipee to the Winter Olympics at Vancouver!
Peace! Thanks for helping!

 

It wears out the head of the Hard drive, after like 5 reinstallations in about a month.

 

So does regular reading and writing of data onto the platters. It's no different. And the magnetic head doesn't really wear out that easily.

 

I think it just writes more data... I dunno. My uncle says not to install any large OS more than 5 times in a short period. For example, installing Windows 7 over and over and over again. That is like deleting 10GB, putting 10GB in, deleting it again, and so on.

 

It doesn't take a hard drive that much effort to "delete" something. All the data is still there, the OS just pretends it isn't and eventually it will be overwritten by new data.

 

MY 1st laptop is the slowest laptop on the planet....It takes about 10 min for me to log in and about another 20 for me to actually be able to do anything it has so many viruses and spyware its ridicoulous. So glad i got a new one and im not going to do all the stupid stuff i i did with my first one and actually use norton and cccleaner unlike i did with my 1st laptop it had no protection. Its like a target for trojans..but i still love it in a way because literally all of my emulation stuff is on here(thank you romulation) and ive played my first emulator on that computer good times =]