Making my netbook quicker?

trewyn15

trewyn15

New Member
Hey guys, I am looking to make my netbook a little faster. Right now I'm having a little trouble here and there. Here are my specs:

-Asus Eee PC 900HD - Replaced Screen - 60GB OCZ SSD - Windows XP Professional 32-bit SP3 - Will be upgrading to 2GB ram soon.

Here is what I'm trying to get accomplished with it:

-Boot faster-I keep the disk fragmented and cleaned, no junk files. I have a limited amount of programs and barely any programs set to boot when the computer's turned on. When I log on I am finding some interesting files in my processes. At any given time I have various svchost.exe running. As I type this I actually have 5 or more running. I have also seen other processes running, but they're not now, so I'm not sure exactly what they were.

Here's my start-up processes (minus Chrome, because I was typing this as I made the image):

startprocesses.jpg


-Sleep Issue-I'm not sure if this is a problem with Windows XP and a solid state, but whenever I try to put the netbook to sleep and wake it back up, I get a black screen, but I still get the activity lights showing that the computer is working. This isn't a huge deal because the computer boots rather quickly, but is rather annoying if I'm trying to save something that I've been working on.

That's about the only issues I'm having, aside from the keyboard being tiny and somewhat hard to type on lol

Any ideas or help would be wonderful, thanks guys!
 
svchost isn't an issue. It's running services necessary to keep XP running right :P

I'd recommend uninstalling iTunes if you don't have an iDevice and replacing AVG with MSE.

Also, if you're not running any Windows-specific programs, maybe you should consider moving to Linux if you're tech-savvy. Ubuntu or Mint would be a good distro for you to try.
 
lucasbytegenius said:
svchost isn't an issue. It's running services necessary to keep XP running right :P

I'd recommend uninstalling iTunes if you don't have an iDevice and replacing AVG with MSE.

Also, if you're not running any Windows-specific programs, maybe you should consider moving to Linux if you're tech-savvy. Ubuntu or Mint would be a good distro for you to try.
Click to expand...

That's what I thought, but found it interesting that it has so many processes running, so I wasn't sure if that was an issue.

I use my iPod Touch, so I'll probably be keeping iTunes, because this is like my mobile media device for pictures, videos and music.

Is MSE a lighter program? I'll look into that for sure.

I have run Ubuntu before but I'm not really interested in running it on this, just in the interested of keeping things simple, although it being so light would be really nice, just not practical IMO for what I'm looking to do.
 
Run CCleaner. Remove all the software you don't need. More RAM would be beneficial and MSE is really light on resources. I run a scan everyday and I never even notice it since it's completely in the background. Never affects performance and have never been infected.
 
trewyn15 said:
That's what I thought, but found it interesting that it has so many processes running, so I wasn't sure if that was an issue.

I use my iPod Touch, so I'll probably be keeping iTunes, because this is like my mobile media device for pictures, videos and music.

Is MSE a lighter program? I'll look into that for sure.

I have run Ubuntu before but I'm not really interested in running it on this, just in the interested of keeping things simple, although it being so light would be really nice, just not practical IMO for what I'm looking to do.
Click to expand...
Ah I see. MSE is definitely lighter. The extra RAM you're getting soon will definitely help too.
Denther said:
Run CCleaner. Remove all the software you don't need. More RAM would be beneficial and MSE is really light on resources. I run a scan everyday and I never even notice it since it's completely in the background. Never affects performance and have never been infected.
Click to expand...

He mentioned in the original post he keeps it clean.
 
well to start off, stop defragmenting the ssd. lol thats not doing it any good.

Can you post the msconfig start up programs, so you can uncheck the programs you don't want to run.
 
lucasbytegenius said:
Ah I see. MSE is definitely lighter. The extra RAM you're getting soon will definitely help too.


He mentioned in the original post he keeps it clean.
Click to expand...

I know he did but people's definition of clean may vary and that doesn't necessarily mean CCleaner.
 
mx344 said:
well to start off, stop defragmenting the ssd. lol thats not doing it any good.

Can you post the msconfig start up programs, so you can uncheck the programs you don't want to run.
Click to expand...

Yeah, after I thought about that some more I didn't really understand why I did it in the first place lol

So I'll probably get back into the startup programs and make sure I have just about everything closed. I'll post my startup programs to make sure I'm not leaving anything that I can get rid of.

Also, I'll get that extra ram soon, it runs good as it is surprisingly for what it is, but the extra ram won't hurt
 
You must remember Netbooks aren't made for speed. They are made for lightness/portability and only email/websurfing. You only have a celeron processor and only 1gb of ram, it supports up to 2gb of memory. Celeron cpu's are slow anyway. Upgrading the ram is the only thing you can do besides stop any unnecessary programs from running at bootup.
 
johnb35 said:
You must remember Netbooks aren't made for speed. They are made for lightness/portability and only email/websurfing. You only have a celeron processor and only 1gb of ram, it supports up to 2gb of memory. Celeron cpu's are slow anyway. Upgrading the ram is the only thing you can do besides stop any unnecessary programs from running at bootup.
Click to expand...

Yeah I realize that. It's actually surprisingly quick, although I don't run any large resource programs like Photoshop or video editing programs.

Here is what I have for startup programs:

startup.jpg


Any ideas for more that I can take off there without running into issues?

I just installed MSE and it's running great, can't tell it's there - Thanks!

Anyone have any ideas why I'm having that issue when turning my computer on from sleeping? I just tried again and left it for a while, after about 5 minutes my background comes up, but nothing else lol

One more question, anyone know a light-weight program like photoshop? I thought there used to be a lighter photoshop but I guess I was wrong.

Thanks for everyone's input!
 
Not sure how lightweight GIMP is but it's a decent photoshop alternative from what I hear. I've used it a few times. Always have MS Paint but that's like comparing Legos to micro-circuitry.
 
johnb35 said:
You still have a remnant of avg running. You can also disable apsdaemon.
Click to expand...

Which one is AVG? I'll have to make sure I deleted all files and make sure nothing else is left. Awesome, I'll disable that one too, just for future reference, what does apsdaemon do?

Denther said:
Not sure how lightweight GIMP is but it's a decent photoshop alternative from what I hear. I've used it a few times. Always have MS Paint but that's like comparing Legos to micro-circuitry.
Click to expand...

I've used GIMP also, I think with their latest release it got kind 'heavy'. Paint, mehh lol I've begun to use irfanview instead lol
 
Quick gooogle reveals that APSDaemon is used to wirelessly sync your iPod with your computer.
 
It's booting in just under 25 seconds... not bad but not as good as I think it could be.

Do you guys think ram will help at all? I'm thinking not too much.. lol
 
The extra ram would only really help while using the netbook if doing a lot of multitasking. I think people sometimes forget how little ram XP uses. I remember my wifes old hp that we no longer have ran XP on 256 MB of ram, not very well but it would boot and could go online and use windows media player.

Under 30 for a boot isn't to bad I think considering the cpu and I am sure you have a 5400 rpm with a low cache HDD.

The only thing I recommend is reinstalling Windows. I tried everything that was recommended on here on to my mom's 5 year old hp laptop and it helped but I felt it was not fast enough with the hardware it had so I did a fresh install of Windows Vista with updates and drivers and it seriously helped it out noticably. The only thing I tell anyone is doing a Windows install with drivers and updates is very easy but very time consuming so make sure it is on a day you have nothing planned.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top