Hello Mattata

With 2 GB your PC will be faster and you can run more programs without the swap file is used. After upgrading the memory, the size of the two files pagefile.sys (the swap file) and hiberfil.sys (hibernation on disk) will be increased to more than 2 GB each one. Your hard drive is 80 GB capacity and almost full? Perhaps, it’s time to change the drive also? You can use various disk cloning tools to copying your actual drive (Acronis True Image by example) on bigger one.

I did a test today on a PC that I use almost never. The CPU is an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.5 GHz) with just 256 MB running Windows XP SP3. There have been just few Windows updates after formating in 2012. Avast (free) 2014 is installed with Firefox and Opera too. I’m using Startup Control Panel.cpl http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml (looks like msconfig) to configure Windows XP for just the bare minimum of programs launched at startup.

So, what is the score for this outdated PC (Your PC is faster and have 2x more RAM).

  • The total system startup is completed after 2 minutes-2 minutes 30s (I mean no more disk access, all programs loaded).
  • Open a folder is immediate or just take few seconds.
  • Launch Firefox v25.0.1 takes 2 minutes.
  • Opera v17 is “faster”, just one minute to wait!
  • If I open new Tab in browser or launch other programs, the performances decrease (it’s not a surprise with just 256 MB).

This is why I was surprised with 512 MB the performance of your PC are so low (3 to 4 minutes to load Opera and few minutes to open folder?), even with almost none programs launched at startup, as indicated by essexboy? This is why I also said to check the hard drive (multiples read errors/retry, can slow the disk). Or 100% CPU usage also! the old PC 256 MB I tested have a problem with the Windows Update service using 100% CPU! I had disabled this service to do the tests. With WU activated, for example, Firefox starts in 4 minutes instead of 2! Eh eh, it looks like a little bit what happens on your PC? My other PC have 512 MB (Windows XP/OpenSuse Linux), 1 GB (XP/Win7 or XP/OpenSuse), 2 GB (ex-3GB) for Win7/Win8 on my (Lenovo) Notebook…

This is a screenshot of my recent test with Windows XP SP3 on 256 MB outdated PC (using PC with just 256 MB is really NOT recommended!).

http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/7354/za7y.jpg