frostbite,
Knowing the nature of the beast is half the battle!
Apart from viruses, the most common reason that I have come across for PCs slowing up is a proliferation of "helper" items that automatically start when the PC is booted / user logs on. Anything from MS Office to Quicktime seems to want to run at startup and jump into the system tray!
If they have a predilection for installing freeware off cover CDs - like my Dad - then there's probably lots of the little buggers.
Clear out all the crap (or politely suggest that they do) in the Startup folder, and the Run registry key. Especially target anything to do with MS office and indexing unless they really need / use it. Turn off unnecessary features - like Messenger on a standalone PC. Or do you mean it's connected to the internet but no other PC?
If they are connected to the internet and use a software firewall is it configured correctly? Perhaps moving to a hardware firewall would allow the software one to be removed, or reduced. Some will say that you still should have a software firewall even with a hardware one, to protect against outbound abuses. But I don't think that the default MS supplied one is of any use in this respect.
Any AV / spyware real-time monitor can impact the performance, as they are often set to check every file that is opened / written by default. Have a look at those settings, and perhaps build an exclusions list. I find that the Java Runtime executables are a particular pain in this respect, for example, so I add them to the AV exclusions list.
It can be useful to run a performance monitor so that you can see what is loaded into memory and what's chewing up the CPU cycles. The Task manager alternative mentioned on this forum recently is excellent in this respect.
Pagefile fragmentation can be a problem - the manual method of dealing with this is:
- Eliminate the fragmented pagefile
- Create a temporary page file on another drive
- Reboot
- Defragment the drive that held the original page file
- Eliminate the temporary page file
- Recreate the original page file
- Reboot
Or you can use a freeware tool such as
this.
You ought to check the BIOS, just to make sure that the fastest settings for RAM and disk access are enabled - amazing what people fiddle with.
Is there a particular application that is performance-challenged? Is it that they have too many windows open? Even having too many icons on the desktop can have an impact on performance!
This is by no means exhaustive - I'm sure that by googling and / or searching the MS website with appropriate keywords you will come up with more ideas.
Cheers
SD