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Update drivers, use msconfig to stop unnecessary software from running at boot, and switch over to a classic theme. I ran XP for two years on a system identical to that, and it ran fine as is.
 
I know that AVG has been a pretty lightweight A/V in the past but 8.0 seems to be a slight change in their philosophy. I would either install Avast Free edition or reinstall AVG without that Link scanner crap. Look for redundancies as well; if you're always behind a hardware firewall then disable the Windows firewall service. Oh, and like what the previous poster said: switch to the Windows Classic theme and disable the theme service. You might even want to try to disable the welcome screen and FUS and their services as well if you think that will help.

Don't delete and disable prefetching though, regardless of what a lot of "tweak" sites suggest. The worst that can happen is degraded performance (I had a laptop with XP pro that had a lot crappier specs and disabling prefetching didn't help at all).

I know that you stated that you don't want to shell out any money but I heavily recommend upping the RAM on that laptop to at least 512MB for much better performance (XP SP2/3 is much more of a pig on resources than XP or XP SP1), especially since it's sooo cheap. Hell, you might even have a friend or coworker that might be able to hook you up with a couple of free sticks.
 
[H]exx;1032780354 said:
Are there any utilities out there that will remove .DLL files or driver files that are not used? We all know how Windows loves to have 321,847,239,652,348,758,234 drivers ready in case you plug something in....which for me will be never ;-)
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That wouldn't net you any performance gains anyway, so it is best to leave them alone.
 
Well I checked Newegg to see the prices on the type of RAM you use and by golly, your right. :eek:

I was expecting to see ~$10 prices for 256MB SO-DIMM SDRAM and ~$20 prices for 512MB sticks but I am seeing ~$20-$30 prices for the former and ~$50 for the latter. Makes me wonder about the prices for RD-RAM and those SIMM sticks (is there anyone foolish enough to sell those anymore).

You might have to make some sacrifices and find lighter replacements for or older versions of software you currently use e.g. replacing Nero 6/7 with Imgburn or Nero 5 (LOL, Nero 7 on a 800MHz laptop. I'd rather chew glass :p). You might also want to consider replacing the Windows default shell with something a lot more lightweight like ROS Explorer or blackbox for windows (backup, Backup, BAAACKUUUP before resorting to this method).

Oh, BTW, I see that your laptop's chipset does support up to 1GB of RAM. Just FYI ;) if you ever change your mind on memory upgrades.
 
Classic Performance theme....
Lighter antivirus like NOD32 or AntiVir
No 3rd party software firewall

It'll run tolerable. No matter how "light" you think you're making XP....is still gets substantially peppier once you get to 512 megs of RAM. Add to that..probably just a 5400rpm hard drive in the laptop....there's only so much you can do.
 
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