bigfishking
asked on
Extremely Slow
This question is for my sister. She has a 400mhz processor with 128megs of ram running Windows XP. When using windows media player to burn a music cd it takes 10 to 12 hours to convert the file and then a reasonable amount of time to actually burn them. I on the other hand have a P4 1.6ghz with 256 DDRam. It only takes me about 20 minutes to burn a music cd using the same windows media player. Why would her computer take so long when it's really not that slow of a system? Any help would be greatly appreciated in fixing this problem.
Her CD-RW drive is probably considerably slower than yours. Also if she has other applications running besides WMP or the burning software, that also would slow down the process. Your RAM is also much faster than hers, since you probably are using pc2100 ddr, and she is using pc100 or pc133, and half the amount you have.
It is likely that her processor is an AMD K6II or pentium II if it is running at 400MHz. Combined with the fact that she has 128MB of RAM, I would say that this system is a bit lightweight to be running XP. The best way to speed things up here is to install more RAM, as XP is probably taking up most of the system resources. Also, check the task manager to see if any unneccessary tasks are running in the background and close them down before converting and burning music. Ideally though, she should upgrade the CPU,Motherboard and RAM.
agree with above, personally I would either update the machine or move back to a different version of windows that requires less resources. It might be worth checking things like the amount of space on the hard drive and the amount of virtual memory that the system is currently using. reconfiguring these could speed the system up.
Also running MSCONFIG and turning off any of the programs that you dont need to run at start up.
other things that might make a difference are:-
brand of CD that is being used (remember that since she has a different cd writer this could be a problem)
where the drive is connected on the think they are best off configured as secondary master but I could be wrong.
cd writer configuration.
speed of the actual cr writer in the first place.
the device that the cd writer is copying from.
how much it is copying
...and many other things related to bus speeds, processors drive types connection types etc
and lastly as it is obviously an older machine it might be on its way out anyway.
Griffon.
Also running MSCONFIG and turning off any of the programs that you dont need to run at start up.
other things that might make a difference are:-
brand of CD that is being used (remember that since she has a different cd writer this could be a problem)
where the drive is connected on the think they are best off configured as secondary master but I could be wrong.
cd writer configuration.
speed of the actual cr writer in the first place.
the device that the cd writer is copying from.
how much it is copying
...and many other things related to bus speeds, processors drive types connection types etc
and lastly as it is obviously an older machine it might be on its way out anyway.
Griffon.
ASKER
The problem really isn't in the actual burning of the CD it's the windows media player converting the files. The burning process doesn't take that long, just getting the files ready is the hold up.
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ASKER
I tried this solution slightly before you posted your suggestion with Roxio ECDC 5 and the CD burned in around 20 minutes. Even though I experimented on my own your answer was the one to suit my sisters problem. One day when she can afford to upgrade or I hand down my computer she will have less problems with the speed of such programs. Thanks to everyone for there help!