[FiFGuitar]

Hi everyone, I just bought a Compaq Presario 6027US for $80. It's a Pentium 4 Processor, 2.0 GHz, 512 Mb, PC 2100 DDR Total System Memory. It's 3 years old. Here's what confuses me, my laptop of about the same years is a Sony Vaio PCGFXA63. And this compaq presario is either equal to or better in every detail. MY laptop moves quickly.
SO WHAT CONFUSES ME is why is the compaq presario not just slower than my laptop but really slow in general?? Is this normal or abnormal? Is there anything I can do to speed it up? Did I misread the information? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks
-Alex

[RickJ]

Compaq is notoriously slow. I can't give you exactly why it's so, but the 3 PC's and 1 Compaq laptop I've had over the years have been tooooo slow... and I hear "is slow" about folk I know who have Compaq.

I think it's all the software garbage that comes with them that is difficult to pin down and remove...

[phillysteakandcheese]

There could be a lot of factors that contribute to the machine being slow... both hardware and software wise, but I agree with Rick - The old Compaqs were quite poor quality machines.

You probably need to do a major clean up or re-format/re-install of the machine and make sure at has all the last available firmware and drivers installed.

If you got it at a used computer store, hopefully they've already done that.

If you bought it from an indivifual or auction, it could just be full of excess software that's dragging it down.

[ScottGem]

I have a Compaq I bought 18 months ago. Its an Athlon 64 2800 with 1G of RAM. While I haven't done any benchmarks against a comparable machine, I haven't noticed any slowness about it. Compaqs have changed considerably since the merger with HP.

When you say its slow, in doing what? You also say its used. Did you reformat ot make sure you cleaned out any spyware or other malware from it?

[FiFGuitar]

I have a Compaq I bought 18 months ago. Its an Athlon 64 2800 with 1G of RAM. while I haven't done any benchmarks against a comparable machine, I haven't noticed any slowness about it. Compaqs have changed considerably since the merger with HP.

When you say its slow, in doing what? You also say its used. Did you reformat ot make sure you cleaned out any spyware or other malware from it?

Thanks for the reply, it's just overall slow in getting started and lags a bit. How might I reformat it? Do I need the original OS software to do that?? Because I got it used off craigslist. Thanks -Alex

[ScottGem]

Go to hp.com and look up the model. Download the manuals and look for instructions on making Recovery disks. If you can do that, use them to restore the system to factory condition. If you can't create the disks, let us know what OS is on it and we can advise further.