I recently got a brand new DELL pavilion system on ebay. I checked the properties on my computer as soon as I got it and it said P4 270MHZ and 128MB RAM. It also has 40GB hard disk. It has XP professional installed. The problem is it is really slow. If I have more than 4 windows open it becomes excruciatingly slow. I defragmented it (even though it is brand new) but it is still slow. I have applied SP1, the latest patches and nothing seems to work. IE keeps crashing and it keeps saying "windows is increasing virtual memory). I dont think it is RAM as I have a celeron machine with 64MB RAM and it works much faster. Could there be any hardware reason? Any help would be appreciated? Thanks, Ram.

Ummm....there is no such thing as a P4 270MHZ...and if that was the case which it isnt your computer wouldnt be new...new is something that of the 2ghz area....your ram is ok and so is the hard drive. What is causing the system to be so slow is that it is impossible to run windows xp on 270mhz. run a program called Belarc advisor (i dont have the link) and it will show you everything about the system... How much did you pay for the system?

I don't think 128RAM for XP is enough, you might want AS LEAST 256RAM for it to run smoother, 512RAM would be good for a 2.7Ghz. ~Death-Knight~

You need more memory. XP will not run properly on 128. 256 is a bare minimum but 512 is the best recommendation for xp. If you do the upgrade you will see a big improvement. Memory is cheap now you should be able to get alot with very little cash

There's also no such thing as a Dell Pavilion. That is an HP model.

I run XP Pro on 128mb ram nice and good and with 650 mhz too

You may have too many programs running. Until you can get more RAM, you could turn off everything that starts with the computer. Only do occasional scans with antivirus, turn off all of the quickstart programs and just start them from the start menu, reduce the size of your background photo or better yet don't use any. I am not familiar with XP myself, but I read that XP also has msconfig. If you go to run, then type msconfig it will show a tab called startup. Remove the check mark next to every program you don't need to start immediately. Most people leave their anitvirus and maybe their firewall if you have dsl or cable modem. You may need other things to remain depending on your system. Such as some CDRWs require their software running in the background, etc.