Windows 7: Trying to Improve XP's Performance

I know what you're going to say: Go get Windows 7. I'm trying to do some maintenance on my aunt's computer and she has Windows XP Home Edition on it and the computer is so old that I don't think it can handle Windows 7 (and we don't want to spend the money to upgrade this since my aunt doesn't do anything really intensive on this computer). Therefore, I want to try to increase the performance of this computer. I've uninstalled all the unnecessary stuff she doesn't need, did a Disk Cleanup and Defragment, and installed all the latest updates. Is there anything else I should do? I noticed that the startup time is really slow on this computer, so that's the biggest issue I'm having right now.



Also, can Windows Media Player 11 with K-Lite Codec Pack play DVDs? If so, I might uninstall InterVideo DVD and RealPlayer. However, with RealPlayer, I try to uninstall it in Add and Remove Programs, but it keeps saying it may have already been uninstalled and if I want to remove it from the list. However, I know for a fact that RealPlayer has not bee uninstalled, so if I don't need RealPlayer, can someone tell me how to uninstall it? I went on Google and noticed that some people used programs like RevoUninstaller. Should I use this too? I wasn't sure if it was ok to use this, so I wanted to ask you guys first.

yes revo is good and free.get rid of the programs you want first then the people here will need the system specs to give any real good advice.just noticed this is the chillout room and this thread should be in performance and maintenance. or maybe not as i notice it's xp

The best way is to do a complete re-install. This will eliminate things like cookies, spyware and trojans. These really slow computers down.

System Specs:
Dell Inspiron 8200
Windows XP Home Edition SP3
Intel Pentium 4 Mobile 1.70 GHz
512 MB RAM
I don't think I need to go into the graphics card and wireless card and stuff like that.

Also, there's a new problem. Microsoft Office XP Word keeps telling me "Compile error in hidden module: WinFaxPrintAndMerge." I Googled around and I manged to figure out that it's a template issue because running this ("C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\WINWORD.EXE" /a) brought up no error. However, in this website (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316033), I went to the section that says "Remove templates from the Startup Folder" and did all the steps there. The Startup folders are completely empty (which doesn't make sense because something is obviously trying to start when Word starts up) and fixing the Normal.dot file didn't help. Does anyone know how to fix this?

EDIT: And doing a reinstall is not a viable option.

Alright, but if youre anyway going to uninstall massive amounts of stuff, its just easier to uninstall everything, and then install stuff you need back. You asked what is the best way to imporve the performace, and i told you that clean install is the best way. Sorry if my answer didnt help you.

I would consider a reinstall if this was a desktop, but it's a laptop and I don't have all the drivers for the special buttons and the mouse pad, so I think I may end up doing more harm than good. Still, thank you for attempting to provide a solution.

Does it have a "hidden" recovery partition, in computer do you see a "D: Recovery" partition?

Dont think XP has that kinda stuff?

Here this might speed up the Startup at least.

Go here.

It's not an XP thing, it's added by the OEM.