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Computer running extremely slow help

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knoxville363

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My friend thought he had a virus so he gave me his tower for me to run malwarebytes on cause I know nothing about computers but he is way worse than me lol. He said the pc was running very slow and I figured he prob just had a virus...

He has a dell dimension 4700 here are the specs:

WINDOWS XP VERSION 2002 SERVICE PACKAGE 3
INTEL (R)
PENTIUM (R) 4CPU 2.8GHz
2.79 GHz, 1.5GB of RAM

I know the computer is old and crappy. He just wants it cleaned up and running for his 3 kids because he bought a new one. When I turn it on...just for the desktop to load to the point where you can actually click firefox it is at least 3-5 minutes. It seems very sluggish. When I go online it has no issues as far as web browsing. The main issue is why is this computer taking so long to load up. I opened the tower and it was EXTREMELY dusty. I cleaned it up so Im pretty sure the dust isn't causing this behavior. Can anyone suggest what may be wrong. I ran malwarebytes to get rid of the 1 virus that he did have as well. I have a pc that is similar and it is very slow as far as loading when I compare the two. His hard drive is not full either. He is only using 50GB out of the 150GB. There are practically no programs on the pc either as far as games and such. I have no clue what it could be unless since he allowed the pc to get that dirty he messed something up. Any advice would be appreciated such as programs to try etc. Also he said he did not go on any XXX sites or anything crazy so I am ruling out a virus cause I don't believe that is the issue.
 
frisch7

frisch7

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format the hard drive and reinstall the OS. then install the free version of AVG. if it's still slow after that try some things to increase performance like disable all the fancy effects and all that good stuff. If that still don't work put linux on it. Linux will run 10x better than windows and you wont have to worry as much about viruses.

also forgot
Try to defragment the hard drive and do a disk clean up. then run malware bytes and your anti-virus in safe mode.
 
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knoxville363

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based on these specs, can this pc handle windows 7?
 
frisch7

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Here is the requirements for Windows 7 Link
1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)

DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

So I would say yes but if it runs slow I would re-install XP
 
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