Hard drive with 2 different formats

[Rossl]

I have a friend's compaq Presario laptop. While trying to figure out why this thing is now running at a snails pace I noticed the C drive is formatted for NTFS ad the D drive is formatted for FAT32. They are both the same physical drive

Is this OK? If not how can I correct it.

[LeftyAce]

It's not a problem in and of itself. What is the D drive used for? Is it a partition with data he created? Or is it the Compaq recovery partition? If it's not something he specifically created, don't change its format.

As far as the snail's pace, run antivirus and Spybot and AdAware to check for any nasties that might be slowing stuff down.

[minsonngo]

Make sure you defrag the drive too.

[Rossl]

I think this is the default configuration, he didn't chnage anything.

I already tried Spybot, Adaware, CCleaner, and defrag with some inprovement but not totally fixed/back to the speed when the laptop was new.

This thing came with a lot off "junk" software loaded and some of it was removed, I think that may be the problem. But I haven't been able to identify the cause and fix

[perkster]

check the mode the HD is running in? PIO is slow

[minsonngo]

Maybe a backup... reformat... and clean install of the OS is in order...

I do this to all 4 of my systems at home on a yearly basis in the summer time... in fact... I just got done with two of my systems last night.

[Cricket]

How much free space is on the C: drive? If it's getting full the swap file won't have room to work.

Originally Posted by minsonngo Maybe a backup... reformat... and clean install of the OS is in order...I do this to all 4 of my systems at home on a yearly basis in the summer time.

You pretty much had to do that with Win9x based OS's but I don't think it's necessary with NT based OS's. I've had the same install of WinXP Home on my computer for the last 3 years and I haven't noticed any loss of performance...but then I don't install and uninstall all kinds of software and I do regular maintenance once a week including a disk cleanup with CCleaner.

Reinstalling WinXP yearly won't hurt but I just don't think it's it's something you must do.

Cricket

[minsonngo]

Originally Posted by Cricket You pretty much had to do that with Win9x based OS's but I don't think it's necessary with NT based OS's. I've had the same install of WinXP Home on my computer for the last 3 years and I haven't noticed any loss of performance...but then I don't install and uninstall all kinds of software and I do regular maintenance once a week including a disk cleanup with CCleaner. Reinstalling WinXP yearly won't hurt but I just don't think it's it's something you must do. Cricket

I do it because I just like to start out fresh... also... some of the computers pickup spyware and such during the year that my weekly spyware scans cannot remove. Hehe... I also install and uninstall software and games all the time to play around with them for a little while only.