sister-in-laws laptop is really slow

[newomij]

I'm house sitting for my wifes sister for a few weeks and trying to do my normal computer stuff with her almost antique laptop. About all I do is browse the web, check email, and attend the PCM EDU but it takes forever to get around on this machine.

It is an IBM Thinkpad, about 9 years old, with an Intel Celeron processor that shows 896 MHz and 376 MB of ram. The OS is XP Home with SP2. She has only 14% space available.

There are a lot of program shortcuts on the desktop and along the bar next to the start button. There is, also, a Google Tool Bar open all the time. The prefetch shows 32 items opening at startup.

She is using AVG 7.5 Professional antivirus and Adaware for spyware removal. A Linksys wireless connection at 54 Mbps.

Do all these shortcuts and the G tool bar hog all the remaining memory? What can I do to speed this thing up?

[glc]

Free up some hard drive space and trim the startups way down.

Use CCleaner to get rid of the temp files, shut system restore off and back on to dump all the old restore points, run chkdsk/f, and defrag it.