Steps to a happy XP experience

The main thing that drags down the performance is when the system tries to write to the SSD. Check to see what tasks are running, and see if you can find a correlation between when the system lags and what tasks are running. I bet there's some task running that is writing to the SSD and causing the slow down.

 

Oh, and if you're seeing a lot of hits to urlclassifier3.sqlite in your FileMon results, you can see at the following link that that is a malware/phishing DB which gets downloaded gradually from Google and updated occasionally. Of course, the first "gradual download" is 53MB, so it'll take a while, but should calm down on its own eventually, if I understand it all right.

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &sk=t&sd=a

 

I've not yet managed to install XP on my Linux One.
I am getting a bit further in that the USB is recognised and starts loading it even gets to "Windows is loading files" and then "Setup is starting windows", but then everything halts with "A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down ...". I've tried getting into Safe Mode but can't because windows shuts down.
The technical information given is -
"STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF899963C, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)
Can anyone assist? I suspect that there is some conflict with the resident Linux OS - should this be removed to leave a clean machine perhaps?

 

I had this same problem when trying to install a "regular" copy of XP from a USB CD. I installed XPLite and Tiny Vista successfully both from CD and from a USB thumb drive. The only thing I can think is that certain versions of XP don't like the SSD or some other aspect of the Aspire One. I would suggest looking online for XPLite or TinyVista...

 

I installed all drivers from Acer.co.uk site and everything is working very well.
I know, probably someone had asked but I am too lazy to read through all those comments, so could anyone tell my why do I have to disable D2D in Bios ? Thanks,
Gvido

 

AFAIK D2D is a hardware-level backup function, initiated by the BIOS. It is not a Windows or Linux program, so won't be accessible there. Unless you want the computer to carry out these operations and slow things down, then disabling it form the BIOS is your only option...

 

'got the A110 (512 mo ram)
tinyxp V9 installed, 'did all the tweaks (fat32, d2d, cach writing and page disabled..)

and I installed all the acer drivers. Everything works OK.. but it's a little bit slow in fact.. is there better drivers than the acer one ?

 

I'm coming to the conclusion that the driver question may be moot. The only driver in question that ought to matter with respect to this problem is the ICH7 storage driver, and in all of the drivers I've seen (latest from Intel, Acer, MSI Wind, etc.), it's all that same version 8.2.0.1011 driver from 11/15/2006. The driver package may say it's newer, but that's because it's not a single driver but a package full of drivers for every chipset Intel makes. I think in every case it's that same old ICH7 driver so it doesn't matter, as far as I can tell.

Also, I disabled malware protection in firefox in about:config. That helped, since it was always accessing that urlclassifier3.sqlite file and it just wouldn't stop.

 

Hi,

I got a full version of XP Pro with SP3 installed on my AAO 110L - working ok. Disabled D2D, did the FAT32 formatting, disabled the page thing and the system restore, KEPT the cache.

After install, I uninstalled OE, and am wondering what else I can uninstall to trim some fat? Which is better to run on the AAO, IE or Firefox/Mozilla? If it is Firefox, can/should you uninstall IE? Also, what in tarnation is MSN Explorer? Can I remove it?

Sorry if these are dumb questions, but I'm a Mac guy and am reluctantly having to accept XP on my ONE after Linpuke Lite was just too restrictive. Having to learn windows again... *sigh*

Thanks!

EDIT: Ok, just canned MSN explorer and the world is still turning... now, what about IE and the rest?

 

Ok, now I have Xp and everything installed, and it's running ok, but I cannot get the sound card working...

I downloaded and installed the Realtek drivers, from the Acer website. I run the install program, and it says that everything has installed correctly and to restart the computer - I restart, and I get a dialogue box that a new PCI device was found and it is looking for drivers for it.... I have tried letting it search itself, and I have directed it to the directory the install wizard set up, but it is not recognizing the drivers somehow... What gives?

 

XP Audio driver fix

It happened to me as well. The solution is to install a Windows patch/driver for "uaa bus driver for high definition audio", the file named "kb888111xpsp2.exe". It should be available on MS website, otherwise just google it.
If you are running XP SP3 you will need to change that version to SP2 in the registry, otherwise it will refuse to install. You can do that by setting the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows\CSDVersion" to "200" using "regedit", restart the computer, install the update, and then set it back to "300".

 

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread and the EWF thread.

I found an old IDE CD drive and suitable USB case lying around so I was able to install XP from CD. Mine AA1 is a 8GB Linpus machine, fortunately with the faster SSD.

Did a standard install to a FAT32 partition.
Turned of system restore, cache, D2D in bios
Added 1GB Ram
8GB Storage expansion
Most programs and all data on storage expansion.
Currently 2GB free on C:, buts there is about 500MB of stuff that I think can be deleted (I renamed the folder, if Windows doesn't complain I will delete them).

A few quirks and issues in the install but all problems were resolved by reading the thread.

XP worked well with the occasional freeze, not really much worse than my heavily loaded Thinkpad T61p.

I added EWF and now it blasts along with no problems.

So, again, thanks to everyone. I know some people must have put in significant time working through these problems. I appreciate you sharing the results.

 

Re: I make browsing on my AAO (ssd) to run faster that desktop P

I found that slowing down is based mainly on ssd write oprerations. So I try to eliminate all write operations :
* Install additional 1GB RAM.
* Install XP SP3
* Install Firefox
* Disable Virtual Memory
* Disable Firefox Cache
* Make Ramdisk (256 MB)
* Make new Firefox Profile on Ramdisk
* Make BAT file started on XP start up that copy my old firefox profile to new profile located on ramdisk.
* Install Firefox add-on Foxmarks ( to upload recently created bookmarks and download them after restart ).

! Cookies and history are lost in this case.
! Sometime I switch to normal firefox profile to inslall add-ons or make some browser settings because all changes on ramdisk profile are lost upon restart.

 

Re: I make browsing on my AAO (ssd) to run faster that desktop P

Or use Opera which can either use RAM and/or disk cache

 

Hi Folks!

Ok, I think I got a little hint as to how to boost performance, but first let em tell you my specs:

AAO 110L with the Samsung (faster) SSD chipset and 1.5GB RAM
Windows XP Pro w/SP3, installed via external USB DVD drive, FAT 32 format
Installed ALL the Acer drivers
Installed the audio fix file
Got rid of MSN Explorer & MS Outlook
Added ALL connection options
KEPT disk caching
Turned off Paging
Turned off System restore
Transfered My Documents to my 8GB SDHC (Apacer), inserted in the left slot
Added VLC media player
Added Yahoo IM
Added Open Office 2.4
Added Sumatra PDF reader
Added ClamWin Portable virus scanner
Installed FireFox 3, turned off smooth scrolling and caching

Went to MSCONFIG and turned off: Task Scheduler, System Restore Service, Windows Time, Security Center, and Automatic Uptades, as well as IMJPMIG, TINTSETP (both of them), jusched, and YAHOOM~1

At this point things were running ok, but slow. The system never crashed, and seemed stable, but was annoyingly slow. So, I then did the following:

Ran disk defrag on both the SSD drive AND the Apacer SDHC card
Purchased and installed AMUST Registry Cleaner ($19.99) and ran it

THESE LAST TWO SEEM TO BE THE MOST IMPORTANT IN BOOSTING PERFORMANCE!!

The little machine is now running really well - the registry was really dirty, even as stripped out as I had everything was. After running this registry cleaner, the performance has been VERY good! I think it is the stupid registry that is making this little machine so sticky.

I hope this helps!

 

Task Scheduler is important to leave it on contrary to some "optimisation" guide, without it the prefetcher doesn't work and trust me, you want prefetching

Also, defragmenting any solid state drive is completly useless as modern SSD have built-in wear leveling mechanism, that means everytime you write to it, it use an random sector and it will never be continuous and ALWAYS fragmented, this is irrelevant as the access time is almost instantanious

And how can the registry be "dirty" on a clean installation with only a very few programs setup, I wouldn't spend a dim on any of these so called cleaners. I've had my share of story with Norton systemworks.

Edit: Here's a article on XP myths
http://home.comcast.net/~supportcd/XPMyths.html

 

I agree with the last two paragraph, but would like to ask you to explain how prefetch would help. As far as I know (and I may miss some of the info, therefore my question), prefetch does what BootVis did in the early XP days: reorganize the files on the disk so that the most-used files and device drivers (in the case of bootup) are in sequence and at the beginning of the disk, in order to speed things up. Not only that feature is useless on a SSD (for the same reason as a defrag is useless) but it also slows things down by re-writing files to the Windows\Prefetch folder (remember the SSD is darn slow in writes).

 

The boot up optimizations may not be useful in this case but prefetching helps application lunch time memory wise. So yeah, one may want to disable the bootup prefetching (HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher = 2, application only) and also disabled the automated file optimization on idle

This is also called prelinking under Linux

 

Here is some good information about prefetch. I would not turn it off.
Most people think prefetch stores often used executables in a special folder, but thats simply wrong.

http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000743.html

 

Thanks a lot for that link, very informative, and I was definitely wrong about pre-fetch for applications. Thanks!