As Firefox plans to abandon Windows XP and my old laptop cannot run Windows 10 (no NX bit), I tried K-meleon. It's installed on a Celeron M370.

It's blazingly fast (76RC).

Firefox 52 takes 3 minutes to start and 2.5 minutes to open a typical news paper page.

In comparison, K-meleon takes only 1.5 minutes to start and 30 seconds to open the same web page - if in cache, only 6 seconds.

So keep up the good work, it's certainly great for older hardware



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2017 12:52PM by janolsen.

something too strange in your config - 1,5 minutes to start for KM is TOOOOOO MUCH on the PC with such CPU from 2005.

Check your OS for problems, software junk and viruses - it should work WAAAAAY faster there!

Or probably rather, all that automatic background downloading, preloading, prefetching, checking, virus-checking... giant adblock lists each startup, giant phishing lists, background checks if all addons are current etc.?

For example it took me months to realize why FF10 froze right after startup on Win98: that link-prefetch pref was ON!! Since blocking that culprit, it can occasionally access a website again, although not very long and not many, since I'm using that thing only for sites that need tons of scripts to function at all :-/

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(sig) New unofficial K-Meleon 76.4 (KMG76.4) available, in own subforum.
Based on Goanna engine, called 'test' builds forever but more stable as 75.1 acc. forum members. It's 1-2 generations ahead of predecessor KM76RC-2016
K-Meleon FAQ (link missing in forum sidebar)
Tips&Tricks - Learning new stuff every day
New to K-Meleon? What do you like? What not?

Well, you can use also this Firefox fork
Fork http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?12,141645

There are also 32 bit Chrome Forks.

http://kmeleonbrowser.org/forum/read.php?12,140333,140333

What is slow for You?

I use a FUJITSU SIEMENS AMILO Pa 2510 / CPU Typ Mobile DualCore AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-56, 1800 MHz (9 x 200) with 2 GB RAM

The Amilo Pa 2510 is a reasonable beginner's notebook. Said Notebook Check in 2007!

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Fujitsu-Siemens-Amilo-Pa2510-Notebook.4329.0.html

My only change = I downgraded it from Vista to XP.

As said by others = background processes slow Your PC down.

Use Sysinternals (Microsoft bought the company) autoruns to kill all background processes that start and are not needed. It part of a suite that also includes a mighty replacement of the MS Windows Task Manager.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062.aspx

Autoruns should not show anything starting at Tab Logon but Your firewall and maybe Your virus protection.

And others should also be reduced to the really needed.

Who needs scheduled tasks anyway.

Fire the programs up when You want to use them.

Do You still need programs to watch for updates.

You are running XP. There are probably none for You any more! ...

p.s. I say "maybe" because You can get away from constantly running virus protection if You deactivate Windows Scripting and run a firewall.
I hide behind my Fritzbox. So my autoruns do not include even that.

I only start the virus scanner when I visit places that are shoddy and potentially dangerous.

My K-Meleon and some other browsers that do not call home during start - fire up in a couple of seconds.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/18/2017 07:27AM by guenter.

The computer has only 512MB DDR2 RAM. Only process I have voluntarily running on this laptop is NOD32.

It's an Acer Aspire 3620.

Looked at Sysinternals Process Explorer and svchost.exe is using approx. 99%, but subentries use very little (like Process explorer taking 3% of the 99%).

svchost... yeah well possible that that's the culprit! Just recently stumbled across an old note of mine, that exactly this thing nearly froze my old vista computer in the beginning, until I finally killed that "local" process... Finally figured out, the prob was that it was search-indexing all the time everything it got into its greedy access fingers, even attached usb-drives or disks or SD-stick, constantly crawling and indexing even removable devices, working like crazy and LOUD and heating up the machine at times when it really wasn't doing "anything"... What I absolutely HATED but couldn't stop at first. And every time a removable device was attached, that process started all over again, at zero!
If you're feeling experimental, be aware, there were several svchost-processes running, the one I needed to kill was only something with "local" in the name.

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siria
I finally killed that "local" process... Finally figured out, the prob was that it was search-indexing all the time everything it got into its greedy access fingers...

I assume that you mean the Indexing Service.
How to turn it off.

svchost is responsible for multiple system services - from Windows Update to some hardware related once.

I can remote your PC to optimize its work - but only if you'll trust me, for sure ;-)

You can send me PM if you'll decide to try.

Quote
rodocop
svchost is responsible for multiple system services - from Windows Update to some hardware related once.

There are more svchost.exe. AFAIK not all of them are mandatory.
< http://www.majorgeeks.com/content/page/black_vipers_services_configuration.html >
or direct to the source
< http://www.blackviper.com/category/guides/service-configurations/ >

Aside of the OS, I'm afraid that the browser would also need some tweaking.
For instance 256 network connections are a heavy blow for that system.
Maybe something like 16-32 would be better.

But one could try to tweak everything endlessly, the sad true is that a Celeron M370 processor and 512MB DDR2 RAM are hopeless sparse for nowadays web and applications.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/18/2017 10:32PM by Yogi.

I have one EEE PC with 512 Mb RAM and Celeron CPU - KM starts there in just few seconds.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/18/2017 10:49PM by rodocop.

Quote
Yogi

Quote
siria
I finally killed that "local" process... Finally figured out, the prob was that it was search-indexing all the time everything it got into its greedy access fingers...

I assume that you mean the Indexing Service.
How to turn it off.

YES. Great link, thanks
The "manual" setting may even be enough already.

---

(sig) New unofficial K-Meleon 76.4 (KMG76.4) available, in own subforum.
Based on Goanna engine, called 'test' builds forever but more stable as 75.1 acc. forum members. It's 1-2 generations ahead of predecessor KM76RC-2016
K-Meleon FAQ (link missing in forum sidebar)
Tips&Tricks - Learning new stuff every day
New to K-Meleon? What do you like? What not?

I forget one thing.
A considerably huge improvement to ram usage on Firefox (and firefox forks too) is runing the browser with Firemin.
The ram usage on firefoxes running with firemin is really low.
Firemin website

Quote
rodocop
I have one EEE PC with 512 Mb RAM and Celeron CPU - KM starts there in just few seconds.

My main point was that 512 MB of RAM are definitively spare. I can't imagine how it could offer even a half decent surfing experience nowadays.
While not great, a Celeron 1.70 GHz should still do the job with WinXP.

As for a browser start, it shouldn't take longer than a few seconds even with 512 MB RAM (an active AV can lenghten that time).
IMHO, 2.5 or 1.5 minutes for a browser start are an indicator either for a virus or for something utterly broken.
The same applies for 2.5 minutes or even 30 seconds to open a typical news paper page, except you are on an ancient modem.

Quote
siria
Great link, thanks

You are welcome.
I consider Black Viper to be a trustworthy source. It was of great help for me to tailor my OS configuration since W2K.

@janolsen - a hint more: A few moths ago I could make my even older desktop (Pentium MMX with W98) significantly faster by means of TuneUp Utilities (1 month trial free). Especially clearing and defragmanting! of registry. The clearing mekes TUU much better than CCleaner and registry defragmentig is not possible by CCleaner.

I don't know if this helps you too but you can try it.