How to speed up work on an old computer?

Question

Iron

Computer s754 Sempron 3000+, 1 GB RAM, Radeon 9600 pro 128 MB, HDD 80 GB, monitor 22 inches (1920x1080).
What you need: surfing the Internet (first of all, searching for beautiful photos plus YouTube and social networks), working in CorelDraw 13 and Photoshop CS2 programs at an average level.
At the moment, the usual Windows XP SP3 is installed, as updated as possible. Antivirus 360 Total Security. Firefox browser. There are no viruses, "improvers" and other harmfulness.
Problem: Everything is slow.
Pages in Firefox do not spin smoothly, YouTube videos slow down even in 360p quality. Etc.
What are the options for speeding up work without upgrading / buying iron?
Surfing the Internet, Word (it can be replaced with an analogue that supports this format), Photoshop CS2 and CorelDraw 13 should remain.
In the process of searching for photos, you can easily end up on a "harmful" site, so security is also needed.
Answers will suit even the most simple ("try this OS").
First of all, he is interested in what options can be at all (from banal to exotic).

Answer 1

The system as a whole is very weak, but it can be improved almost for free if you approach it wisely and take the trouble to write to several people.
In "projects" of this kind, the only task is to unload the main bottle neck. In the case of a system like yours, there are two such bottlenecks: the disk subsystem and, to a slightly lesser extent, the processor. With the processor, everything is more or less simple: you need to shift the maximum load to the video card, where possible, and avoid software with a heavy, unoptimized interface. It’s a little more complicated with the disk, because now, while, say, working in Photoshop, something like this happens: the file is transferred from disk to RAM, and transferred back to disk (1) through the swap file, at the same time, Flash creates its own temporary file cache (scratch file), in which it writes changes - history and everything else (2), while the antivirus scans changes on the disk for something unwanted (3), periodically, the system moves something with its background processes (4) - now we already have up to four simultaneous accesses to the disk, which, in principle, is not adapted to process more than one at a time. Therefore, it is necessary to act as follows.
Good luck!
EDIT: Added a paragraph with explanations.

Answer 2

Turn off the antivirus. From 2006 to the present, I have not used antiviruses, and nothing. Once every couple of months, the truth was loaded with Dr.Web CureIt in order to check the system, but they did not find anything. I downloaded the software mainly from off. sites and rutracker. Antivirus still does not protect 100%, but eats up half of the resources.

There are no viruses, "improvers" and other harmfulness.

- you can immediately see that you are an advanced user.
Off topic really, but take a look in the direction of sandboxie, a great replacement for a voracious antivirus if you need to run a crack, oops sorry, software of unknown origin)

Answer 3

look for RAM at a flea market, study the BIOS for overclocking,
+ try changing the browser (I won’t tell you which one, but I can’t say for sure not all browsers are greedy for resources)
, maybe Linux will help here, but there you already need to look for analogues of Photoshop and Corel

Answer 4

What are the options for speeding up work without upgrading / buying iron?

Everyone here is deceiving you! ;-)
Tear down Windows - install Linux, and enjoy!
PS Linux, in principle, any ... but even better - something from the minimalist, for example Puppy.

Answer 5

Corel works only on Windows
Without investing money in hardware - there is no way to speed it up ...

Answer 6

If without photoshop and corel - install Xubuntu

Answer 7

And how to optimize an even older computer: ASUS P4B533, 256RAM, 40+80GB HDD, 128MB Video.
Purposes of use: office, surfing the Internet, watching movies and listening to music.
No big work with graphics and other workloads.

Answer 8

Windows 10
Instead of Anvir habrahabr.ru/post/101971

Answer 9

And I looked at the characteristics - does it seem to support 64bit? It is quite possible to install the appropriate Windows (XP also happens) and memory - how much will fit into the slots)) And 64-bit versions of programs, in theory, will also run faster, the same FS, for example (though only the latest versions) - like in that cartoon , while 32-bit one-two-one-two, 64-bit one-two-three-four-one-two-three-four)) Although here is the same Vivaldi browser that was recommended above, in the 64-bit version feels like a character from the same cartoon somewhere - Chrome 32-bit on the same engine is much faster - but Vivaldi states that the 64-bit version is still experimental, so it's quite possible that not everything is carefully processed with a file there ..
And it seems to me that it is better not to limit the size of the swap file - here on my netbook with 4Gb on the disk it is used significantly more if a lot of things are open. But just select the second screw only for swap .. And you can put a very small thread for this, even on 10Gb - and so that there is nothing but swap
Well, what about overclocking - lowering the processor voltage in parallel can also help a lot - according to my observations, AMD processors have it by default with a large margin. And when lowering it, the computer can even slow down less without overclocking, since it heats up less - fewer errors and the frequency does not decrease if it is controlled by the BIOS. But during acceleration, you also need to increase the voltage in parallel - raise the frequency, while it pulls at the previously set voltage, as it starts to freeze - and increase the voltage by one step

Answer 10

Well, you can sell this one, add it and buy it from someone used ..
That's where a person with i7 can't sell everything xD
In general, I don't see the point in pumping that system, due to the fact that it is old and the hardware (which is weak) It will cost the same as a new one, if not more. So either save up and shove your past by buying from someone newer, or live with what you live. Of course, ofnut everything superfluous, look at what's in autoload.