XP slows down, how to fix it?

Question

System administration

There is an old XP, available exclusively via RDP, so it will not work to reinstall, but it needs to be fixed. She began to slow down mercilessly, but at the same time in idle processes - 99%. But it takes tens of seconds to launch any application, even after just rebooting. Memory - 2 gigabytes, not much in modern times, but this does not explain the brakes. Avast is happy, it does not find viruses. How can such a miracle be diagnosed and repaired?

Answer 1

In principle, I suspect that the problem may be that the screw does not read the sectors well and slows down. The processor will not be busy.
If not ANY application slows down, but for example a browser, clean it from unnecessary plug-ins. You can even take it down and put it back together.

Answer 2

And I will add a question, the answer to which may be a simple solution, but which for some reason is constantly overlooked by "specialists":
How much free space on the system partition in% and in Mb?

Answer 3

Change hard drive. Through RDP, unfortunately, it will not work.
You can also turn off the swap file if it exists and is not used - but this is a temporary solution.

Answer 4

Is a SMART monitor installed?
If not, then put en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpeedFan or equivalent.
If so, what does it show? Are there errors on the disk?

Answer 5

Speedfan will also tell you if there is overheating.