Speeding up ID3

Question

Any tips for speeding up ID3? It's been gradually slowing down over time on my PC over the last couple of years. Now there is about a 5 second delay between the time you do something and it actually happening. Makes it a real pain to use.
Same files run just fine on a similar laptop with half the memory, so it's either the PC or this installation of CS3. Photshop and Quark work just fine.
Things that haven't helped:
Go thru preferences and turn off anything that looks like it might slow things down.
Max out memory
Go to bigger hard drives.
Run CCleaner to tidy things up
Time to reinstall Windows and ID3?
P4, 2.4GHz, 3.5 GB memory, Dual LCDs, Win XP Pro

Answer 1

It is very unlikely that anything in InDesign 5 itself is the source of the problem. More likely, it is the system environment. Areas to look at:
(1)     Heavily fragmented disk in conjunction with a disk with usage reaching capacity. Solution would be to defragment the disk. Obviously, if you are really short of space, it will fragment again quickly in which case a larger disk would help.
(2)     Orphan temp files. Exit all programs and examine your temp directory or directories. You may find hundreds or even thousands of files that were not properly deleted when the programs that used them terminated, especially if such programs crashed. Delete such files and then if necessary, defragment your disk again.
(3)     Too many startup programs and background services. It seems that every time one installs software, including what would seemingly be simple such as printer drivers, very often aditional startup programs and background services are installed. Such software consumes virtual memory, real memory, and often, significant compute cycles even when it should be dormant in the "background." Check on what such programs are actually installed and necessary for your system. Uninstall any unnecessary software. (Reformatting a disk and reinstalling Windows is often seen as a performance improvement strategy although what such system reinstallation really accomplishes is totally resetting all the bloatware that a user may have intentionally or unintentionally installed over the years.
          - Dov