HP Pavilion a645c very slow after XP SP3

You might notice that you HP Pavilion a645c might be either extremely slow or doesn’t boot after installing Service Pack 3 (SP3). The reason why this might happen is when HP first created the machine they provided a REALLY old version of the driver for the AMD processor.

1. On a separate machine go to the HP website and download the updates from here. The updates you need are:
2. Microsoft Windows XP SP3 Upgrade Utility for systems with AMD processors.
3. Microsoft QFE Update (KB835409) for System Restore
5. You will need to copy these file to the machine in question. I use a $10 flash drive.
6. If you machine still boots you should try and boot up in Safe Mode by pressing F8 during the boot process. Select Safe Mode when asked.
7. Install both updates.
8. Reboot the computer after both updates are installed.

Hopefully this will fix your slow problems on your HP Pavilion a645c.

PS – You might also need to use these two posts as well just in case your control panel icons got screwed up.

http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/how-to-remove-duplicate-icons-from-the-control-panel/

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/cpicon.htm