Laptop VERY slow, tips & is there a program for before and after results?

My wife was given a laptop from work, it was used by a few other people before her and she is sadly on the bottom of the feed pile when it comes to getting equipment

I checked the physical case here before i started, took back panel off and blew out the fan and vent intakes (wow they were nasty), must have been a smoker too... but that should help heat wise for her keep things going cool etc, if nothing else that was a big start before i plugged it in even... Then I wiped the thing down cuz who knows what was on the fingers of whoever else had it

Ok this thing took literally 9-10 mins to fully boot up and get past the "wait timer" by cursor to be able to even press the start button, I know there are a TON of things I can check and do to this to get it runnin smooth and faster...

She will notice the differences for sure once I am done running lots of cleanup checks and whatnot, but I was hoping to find some sorta little app that would give me some good baseline numbers of how this thing is performing so I could do a before and after type test to show the differences etc.


The unit is a Dell Inspiron B120 Celeron 1.4ghz 512 of ram, win xp home sp2
40G hd (only 12g used) prob very slow rpm (basic bottom line unit here)
So I am not expecting blazing performance but I know it can run better here...


These were my ideas to do (fill me in on any key things i might be missing)

First off updating McAfee on here and running a full virus check if it is outdated ill probably uninstall it and add avg free version and update/run that.

Running scan disc and cleanup then defragmenter

Run Windows Updates (apply all as I am sure it hasn't been done)

Installing an running a full ad aware or spybot & check for spyware

Clearing the internet cache history files etc

Go thru the startup menu turning off autostart on some that dont need to start up with bootup, and or uninstalling junk apps or non used items

Anything else big I am missing here that would help performance for her?

Thanks for any tips on what else I should do or check, and or anything to show before and after results or performance (im a benchmark kinda guy) silly I know but some here may relate...

Bill