Nic O'Demus wrote:

I've recently added a Celeron 1.2 gig pc to my system. 512mb pc133 ram.
Windows XP pro. Not sure which mobo.
The pc came with the os installed and I thought I'd try it as I have only
ever used 98SE before, so I know little or nought about xp.
Runs 24/7 and takes about 7h45m to process a wu.
This seems a bit slow to me as I also have a P3 1.0 gig pc, 512mb pc100 ram,
Win 98SE. Abit BH6 mobo.
This processes wu's at about 6h30.

7:45 is slightly faster than SetiSpy estimates in it's performance
comparator. However, I averaged about 7 hours with a Cel II (Coppermine)
1100Mhz on an ASUS BX m/b.

Celerons are indeed crap. The 1100 was slower than the P3 650@806MHz it
replaced, until I upped the speed by 10% :) Waste of money unless really
cheap.

Are there any *general* tweaks that I can make to XP (or bios) to speed
things up a bit, or is the slower processing due to the cpu being a celeron?
I'm not into overclocking.

Both your cpus are running at about the expected rate. However...

If your PC start up with a splash screen, you should be able to go into
the BIOS and switch it off. Then look at what's on the screen during
start-up. Press the Pause/break key to hold the display and the enter
key to carry on with bootup. What's there should give you a clue to the
m/b, chipset and memory speed. In particular, write down the string in
the bottom left-hand corner and search for it in google. 

Even though you have pc133 memory, you may find that it is running at
100MHz. If so, go into the BIOS and set the memory speed to 133. It may
not let you do this! I have an Intel 815E based m/b which only allows
memory MHz that the same or slower than the CPU FSB. If you are limited
to 100MHz, try setting the memory timings to something quicker. Look for
fastest/turbo/cas 2/cl 2.

HTH,
Chris.