T
TRABEM
My punchbox is slower 'n molasses on a cold winter morn.
System is a Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop, XP Home, 2.3 Ghz with 256 MB of
ram, harddrive is 30 GB with only 10 GB in use. I have 2 users on the
system, both with administrative privileges. We always log off when
switching users, so the problem is not due to another users programs
running.
We have all the Microsoft updates and only use the stock Windows
firewall. We have DSL and our download speed is slower than our
neighbors..we've swapped modems and computers......the 30 percent
slower download speed is due to something in the computer itself and
shows up as a data light that does not stay continuously lit during a
download....it stops for 5 or 6 seconds every minute, then resumes.
Again, we've confirmed that our neighbors system does not act like
this (same ISP).
I have Norton SystemWorks, which is a virus checker. I use adaware,
have purged the startup folder so no applications run at startup now.
I've stripped the software down to the bare minimum, taking out some
software that insists on occupying resources by running in the system
tray (notification area). I've taken out all the Dell specific utility
programs as recommended by independent sources familiar with the Dell
setups.
Sometimes when I boot, it's so slow that it gives me notices that so
and so system program couldn't start and wants me to send a
notification to Bill G. The same thing happens often when I shut down,
or during routine use.
I often use an electronic circuit simulator called Spice, which is
very computationally demanding and it has a crude banchmark in it for
speed. Guys with old win 98 systems and 600 Mhz processors run the
benchmark faster than I do. According to the Dell forum, mine is
dreadfully slow (compared to other Inspiron 1100 series users).
I've defragmented the harddrive to death (almost), a freshly
defragmented drive shows a slight improvement......but it's not the
problem. I've cleaned the internet temporary files, the cache and the
internet history shortcuts.
Norton one button checkup software often finds an activex error in the
registry, and fixes it......OBC and Win Doctor do not find problems.
There is one hint, which might be meaningful (or maybe not). When I
attempt to run Norton Disk Doctor, the software tells me that "the
operating system or another process has exclusive access to this drive
or some of it's files. NDD cannot continue with the repair under these
conditions. A repair can be scheduled to occur the next time you
restart your system".
When I tell it to perform the reset and scan, it does a dos scan,
finds no errors and restarts windows.
If I rei-nitiate Norton Disk Doctor, I get the same error
message......over and over, etc.
Norton website does not suggest any remedial action for this problem.
Dell has nothing but blank stares, kinda like Radio Shack employees do
when they don't have an answer:>:
Honestly, the computer is nearly worthless, my 1 Ghz win 98 desktop
runs circles around this new Dell laptop.
Any ideas??
Thanks,
Art
System is a Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop, XP Home, 2.3 Ghz with 256 MB of
ram, harddrive is 30 GB with only 10 GB in use. I have 2 users on the
system, both with administrative privileges. We always log off when
switching users, so the problem is not due to another users programs
running.
We have all the Microsoft updates and only use the stock Windows
firewall. We have DSL and our download speed is slower than our
neighbors..we've swapped modems and computers......the 30 percent
slower download speed is due to something in the computer itself and
shows up as a data light that does not stay continuously lit during a
download....it stops for 5 or 6 seconds every minute, then resumes.
Again, we've confirmed that our neighbors system does not act like
this (same ISP).
I have Norton SystemWorks, which is a virus checker. I use adaware,
have purged the startup folder so no applications run at startup now.
I've stripped the software down to the bare minimum, taking out some
software that insists on occupying resources by running in the system
tray (notification area). I've taken out all the Dell specific utility
programs as recommended by independent sources familiar with the Dell
setups.
Sometimes when I boot, it's so slow that it gives me notices that so
and so system program couldn't start and wants me to send a
notification to Bill G. The same thing happens often when I shut down,
or during routine use.
I often use an electronic circuit simulator called Spice, which is
very computationally demanding and it has a crude banchmark in it for
speed. Guys with old win 98 systems and 600 Mhz processors run the
benchmark faster than I do. According to the Dell forum, mine is
dreadfully slow (compared to other Inspiron 1100 series users).
I've defragmented the harddrive to death (almost), a freshly
defragmented drive shows a slight improvement......but it's not the
problem. I've cleaned the internet temporary files, the cache and the
internet history shortcuts.
Norton one button checkup software often finds an activex error in the
registry, and fixes it......OBC and Win Doctor do not find problems.
There is one hint, which might be meaningful (or maybe not). When I
attempt to run Norton Disk Doctor, the software tells me that "the
operating system or another process has exclusive access to this drive
or some of it's files. NDD cannot continue with the repair under these
conditions. A repair can be scheduled to occur the next time you
restart your system".
When I tell it to perform the reset and scan, it does a dos scan,
finds no errors and restarts windows.
If I rei-nitiate Norton Disk Doctor, I get the same error
message......over and over, etc.
Norton website does not suggest any remedial action for this problem.
Dell has nothing but blank stares, kinda like Radio Shack employees do
when they don't have an answer:>:
Honestly, the computer is nearly worthless, my 1 Ghz win 98 desktop
runs circles around this new Dell laptop.
Any ideas??
Thanks,
Art