m17x sudden slowdown.

Ok guys I'm starting to get really fedup with Dell.
Just about a month ago, I started to experience a sudden massive slowdown in my laptop, from right clicking + refreshing, mozilla tab browsing + scrolling, audio, video, gaming...
I got desperate and reformatted the whole damn thing.

Now the same problem suddenly occurs. The pattern is, usually I leave my laptop on for a few days (2-3) before shutting it down overnight to give it a rest. Next moment when I turn it on again, the sudden slowdown commences. What's even more annoying is that I bought this laptop in my country, Malaysia and I'm getting lousy customer support from Dell, promising that once I fill the warranty transfer form, they'll be able to read my service tag in their databases within 24-48 hours (i'm currently in UK studying abroad). It's been more than a month and I only recently got their email saying that the info I provided was incorrect (about a week ago). Fair enough, so I refilled it again. STILL no word.
Called Dell again, no such service tag in their database. I almost blew my top off. So I googled and found your site. Found several possible solutions but to no avail.

1. One thread suggested uninstalling the Command Center crap. Still slows down.

2. The first question which I presujme most would offer to help me would be whether I'm in stealth mode. A dell technical agent told me to disable the backup 9400 GPU in BIOS so it'll run purely on the 260M GTX when I first got desperate and reformatted. It has been so ever since. Stealth mode does not exist on my laptop.

3. I'm currently playing only 2 games : L4D2 and COD MW2

the present technical advisor went so far as to only say "I suspect it's a software problem", as he couldn't go any further since he didn't have my service tag no. in their databases.

OS is still Vista Home Premium SP1 (which I doubt is the problem as it has been running fine this past month plus)

have not been installing any latest drivers whatsoever ever since reformat, running fine till now.

Am using one of the most powerful anti-virus softwares = ESET Smart Security, with no blocked infection attempts (didn't bother scanning since considering the slowdown, it would take half the day just to complete scanning).

What frustrates me most is still the sudden, unexplainable slowdown.
A friend mentioned during my last reformate, that it probably slowed down the last time due to 'driver incompatibility', due to the fact that I probably installed a bunch of stuff, and it was incompatible with the OS (ran a full diagnostics, virus scan, alienrespawn, everything by the book and the slowdown was still there).

I doubt that this is the exact same problem, seeing that it wasn't as slow as the previous one.

CPU usage is at 20-40%, with firefox taking the chunk of the memory usage at 58k, explorer at 32k and some unknown app called csrss.exe at 11k.

Please advise.

 

try completely disable this "the most powerful anti-virus softwares = ESET Smart Security" and take a look what happens
btw i don't use any anti-virus - it eats 30% of any pc..

 

what would I expect to happen? will it solve my problem?

 

just give a try. as i've already told antivirus hardly slowdown whole system. turn it off immediately and stop the anti-virus service

 

I see what you mean and you have a good point. I can't try it yet because i'm doing one last in-depth scan before I backup my files just in case I might have to reformat my OS from Vista to Windows 7.

But that doesn't explain the problem as to why my laptop is suddenly slowing down without any reason, when all this while I've been using this antivirus and it hasn't given me any problems before. And if I shut it down, what AV software will I use to protect my pc? It has blocked attacks before.

 

anyway I've tried what you suggested, completely disabling it and also removing it from startup. the same problem is still there and booting also takes longer. any other suggestions?

thanks

 

I am having the same issue, I think. The only thing so far that I noticed could fix the issue was uninstalling (without reinstalling) the video driver. At that point, anything that would not be relying on the Video Card for performance works just as expected - just as it did when the system first shipped.

Reinstalling the video driver, of course, brings back the problem. Anyone else encountered this?

 

1. What are your temps when Idle/gaming ? (HWMonitor/Everest)
2. Run CCleaner and remove all the garbage (especially from OS)
3. Download a light-weight and free antivirus (Avast Home edition for instance), uninstall ESET , install the new antivirus.
4. Install Spybot Search&Destroy and run a full scan with it.
5. Uninstall the current video driver, polish with CCleaner, install a different driver (e.g. 186.82).
Give us your feedback.

 

If you get to the point of reinstalling the video driver use BatBoy's guide from here

 

This also seems to help:

Setting \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{**unique to you for nvidia**}\0000\PerfLevelSrc to 3322 (from the "disable powermizer" guides) seems to fix this. Did not do a lot of testing on it yet, but the system was noticably more performant, and in-game framerate went from ~6 to ~70.

 

Disabling powermizer has issues on its own. As you continue testing could you also run DPCLat and see if you get red spikes?

 

Yep, I have been running it. Without the powermizer disabled, peak latency goes to 60k, and is above 2k fairly often. With it disabled, it alternates between green and yellow, with the occasional red spike - though I have not managed to see anything above 6k yet.

Will keep you guys posted if I see weirdness in temperature / DPC latency. Though I tried going through the other devices on the list and disabling them did nothing to improve the latency scores - it kept alternating between yellow and green.

 

What most people dont understand is Eset is a small Anti virus program. Not Bloat ware antivirus program with junkware. His Antivirus is fine.

 

I agree. I have been using Eset NOD32 for years and it has a very small footprint. Unlike norton that runs tons of services and integrates itself all over windows. NOD32 has won many awards for 100% detection. I get about 5 updates a day from it.

 

In the past 2 years only I have seen ~100 cases of this small anti virus program being a culprit of major slowdowns among my clients. Yet many never noticed any problems with it and have no complains. I would still replace it with a different program. As a part of our routine procedure when dealing with slowdowns it's recommended to replace or reinstall ANY antivirus software as any of them can contribute to the problem.
I do not however, advise installing Norton and (lately) Mcafee antivirus.
But that's my strictly subjective opinion, based on personal experience.