XPS L502X - Ugh! - Slow performance/typing

Help! I am not an expert or even moderately computer savvy, but I am getting nowhere with Dell support (that I paid $240 for). I think I am on my own now, and I've come to y'all for help. Sorry for the long post, but I think it will tell you all you need to know.

Quick bio: I bought my computer through Amazon in late August 2011. It has Intel i7-2630QM CPU @2.00 GHz. 6 GB RAM. 64-bit. Running Windows 7 Professional and Office 2010.

In the first 90 days of ownership, I was on the phone with several Dell XPS technicians for a total of about 10 hours. The main problems were:

(1) Updates kept installing and installing, but would never "keep" when I rebooted the machine. They would re-appear in the list of recommended updates.
(2) I had a loud fan noise, where the fan would surge loudly at seemingly random times, then die down.
(3) Sometimes my laptop would not recognize when the AC adaptor was plugged in. It would say something about the device not being found (I can't recall the exact error message).
(4) Then I had problems where the keyboard didn't seem to be quickly responding to my typing.

Since it was so long ago and because they did all the fixes by remotely taking over my l laptop, I don't recall exactly what they did to fix these three problems. (I do recall that one of the fixes involved updating a chipset driver or something.) Overall, I was pretty happy with my computer once these problems were fixed. The internet speed was great, typing was great, and the fan noise was fixed.

In March of 2012, I was having some problems similar to above (I can't remember which), and called the Dell XPS folks. Although my 90 day warranty was out, they gave me some help since it was the same problems as before. They must have fixed the problem. The important thing is that they suggested I buy System Mechanic, which I did. I have been using it for about 10 months now.

Fast forward to late summer 2012 (just before the one-year warranty was up) and two problems had developed.

(1) My wireless internet connection got pretty slow. Pages would load slowly. I couldn't move between tabs in Internet Explorer without it taking a long time. It was the same for other browsers.
(2) Upon waking my computer from hibernation/sleep or upon a fresh startup, I would sometimes get a black screen that said, "Operation System not found." If I hit "enter" or "escape," I would be taken to another black screen that would say someting about Intel and something about Realtek. After processing for awhile, I would then get the Boot Menu. The only thing I could do to get out of this feedback loop was to just manually power down the computer and restart it. For the most part, this "solved" the problem, meaning it did not reappear when I restarted it that time.

I had gotten a new modem/router combo (Motorola Surfboard) about that time (late summer) and thought that was the problem for the slow internet speeds. I exhanged it for another one thinking it was a lemon. It did not solve the problem. I then contacted Comcast (my ISP) and they said I was definitely losing "packets" before the signal got to my modem and that there was probably a wiring problem. They did reinstall some wires, but ultimately concluded there was still something wrong with my computer. The Comcast technician's Dell computer was faster than mine when we did dueling speedtests on my router.

I then contacted Dell Support. Because my XPS was out of warranty by this time (November 2012), I had to buy the one-year extended warranty for $240 in order to get help.

To summarize what I have been through in the last 2 1/2 months: I have talked to about 9 technicians, for about a total of 20+ hours. Their first answer was to restore Windows 7 back to the factory defaults (not sure I am saying that correctly). Then they did the full hardware scans/diagnostics on my computer to see if it was a hardware problem. They found no hardware problems and assured me that since the test came back negative, that there was no problem with the hardware. The problem with the "Operation System not found" was not fixed.

[In the mean time, as a last ditch effort to fix the slow internet speeds, I got a separate modem and router. (I got the Motorola Surfboard modem with a separate N600 Netgear router.) That seems to have solved much of the internet speed issue.]

I called Dell back. The next round of Dell technicians did the same hardware scans, and looked at my computer again (remotely). They though I needed the actual Windows 7 CD because the factory defaults were perhaps corrupt/faulty. They mailed me a CD and Utilities/Drivers CD. With their guidance, I reinstalled Windows 7. Once it was finished installing, I called them back and they (remotely) did the install of the drivers/utilities, since I had no idea how to do that (and in what order). They installed the drivers/utilities directly from the Dell website (I think), not the CD.

Guess what? The "Operation System" error message STILL happened after the second installation of Windows!

I called Dell back again. And the next technician actually solved the problem! He changed he boot priority order (I think I am saying that right). Apparentlly my computer was looking for the CD/DVD drive first. Once he changed the boot order, the problem was gone.

But now one problem has gotten worse since November in particular. My computer has gotten REALLY slow -- much slower than it's ever been! It takes so long for me to be able to log-in to my Yahoo account because my letters don't appear as I type. Scrolling is a bloody nightmare and a game of patience. Going between tabs in IE is slow. Typing in Word is slow. I hate working on my computer.

So back to Dell support. When I called to complain about my now-slower-than-ever computer, the technician acted so quickly--assuming that my system was full of clutter--that he started the System Restore almost as soon as I answered his question if my data/photos/music were backed up. He immediately knew he had acted too quickly once I told him that I had already installed Windows 7 twice. And to top it off, the "Operation System not found" error message popped up as soon as I re-started my computer! The poor guy felt pretty bad that -- not only did he NOT fix the problem, he reincarnated a problem that had finally been fixed!

He said unfortunately I HAD to reinstall Windows 7, so he guided me for the first part of the installation. Once it was installed, I had to call Dell back and they did the drivers/utilties installation from the CD.

So this is where I am at: I think I fixed the "Operation System not found" problem by re-ordering the Boot Priority (since the guy told me how to do it before). And it seems to have been fixed.

BUT: can someone please give me ideas for how to fix the slow typing????

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide,

Heidi in Denver

 

I can see that you are quite annoyed due to your very detailed post; but just to clarify, the only problem you have now is the slow typing - correct?

Changing boot priority would have been my first suggestion to the "OS not found" error, but it looks like you have that under control now

So everything else is fine?

 

Neomesal,

Yes, long post, indeed. And yes, I am trying my best not to get too annoyed.

Thanks for your reply. I actually got the "OS not found" error just now. I had installed Norton (which my ISP provides free) after the 3rd Windows re-install last week. I had been using Norton and Microsoft Essentials (not at the same time) at various times in the last 12 months. I just like Essentials better, so I uninstalled Norton, and restarted, and then got the 'OS not found" message! I manually powered down my laptop and restarted with no problems.

So, no, that problem has not been fixed.

(1) Can you give me the correct boot priority order? I can double-check my computer to make sure I have the right order.

(2) Do you have any tips for speeding up my computer? I wonder if I have a lot of "residue" (my non-technical term) from my previous system restores and Windows 7 installations? Could that be slowing everything down?

(3) And one other problem - while typing, my cursor will randomly jump up to the line above it and start entering the letters. I have no idea what is happening!

Thanks!

Heidi

 

Heidi,

Yes, as you have done, I would have suggested you remove Norton and only use Microsoft Security Essentials. So long as you browse safe and don't click on suspicious/random links from unknowns in emails, you should be fine.

(1) Reset the BIOS settings to default. Then open the BIOS settings again and put "Hard Drive" at the top of the boot priority list and save and restart.

(2) Run "disk cleaner" and "defragmenter" in Windows. I would recommend you download CCleaner and use that for a more thorough clean with advanced options (like disabling start-up programs)

(3) Maybe your wrist is triggering the touchpad, so you could try disabling it and see if that if that fixes it.

Alternatively, you can toggle sensitivity by opening up mouse properties in the control panel > Synaptics device settings tab > settings > and put palm check to maximum and put the sensitivity a few notches to "heavy touch"


For that "residue" disk cleaner should have the check box to delete old Windows Installation files.

And if after trying all this and you still have sluggish typing, is it in Word only?

Hope this helps

 

Heidi,

More often than not, the "Operating System not found" error message happens when you have some sort of USB storage device plugged in while you are booting up your machine. What happens is that if your boot priority is set to look for USB devices before your hard drive, it will attempt to look for a bootable operating system on any USB devices. For example if you have an external hard drive, such as one of those Seagate or Western Digital 1TB USB drives, or even a little 256 MB USB stick plugged in, the computer may attempt to look for an operating system on it.

So as NeoMesal suggested, go into your BIOS and change the boot priority such that "Hard disk" is the first in the list. The easiest way to do so is to
1. At the big "Dell" logo screen, hit F2
2. Use the arrow keys to move the screen "right" until you hit the Boot Sequence screen
3. Use the up/down arrow keys to select the items you want to move
4. Use the "-" (minus) key to move items down one, and the "+" (plus) to move items up one slot. Note that the "+" requires you to actually hold down Shift+= buttons. If you want to play it safe, you could just use the "-" to move everything down below the "Hard disk" item
5. Then use the right arrow key to get to the "Exit" screen, and then select hte "Exit and save changes" option

This should permanently make your Hard Disk the first bootable item, even if you have any other storage devices plugged into your computer. Personally, I prefer to have my devices in this order:
1. CD/DVD
2. Hard drive
3. USB Storage
4..5... (everything else)

The reason being that I may need to boot from CD/DVD, but I almost never need to boot from a USB device. So setting USB Storage to one item below Hard disk, I'm ensuring that my machine doesn't try to check any USB storage devices I have plugged in.

Now regarding the slow typing, could you please try this when you notice that your computer becomes sluggish and more or less unusable:
1. Right click on an empty space in your taskbar, and select "Start Task Manager"
2. Jot down the 3 values that you see at the bottom of the Task Manager: # Processes, % CPU Usage, % of Physical Memory
View attachment 90773

Let us know what these 3 values are. It's possible that something running in the background is severely hogging your resources which in turn is causing your laptop's unresponsiveness.

 

Thanks to both of you for taking the time to reply.

I have tried the things you both suggested. Here is what I did, and the results:

(1) I first set the BIOS settings to the default. (The default boot order was: removable drive, hard drive, USB, CD/DVD, eSATA, and Network). I then saved and exited, and then did a "restart" of my computer.

(BTW, daver, I don't keep a flash drive in my USB port. And I only hook up a printer when I need to print something. I use Carbonite for my file backup -- I don't own a an external hard drive. The "OS not found" error message seems to come up mostly when waking my computer from hibernating or sleeping, although I think it has also come up when starting fresh for the day.)

I got the ole' "OS not found" message after restoring the factory default. I pressed "enter", I got another (familiar) black screen that was half-filled with text. The first part was about "Intel UND..." and the second part was about "Realteck PCIe". At the end of this text it had a line with "Client MAC TDD..." and the next line had "DHCP" with little dots. More dots would be added as the laptop did some processing. After about 2 minutes, the following text was added at the very end: Exiting PXE RAM"

(2) I manually powered down my computer, started it up, and changed the boot priority order to this: hard drive, CD/DVD, removable, eSATA and Network.

FINDINGS: After just these actions, my computer seemed to be zippier. In fact, for the first 10 minutes, it was actually "normal". But then after that time, it slowed down about 50%. But it is currently faster than it had been before doing these steps. (Not sure this is supposed to happen, but it did) When it started slowing down, I looked at the Task Manager. It had 72-78 processes running, 0-26% CPU usage and 32-36% memory. The range of number.s were the spot checks I did over a 90 minute period. The larger CPU usage percents were found only briefly when I was opening a new tab in IE or doing somethiong like that. It was mostly at 0-4% after these "jumps" in activity.

I ran a "disk cleaner" that cleaned out 156 MB of clutter and defragged by computer (it

 

(oops, posted the reply too soon...)

I ran the Windows "disk cleaner" that cleaned out 156 MB of clutter and next defragged by computer (it found 3% fragmentation). One of the options under the "disk cleaner" was the "Windows.old" folder, which contains 27 GB of data. (I confirmed this by going into my C: drive and obtaining the folder size.) I left that unchecked, so it did not remove/clean this folder.

I then downloaded CCleaner and it found 351 MB to clean in Windows and 0 bytes to clean in my applications.

So my question is this: The last Windows installation was a "dirty installation" (that's what the Dell guy called it.) I have moved my personal files/photos/music from the Windows.old folder rather than restoring the files from Carbonite. Can I now safely delete this folder? Is there anything I would need to save from this folder? I wonder if this is slowing down my computer. Or is that probably not the problem?

Thanks guys!

Heidi

 

If you've already run a disk defragment, and you only have 3% fragmentation, that's a good thing. The other thing to check for when your computer is slow, is what is eating up your resources at the moment it's being slow. WHen you notice that your computer is acting up, open up the Task Manager (right-click taskbar), open up the Processes tab, click on the CPU column header to sort by descending order (largest numbers at the top), and take a look at what might be using up your processor resources.

A lot of times some applications might be doing a lot of work in the background, and you wouldn't be surprised to see an application spike up from 0% to over 25%. Still, that shouldn't cause your system to come to a crawl...
What applications do you have installed on your system? Do you have the original OS DVD that should have come with your Dell? I suspect that degraded performance even after a fresh reformat would be caused by a bad Windows image or install.

A "dirty" installation is when you install Windows on top of your current Windows (the same version installed over the same version). In a sense, you can think of it as installing it "in place"; you do not format the drive, you do not delete your previous installation, you just install it as is. Part of this process means that you get that Windows.old folder. The Windows.old folder is not being used at all, or it shouldn't be under normal circumstances, and honestly it should not be the cause of your slow performance. Your slow performance is likely being caused by an application, or a conflict between applications. You can delete the Windows.old folder, but you should be absolutely sure that you have nothing in there before you do.


Now one thing I like to recommend to people is the "Performance Information and Tools" in Windows 7. Open up the Start Menu and do a search for that title. In there, click on the "Advanced Tools" link on the left.

Right off the bat, you'll see a section called "Performance issues". As you guessed it, it gives you the bullets of what *might* be causing you issues in general performance. These can range from the usual "oh your drivers are out of date" to "there is something wrong with ___(this)___ application". Underneath, you'll see "Open Performance Monitor" which will help you visually see what is being used in your system, and finally "Generate a system health report". This latter one is worth running, to see where you system is at. This will tell, hopefully in detail, what might be wrong with your Windows. Run this and let us know what you get.

 

Since you've downloaded CCleaner, I would also suggest that you open the tools tab and disable most if not all the of the start-up programs.
If you want, you can attach a print screen of the Windows startup programs and I'll cross out the things you probably don't need. (I'm on holidays at the moment anyway )

You should also perform a registry clean, but it's not crucial.

And as Daver160 said, make sure nothing important is in the Windows.old file, then you can safely delete it (may as well free up some HDD space!)

And finally, set your power plan to balanced if it is not already. (If it's on power saver it can slow things down a bit)

Cheers

 

Thanks again for your ideas guys. Starting with Daver160's questions/suggestions first:

(1) I checked Task Manager to see what is "processing" during these slow periods. The spikes in activity are due to Internet Explorer. There were no other processes that went to the top of the list (except Task Manager occasionally). The other processes stayed at 0.

(2) I have installed very few applications, and they are all the same things that I have had on my computer for over a year: Carbonite, System Mechanic, Adobe Reader, Microsoft Essentials or Norton, Skype, iTunes, and CCleaner. I am not a gamer, nor do I do specialized computing on my laptop. It's mainly used for surfing the 'net and watching movies.

(3) I now have a Windows 7 CD. The first re-installation of Windows (in November) was a system restore without a CD (since I never got one with my laptop). The second one was from the CD that Dell sent to me 6 weeks ago. (That was a "clean" re-install, I believe.) The third and most recent reinstall was a dirty reinstall from the same CD.

(4) Thanks for the info about the Windows.old folder. I will double-check it for any needed items and then delete it, if only to reduce clutter.

(5) I checked the Performance and Tools > Performance Issues. There were two items listed. One was a suggestion to change my "visual settings" and the other was a program that was causing Windows to shut down slowly (Symantec Service Framework).

(6) I ran the System Health Report. There were four findings: A device driver for "unknown" has not been installed. (If I am looking at this correctly, the driver error relates to Win32_PnPEntity.DeviceID=ACPI\\SMO8800\\1.)There are missing events in the event log (14% missing). The Security Center has not recorded an anti-virus product. And the average disk queue length is 2 and the disk may be at its max transfer capacity.

And now on to NeoMesal's suggestions:

(7) A screen shot or a list of unnecessary startup items would be great.

(8) Can I perform a registry cleanup through System Mechanic? I have been using it to regularly clean/organize my laptop since I purchased it in March.

(9) I changed the Power Plan to "balanced." It had been on a Power Saver plan. (I did change the "put the computer to sleep" to "never" when plugged in, though, for the balanced plan.)

Thanks again for all the time you are taking to read my emails and type up your detailed posts. I really, really appreciate it!

Heidi

 

OK so it sounds like you don't have any obvious rogue applications that are chewing up any specific resources. That's good, but it also means pinning down the actual root cause of the problem will be a bit more work

Other than Microsoft Essentials or Norton, I don't see anything that would slow down your machine the way you described it. Yes, anti-virus products will likely slow down your computer in a noticeable way, but not such that typing becomes a major nuisance.

So it may be that your problem isn't from what software you have installed.

I think if you have CCleaner, you don't need System Mechanic, or vice versa. They do essentially the same thing.

Now, I normally don't recommend doing this unless in dire need of it, but would you be willing to completely reformat your computer, using the Windows 7 CD that you got from Dell?

I ask this because you said that after doing a second install (not a dirty install), you still have a problem with the slow typing. Even if it were a problem with your keyboard or drivers, I don't think it would manifest as a slowdown in the input from the keyboard. The keyboard is so low level input, that either the keyboard's ribbon cable is loose or I suspect something is funky within Windows itself.

Good and bad: good that Windows doesn't detect anything outright wrong within itself, bad that Windows didn't detect anything outright wrong within itself.

If Windows had caught something, you would have been given an option to repair it (may or may not have needed to use the Windows 7 CD from Dell). But since Windows doesn't report anything wrong, it just means that the problem is rather elusive and so it requires more troubleshooting.

OK, looks like your Unknown device is just the free fall sensor for your hard disk: when the machine detects that it is in free-movement, such as being dropped or knocked off a table, the sensor picks up the movement and actively seeks to protect the hard disk from damage.

Now the one thing that caught my attention is that your "disk may be at its max transfer capacity". With the software you have installed, and the ways you described you use your computer, you machine should not have reached its hard disk activity limit. Unless Carbonite backup literally backs up all your files all the live long day, there should be no reason why your hard disk has reached its max transfer capacity. Do you do a lot of file transfers to and from any other locations?

Even if you were to download movies from iTunes or stream from say Netflix, you should not be getting that message. Modern hard disks can handle a lot of thrashing, so to get this message would suggest that something is working in your background.

You should hopefully notice an improvement in performance; Power Saver literally keeps your processor at 1GHz or lower at all times in order to save energy. By changing this value, you are now using your processor's full capability (when needed). Should hopefully make a big difference in a short while.

 

(8) Yes, if it works for you, just that my software of choice is CCleaner

(9) Same as Daver said, Balanced will make a noticeable improvement over power saver with little battery life compromise.

oh and:

(7) You need to attach a screenshot for me in one of your posts (or send it via PM)

Cheers

 

Thanks again guys. From your replies, it sounds like the reason for the slowdown has not been uncovered. No rogue applications, no space-hogging applications (except my anti-virus at times), no performance issues, and it's generally "healthy".

Since I already bought System Mechanic and have 2 years left, I'll stick with that. After that point, I'll use CCleaner to maintain my computer.

Carbonite can slow down my computer a tad, but it had never been a problem before November. In fact, I had "frozen" my backup for the last week so there was no communication between my computer and Carbonite's server. The problems with slow processing did not improve at all. So I feel comfortable ruling that out. As a side note, I don't transfer any other files (e.g., like accessing files from the server at work).

I have not noticed any major improvements since changing to the balanced power plan. It might be slightly faster, but I generally have had the same problems as before.

The twist is that the Dell technician finally called me back today (they were supposed to do the call-back on Monday night, which was one week after they told me outright to take my computer to a local technician to check for deeper hardware problems. I wanted to see if another technician could figure out the problem, so I requested the call-back for Monday).

After this 1.5 hour visit, my computer does seem to be quite a bit better -- maybe 60% better. I took notes while he worked:

1) He deleted some files but I wasn't paying attention to what they were. It seemed like clutter that he was mass-deleting. They were long file names.

2) He asked if I thought I might have a virus. I said it was a possibility, since it can happen to the most careful of computer users. But I run full scans weekly and I have even used that special Microsoft product (Malicious Software tool??) to scan for viruses two times in the last 3 months. He did a Malware scan and it didn't find anything.

3) He removed a couple non-essential items from my startup.

4) He did a system scan (sfc/ scannow) and it did not find any integrity violations.

5) He deleted some hidden remnants of Norton that were not removed.

6) He reset some IE settings and then uninstalled IE 9, saying that IE 8 works better with Windows 7.

When I asked him what he found in all of these tests that would lead him to believe my problem was fixed, he didn't have an answer. I had asked because he didn't find anything wrong after doing these tests. It wouldn't make sense for my computer to act better. Nonetheless, he wants me to use my computer for a couple days and he will be calling me back.

I have to say, as I type, I am much less frustrated than before. Even in Word, I can type more quickly. And if I type faster than the letters appear on the screen (which is still taking too long), at least all of the letters are eventually appearing. Before today, I would type a sentence and where ever the computer became bogged down, it would not show any more letters.

I am still finding that scrolling in IE, or changing tabs in IE, or opening files in Word takes longer than it should.

I'm not sure what else I should do!

Heidi

 

Hi Heidi,

To be honest, without actually getting my hands on your computer, I'm not quite sure what else to be looking for.

For 1-5, that sounds like he was going through routine work, kind of like he was following a mental checklist of things he was trained to do. I certainly could not tell you what he did for 1, 3, and 5, but it sounds like he deleted some temporary files; certainly nothing that would cause any problems later on.

From what the Dell technician did, it sounds like a lot of the problems were with Windows itself: remnants of just "stuff" here and there. I don't think reverting from IE9 to IE8 would have really made that much of an improvement unless the IE9 installation itself was damaged or otherwise somehow "off". As a software and web developer myself, I sincerely do not believe that IE8 works better in Windows 7 than IE9, but if it helps your computer perform closer to normal, who am I do say otherwise!

This is just my gut thinking out loud, but I dare say one troubleshooting step to really determine if the problem was with Windows, is to re-install Windows from scratch using the Windows 7 CD that Dell gave you. This is a rather drastic measure, but ultimately it would help determine if the performance problems really did come from Windows and not something else installed. I'm really hesitant to say that this is the next step, because re-installing Windows is time consuming if you're not accustomed to doing it, and also a general nuisance of having to backup files and prepare for the procedure. I only recommend that you do this on your own volition if you really want to give yourself a clean slate!

 

Well, thanks to you both for your time. You have been very generous and I really appreciate it.

The Dell tech yesterday did admit that I might have to re-install Windows once again. Both times I have done it by CD the Dell tech has been on the phone and told me exactly what to do at each step. Once that process was finished and I had internet access, I had them take over my computer and install all the drivers, etc.

If it comes to re-installing Windows again (which I am becoming convinced needs to be done), what are some things I need to make sure I do during the re-installation process, so that it really is a clean install? Or what are the things I need to make sure the Dell tech does, to make sure it's done right?

Heidi

 

Does the slow typing only happen in Word?

 

NeoMesal,

Sorry for the delayed reply. I had the flu and a busy weekend.

Anyway, no the slow typing/performance was in both Office programs and while browsing (I use IE mainly, but I do recall the problem occurred while using Chrome).

Since the Dell dude played with my computer (and doing seemingly useless things), I must admit my computer has been better. But it may have been the additional things I did that night. I did a Google search after the Dell call and came up with something else to try. I downloaded a driver that was listed under the "Input" tab and it was called "Dell-driver" version 15.2.6.0 that "applied to" such things as "Synaptics touchpad".

What I have now is much less annoying typing delay. In fact, typing and scrolling in IE seems pretty good. Typing in Word also improved. Granted, when I type fast all of the letters do not appear until after a short delay. But at least now the letters are all appearing. Before, I would type and the computer would just stop producing letters at the point it got bogged down. And the cursor is no longer jumping to the sentence above it randomly while I am typing.

So all in all, things are much better. At this point I don't think I need to re-install Windows. But I am prepared to do so if needed.

Thanks for your help!

Heidi

 

That's good to hear, that things are better now. It still sounds like some things are causing the slow downs, so maybe it wouldn't hurt to go visit the Dell website, download the drivers they have available, and re-install them one at a time.

I don't know if it will help any further, but it never hurts to try!

 

I could definitely do that. I am puzzled as to why the Dell site doesn't have a feature that allows you to know which drivers you have already installed on your computer.

In any case, is there anything I need to keep in mind in terms of re-installing the drivers? Like only install the "recommended" ones? Or install only the most recent one if there are two or more available? Or install certain ones first?

Heidi

 

I always recommend that, when in doubt, install the "newest" one available. If there is a specific label or text saying that a particular version is the recommended one, then I would go for that one. Otherwise, the newest drivers are usually the recommended ones.