E1505's Mouse Pointer's hourglass

I just got this computer this week. How come the hourglass of the mouse pointer keeps on showing? Even when there are no applications running, it keeps on popping every 10 seconds. What do you think is the problem?

Also, I just uninstalled all the useless programs preloaded in this laptop and the GUI for the volume control is gone. Do you have any idea how to get it back?

Another issue is that how come the processor just runs 997MHZ in the system properties? Is this normal and a feature to save battery? And after a while it will change to 2.0 GHZ. I got a T2500 processor.

Please help me. Thank you very much.

 

Your hourglass issue is likely something in the startup file that's trying to run in the background... try running MSConfig (start, run, MSConfig) and looking at the startup programs, some can be disabled.

Your GUI for the volume control is only there if you have Dell Quickset installed. It's not necessary for the controls to work, but does give that nice interface.

If you have quickset installed you can fairly quickly adjust where your processor works with its power management settings, however you can still do this without it.

Your processor is likely running at 997 because your system is set to Laptop / portable mode. This underclocks the system to save battery. Going to control panel, then power management and changing the setting to home / desktop changes this.

Hope this helps.

 

You should do a complete hard drive reformat and reinstall windows

 

That's the best method, but it's not necessary to take care of the issue.

 

That is expected behavior. Speedstep is enabled by default, which means your computer will throttle up to full speed when required and return to idle speed when not required. Unless you really need 2 GHz all the time (Minesweeper and Pinball certainly require it ), just leave your power settings as is.