I9300 Really Really Slow all of a sudden... HELP PLZ!

My Inspiron 9300 has always been really fast and I've never really had any problems. But all of a sudden, its been really laggy and taking forever too load everything. I tried system restore but it said you're system can not be restored...

Help plz, anything is appreciated greatly!

 

Usually a near-foolproof option is just formatting and a fresh OS install. That should be a last resort though, see what other support options and forum members say.

 

have you done full virus/adware/spyware scans? these could be running in the background and eating up your processing power...

 

if you have the new intel wireless card drivers the might be the problems as they are using alot of your system. intel i believe still has to fix the problem. if you have download the new drive switch back to the old one for now. also tell us how many proccess are running(Ctrl alt del)...

 

Your hard drive could be going.

 

I'd try a disk check then a virus/spyware scan. You also might try a defrag.

 

I did a full Norton Scan and found nothing. I have 71 processes going on average. And I do have the new driver for the wireless card, now to just change that back... I'm also running defrag as Im typing this.

Thanks for all the help, anymore is great!!!

 

71 is alot. Then again, I don't know if notebooks inherently have more processes than desktops. On my desktop, I averages 25.

 

A laptop should have between 30-50 (max). 71 is quite a lot. I would recommend doing msconfig.

 

get rid of that wireless driver immedieately(more memory sipping than FF). Did you remember how many processes you had before?

 

run your virus scan in safe mode, alot of the nasty ones are able to hide, in your task manager, what does it look like under your performance tab?, is your cpu constantly under load?, is your page file more than your physically installed memory? if I were you I would do fresh install, update everything, trim windows down,install your "core" apps and important files only, then make a backup image of that, then if you get the mysterious slowdown again, it'll be a snap to get a fresh, functional install, another note, everyone seems adamant about getting rid of the intel proset wireless program, I tried doing that, and had nothing but problems, I have a usr router, and when I let windows take over my wireless, everytime I switched the wireless off, or powered down, rebooted, etc, it kicked every machine off the network, and I had to manually power down the router, then power it back up, wich was extrememly annoying, especially since we have 5 machines on the router, using the intel pro set, I have never had this problem, just a heads up, and by the way, it isnt the driver you need to get rid of, do that and it wont work at all, its the pro set utility, you need to go into your wireless options and set it to let windows manage your wireless, then you can remove the pro set utility, do not remove the driver

 

71 is a lot of processes. To me, it sounds like a trojan or other type of malware. If you have the Intel drivers, that could be a major problem, but that wouldn't make it impossible to do a system restore. Usually that's a malware problem, but not always. But with 71 processes, a full format should be at the top of your list anyway. I did a reformat and was running 38 processes on a clean copy of XP Pro (well, I had my AV and Spybot installed), but now I'm running at like 45-48 I think with all my applications and everything installed. So I would vote format unless you don't feel comfortable with that. The sticky at the top of the thread is a great resource if you feel you want to try it.

 

I have always had about 65-80 processes going. How can I remove some of them and which ones?

 

You might want to install ccleaner. Run it and see if you can delete anything unnecessary. Defintely check your startups and see if there is anything that shouldn't be there.

 

How do I start my comp in safe mode? Sry im kinda a computer noob...

 

After you turn on your computer, you see the Dell Bios screen, and then right after that press F8 and it will bring you up to the Safe Mode menu.

 

Well I have two more questions:

Is it bad for you're laptop to run until the battery runs out, resulting in it turning off abruptly?


If a laptop were to go through a power surge, how serious would the damage be?

Kinda random but might be my problem...

 

I second that. Omega593, back up your hard drive, just in case it is about to die.

 

Well your computer should recognize that the battery is getting really low so it will tell you to start saving files. But it won't just shut off completely without warning. I believe you can set it to hibernate or shutdown if you prefer.

Well since its a laptop, power surges I don't think is really much a problem. If the power does fluctuate, the battery can kick in.

 

Now mine is runnning extremely slow. I was flying last night, and now crawling today. I'll be experimenting this weekend, and after I get a clean isntall (haven't collected my discs all yet)