Problems with 1420 and Vista effects

Hi there:

I have a problem with Vista visual effects and my inspiron 1420. I've got the Nvidia Geforce 8400 GS and latest dell drivers.

Even though rating 3.7 on Windows Vista Aero, the thing is the following:

The effect "animating when minimizing or maximizing windows" works very bad. It is very sluggish, and what i find weird is that "sometimes" it works smoothly and like it should, but at other times (the mayority), it works sluggish and laggy. I find this very strange cause it gives me the impression that the video card is "sleeping" or something for a while and then at some points it works fine (when the effect works smoothly)

I also would like to point out that i have a 1440x900 native screen, don't know whether this might be of importance or not. 2.2 ghz core 2 duo, 2 gb ram

Hope to hear from you guys and possibly a solution. I feel very frustrated on having spent thousands of dollars in a supposedly very high range laptop and not being able to enjoy a full gratificating vista experience. A friend of mine with an hp with intel INTEGRATED graphics has better performance as this effect works smoothly ALL the time.

Thanks in advance,
Anibal

 

I have the same specs, and mine does that sometimes as well. Not the majority, however.

 

mine never does that and my computer is much weaker than yours

 

That's odd, do you find when it does work properly you're running different process/programs?

When I had animated min/max enabled I didn't have those problems. T7300 w/ 8400m gs

 

Up, any other help?? Plase, i'm really upset by this thing not working up to the specs

 

what software have you installed since you got your 1420? Did you look at the CPU usage when it was slow? Or look at the processes to see what is using up all the CPU.

 

No special software... and no special processes... i tend to think it has to be an issue with the nvidia graphics card as friends who have integrated intel graphics have their visual interface working perfectly.

 

Have you formatted and clean installed? My wife's 1420 was rather sluggish when she first received it. Things improved after the clean install, but now I'm experiencing problems shutting down or coming out of sleep mode. I may try to uninstall the video drivers and install the updated drivers off Dell's web site. Seems like the drivers could be the culprit here. I have an M1330 when the same exact specs and I have no issues like your or my wife.

 

Clean installed... installed latest Nvidia WHQL drivers... still having the same issue.

I found a post of another person who seems to suffer from exactly the same type of problem. You can check it out here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=141965

Please help guys. This thing is really bothering me.

 

I posted this in another thread but it pertains to the same thing: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2697496&posted=1#post2697496