Slow Inspiron 9100 after OS reinstall

Hi folks

Problem: Slow machine after format/reinstall of OS

Specs:
Dell Inspiron 9100
Win XPpro (Upgrade from XP Home)
Processor: 3.2 Ghz Pentium 4
Memory: 1gb
ATI Radeon Mobility 9800 (256mb)
Soundcard: USB Creative Audigy NX2

I have installed all the latest drivers, including the chipset, but still the thing is slow as molassis.

F.ex if I start iTunes it will play problem free until I start my web browser (or any other program). Then the music starts to stutter for several seconds. Same if I do anything, click on a link, open a new window, or anything at all (f.ex cut and paste). Yeah, even scrolling in this text window will cause my machine to stutter).

I've tried to monitor the performance meters in the windows task manager, and when this happens. And CPU usage hits the roof at 100% and while memory usage is steady beteween about 300-400Mb,

Same with games. Even "older" games that I previously had no problems with stutters like this, and effect resembling lag in an online game. When this happens, sound effects stops and stutters for several seconds, and if I move the mouse pointer it jumps all over the place.

I have installed all the latest drivers from Dell, including the chipset. But there must be something I am overlooking.

Thanks for reading this

 

It sounds like it's not recognizing the memory(maybe). You said it was though. Anybody else? Other than that, it would have to be a driver. Try and contact Dell and ask them. It sounds pretty unusual to me.

 

hmmm

are you up to date on service packs?

 

Hi and thanks for replying

I'm on SP2 and the memory is working fine as far as I can tell.

 

Check the taskmanager look at performance (click view/show kernel times). Leave this up and try a couple of things. Look for the red line to be most of the processor time basically no matter what you do. If the answer is yes look for something big you installed causing task switches or lots of page faults.

Could you have installed one of those antivirus program which scan every thing you touch on your disk as you go? This can bring any machine to its knees. A very fragmented drive can sometimes do this too. Don't forget these notebook drives are slow.

 

Thanks for the tip,

I've checked and that did not seem to be the problem. Kernel times stayed well bellow the green line. But I may be onto something.

Right now I am using running the same combo as yesterday..(iTunes/Web browser, and everything is normalized. What I did was reinstall the Augigy drivers....that is I only installed the sound driver itself. And now it's behaving more or less normal. CPU usage 5-6% except when scrolling in iTunes then it peaks to 40% for a few seconds and then settles right down again.

However, in games I still have the problem. Games that I previously ran without a hitch
on the same system and specs. So something is still causing this...

Regarding AV programs, I'm running AVG free edition and will try to disable it and test again.

 

When the program faulters watch the disk light and see if it winks. I assume it does. If this happens you have something which is causing page faults or the program u are running is reading the disk for some reason when it probably didn't before.

Could also be that you hard drive or cd/dvd are now running pio mode (not likely as the red line and green line would line up most of the time). There have been posts here to detect and correct this.

 

Problem solved

After trying another reinstall, and still no improvement, I simply took a chance and opened the covers under the machine, and....the thing was clogged with dust.

The left and right fan intake has a ribbed dust filter and this was simply packed. Cleaned it up using a compressed air canister, put it back togheter and now it works perfectly. Running even BF2 on full blast without a hitch now...

So what it all boiled down to...no cooling.

Just a warning: by opening those covers, and removing the fans for cleaning, I probably blew the warranty on my machine...but I don't have time to send it in for that...and only have a couple of months left of the period anayway...

Thanks for caring, those that answered my call for help

Rune

 

We had a similar problem with our Inspiron 9100. Video playback was very jerky (both divx and dvd), even the sound was choppy at times and Flash games were very slow with the processor hitting 90 - 100% almost constantly. Opened up the bottom covers and vacuumed out the (clogged) metal ribs. Put the laptop back together and it performed like never before!
Also, the fans were making an awful lot of noise before, something that should have started us wondering...
Anyway, thanks Rune (and Google) for clearing up the mystery!