Vista slow to display windows

I just bought a new Inspiron 1525 laptop (2GB memory, Intel dual 1.73) and let me be the 100,000,001st person to say it: Vista sucks. From searching the internet the last few days I now know that is very old news, but I am usually out of the technology loop, so it came as a very rude shock.

My computer is slow at updating the display when I switch the view between windows of open apps(such as between to IE windows, or to the word processor, etc). It usually takes a few seconds, long enough that you can watch the progression as the display loads each section of the new window. That might not sound too bad, but on my old (much slower) computer you select a different window and bam, it pops up instantly. The delay gets annoying after a while.

This occurs even when only a few apps are open and the cpu and memory are not being taxed. I have tried turning off several features, including switching from Aero to Classic view, with no luck. Does anybody have any suggestions or ideas?

 

Wipe everything, reinstall a fresh copy of Vista that doesn't include everything Dell thinks you need running on your computer.

Lets face real facts here, companies like Dell, Sony, HP, Lenovo, and Gateway are paid money by many software companies to preinstall software onto their factory images. I've seen both XP and Vista computers come brand new, running slow as dogs till they've been formatted and loaded with an actual clean OS.

 

I agree, If you weren't careful when going through the Dell online configurator, (they do allow you to get rid of it while building your system, but you have to go through each section) you most likely have junk software on there that really slow down the experience.

With two GB of RAM, you should be seeing downright snappy performance.

Run a clean install using the OS disk Dell provided and the Drivers disk Dell provided. You should then be good to go in no time.

 

Thanks, if nothing else works (which has been the case so far) then I will certainly give that a shot. If a clean wipe solves the issue then I will be a little surprised, since even with whatever garbage was preinstalled my cpu isn't being overloaded and it should be able to handle loading a freaking window.

 

As a precursor to a reformat, I ran MSconfig and got rid of a bunch of unnecesary startup programs. Looks like you guys were right. Everything is much snappier now. Thanks very much, you have saved me a lot of frustration.

Between this and the HDD parking/clicking issue ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=168425) this website alone has prevented me from kicking this laptop through the window of the BestBuy store from whence it came. These little 'incidents' have really lowered my esteem of the computer industry. Such easily preventable crap.

 

You should also refer to the NBR Vista Tips and Tweaks thread that was compiled by Les (aka Flamenko), which provides a wealth of information regarding how to speed up your Vista system (i.e. turning off indexing, pagefile shrinking, etc.). I would definetly echo the recommendations of the rest - reformat with a clean install of Vista, and then follow the tips and tweaks to get yourself a very snappy machine.

 

Just install XP.
Vista is not for everyone.

 

Be sure you have SP1 installed.
If so, reinstalling the OS (and SP1) might not be a bad idea.
I don't have any problem like you describe at all.

 

Thanks all for the advice. I plan on doing a reformat in the very near future. One thing I just noticed, even though my cpu came with Vista SP1 loaded, the Vista CD appears to be from 2007 and pre-SP1. I suppose it makes no difference if you install with a Vista SP1 CD, or just update to SP1 on the internet?

 

Even though I botched the reformat procedure a little, the computer is *much* faster now that all the junk software is gone. And there I was just assuming Vista was the culprit. Still think it's a crime that Dell/Bestbuy gives you a cpu whose performance is so significantly reduced by crap software.

 

That is lame... it's not like Dell or Best Buy invented crapware, but it's still lame. They should at least make sure it doesn't slow things down much.

Anyway... glad you got it working well now.

 

Well all the crap software and advertising makes Dell money so they can sell the computer to you cheaper!

I guess you cant have it both ways. Most people reformat anyway so its one of the lesser Dell issues lol