Windows running slow, need help

Alright, so I'm gonna sound really really stupid right now, but I need some help with my Dell Inspiron E1705. In trying to take down the partitions dell had on my laptop, I accidentally hit "repair OS" rather than reinstalling windows xp media center fresh. And so I let the OS repair itself, and I got a ton of errors relating to SP2. I bypassed them all and finally got into windows, and decided to repair the OS again. Now windows is running alright, but noticably slower from before messing with windows, most likely due to the fact that I had reinstalled it twice and had errors occurring.

Now I'm wondering what options I have to speed my notebook back up and to gain back the performance I lost. Will running dell restore return the OS back to it's original state? (Because if so, this would be a terribly ironic situation (In trying to delete the restore partition, I end up needing it)) Or is my only option to do a clean install of windows (which I don't feel like doing)

Thanks for any help.

 

Do the clean install. Reformatt it all and start fresh.
It should take about as long as the repair, then a little longer to get the programs you want running.

 

I would do a clean install, update everything, install core apps, and make a backup image of that

 

When you did a repair, that enable all of your services or any changes that you made before to increase/optimize your laptop.

Since you repaired XP, I don't think the restore partition will work. It might, but generally if it detects that the partitions have changed in any way including just the XP partition being formatted, it will not work.

I would just do a reformat also. I know it is a pain to do, but it is the best way to get a clean system.

 

I'd say there was a good chance it would work [assuming the 'Repair' was the ONLY thing you did...] It shouldn't have changed the Partition Table or the 'internals' of the Dell Utility and Restore partitions.

That said, if you did do much of anything else, then there's just as good a chance that it won't....

You can always do a 'test' run [Ctrl + F11] at appearance of www.dell.com 'blue bar' screen. It will let you 'bail' out of the restore so you're not committed if it does work.

btw.... Be prepared with the keyboard as you only have 1-2 seconds to get the key strokes done. The sequence will be the 'standard' Dell Logo screen [that's your 'get ready' cue] and then the 'blue bar' screen.

If you do try the 'test', I'd be curious to know how it 'goes'....

Thanks

Mark

 

The general consensus seems to be a reformat and clean install. Do this and keep us informed.

 

I honestly don't see what you would accomplish by restoring your HDD. XP repair doesn't remove any software from your laptop. All XP repair does is fix registry problems, removes XP updates, returns services.msc back to default.

If you restore, you are going to have to remove all of the junkware, install your software, update XP, optimize your system, etc...

If you do a clean install, at least you won't have to remove the junkware, and you'll have a clean system.

I completely understand if you don't want to take the time to do a clean install or are nervous about it, but if that is the case, then it might be best to figure out what is wrong with your laptop now instead of doing a restore.

That's just my theory on it.

 

Talked with dell to get the cds i would need after doing a clean restore. After that I decided I might as well run Dell restore to see if it helped at all since I could just do a clean install afterwards. Everything seems to be running back at full speed, so that's good enough for me. Uninstalled the bloatware and ran a number of Reg cleaners, went into services.msc and I think I've got the system optimized well enough. Thanks for all of your suggestions to clean install, and I still might, but I'm too worried that I'll screw something important up, and since Dell Restore worked well enough, I think I'm good for now.