The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Painfully slow DV6500t; what is going on?

    Discussion in 'HP' started by slayek, Apr 28, 2008.

  1. slayek

    slayek Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    27
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Folks, I got a DV6500t with T7250 processor, 2GB RAM, Vista 64bit Ultimate with 5.4k rpm 120GB hdd. Ever since I got it, the laptop seems really slow, feels more like a P3 when I am multitasking (firefox/IE7/Outlook/Word). Programs open really slow, it just feels not very responsive to what I want to do with. I used to have a M20 (dell) with XP and it tend to fly with 1GB RAM and 1.8GHz single core Pentium M processor. As of now, I am totally clueless as to what to blame- is it the hardware or the Vista itself? Under task manager, I do not much load whenever I feel the sluggishness. Do you guys have some clue? I am fairly new when it comes to Vista.
     
  2. Greg

    Greg Notebook Nobel Laureate

    Reputations:
    7,857
    Messages:
    16,212
    Likes Received:
    58
    Trophy Points:
    466
    It basically comes down to Vista...it sucks normally. I suggest you read the Vista tweaking guide and also update to SP1 and that should have a dramatic effect for you.

    You also probably have the standard installation of Vista that came with the laptop, and that is HEAVILY laced with spam-programs that do nothing but slow the PC down. If you reinstall Vista without all the bloat, then it will be much much better.
     
  3. Lithus

    Lithus NBR Janitor

    Reputations:
    5,504
    Messages:
    9,788
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    205
    Fixed that for you.
     
  4. TonyZ

    TonyZ Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    31
    Messages:
    388
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Is your Power Plan set to Performance mode?
     
  5. slayek

    slayek Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    27
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I forgot to add in OP, that I have removed most of the bloatware, aka, Norton and other HP trialwares. SP1 is already installed, I had high hopes on it ,but so far no difference in performance. I will take a look at Vista tweaks.
    TONYZ- Power plan was set in HP Recommended mode. Do I need to setup performance mode to boost the snappyness of the laptop?
     
  6. Lithus

    Lithus NBR Janitor

    Reputations:
    5,504
    Messages:
    9,788
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    205
    Did you clean install or did you just uninstall?

    Fire up a clean install, and the system will be blazing afterwards for a good amount of time (as long as you don't mess it up).
     
  7. slayek

    slayek Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    27
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I tried a clean install too, without much improvement. I installed XP pro, but at the expense of Media Center, which I use often in Vista Ultimate. So had revert back to Vista. I have gone thru the tweaking Vista post (first page only, so far). Will see how those things improve my laptop's performance. Stay tuned.
     
  8. slayek

    slayek Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    27
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Greg, Les and all- kudos to you. After tweaking the crap out of my Vista Ultimate, my laptop is flying, performance/responsiveness is significantly up- pretty much as good as my 4600+ X2 desktop.
     
  9. netkiller

    netkiller Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    26
    Messages:
    165
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    2GB RAM, Vista 64bit Ultimate

    2GB isnt going to work well with a 64Bit OS. data encryption is 2times as long i think or something is 2times long thus needing more RAM.
     
  10. Les

    Les Not associated with NotebookReview in any way

    Reputations:
    4,706
    Messages:
    5,391
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Tx Slayek for the comp0liment...and 2Gb works just fine if you have no need for more. Four gb offers more tweaking options however.
     
  11. caveman

    caveman Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    8
    Messages:
    261
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    It shouldn't be so slow. Most likely it has something to do with the hard drive, or possibly the memory. You can run a hard drive self test from the BIOS (F10 on boot, diagnostics, primary hdd test), it can take up to a few hours to do the full scan. To do a memory test you can just download memtest86 and burn the ISO to a disk and let it run a pass or two.

    Hope this helps