Poor performance with dv4z

So I just got my parents a dv4z for Christmas (a dv4-1220us to be exact). The specs are:

CPU: AMD Turion X2 RM-72 @ 2.1GHz
RAM: 4GB DDR2
GPU: ATi HD 3200
Vista Home Premium x64

Upon using the computer the first time, I uninstalled a bunch of the crap software (Norton trials, Juno trials, etc), and installed my own AV software (Symantec Corporate 10) and Office 2007. I also installed Firefox, Google Chrome, and CCleaner. I left a few pieces of HP's software installed, such as the HP updater (though I set it not to start up with the computer, so it's not really running right now), the Lightscribe stuff, the IDT software and a few other things.

But the performance of the computer has been lower than what I was expecting, especially while browsing certain websites like IGN. The processor seems to spike to well over 80% a lot more than I was expecting. Memory usage is consistently above 1.5GB, but I know this is how Vista operates and it will decrease slightly as time goes one. Either way, 1.5GB out of 4 isn't much to worry about.

I know the AMD processor isn't the fastest thing on the market right now, but I don't think it's normal for this kind of performance. Websites (even NBR) scroll slugishly sometimes, applications take some time to load, and general performance just seems to be far short of what I am used to running Vista Ultimate on my Dell (specs in sig), which is considerably older, and 32-bit only with half the RAM. So is this just a new Vista problem, or a Vista x64 problem, or is the computer just this slow? I would hate for it to be the latter.

By the way, I wanted to do a clean install of Vista on the laptop when I first installed it, but HP doesn't ship discs with their computers for some odd reason (every other computer I've bought with the exception of another Compaq has had an OS disc... catch on HP). I have the disc I used to upgrade my Dell laptop (a Vista Ultimate upgrade disc from my school's MSDN agreement), and was wondering if I could use this disc with the guide stickied in this forum, or if I needed an Anytime Upgrade disc. Thanks for all the help in advance.

 

I do believe that disk you got from school should work. Since it's not an OEM version, it should be able to run on any computer.

 

I agree with Red, any vista installation disk will work as long as it is an install/upgrade, not an image disc. I have not heard of any issue with x64 in relation to what you have stated. And you are right, it should not be that slow or sluggish. A clean install should be the fix for this...but then again it may be a bad system driver that HP has yet to fix. If you have the time and access to system drives, I would say do a reinstall and tweak from there. You may want to vLite to ave you some time on the back end. Just make sure to save your OEM reg file to make life easy. There are a couple of stickied guides on how to do this in the Windows area I believe. If you can't find em, pm me and I will sort through my 1k or so subscriptions. Good luck!

 

I find it really disappointing that HP would have faulty OS installations on their computers. So far I've been fine with the computer itself, but terribly disappointed with how HP handles their OS installations. No OS disc, stupid restore partition that restores all the bloat, restore discs that you burn yourself that do the same thing, and hard to access system drivers. It's all a shame, especially considering Dell (their biggest competitor) is opposite from all of the above.

Just to be clear, though, the Vista disc I have specifies on the disc that it is 32-bit and that it is only for MSDN subscribers. How can I be sure it will still work, short of just trying it out? As I said, it's my parent's computer, and I don't think they'll be too happy about me messing around with it like this if it does not, in fact, help anything, or even worse, causes more problems, and more delays of their usage.

Thanks for the replies, though, guys. I really appreciate the help.

 

If you are worried, go find/get a upgrade/installation disc and use that. Or you can always make an image of the installation (C) partition, try out your disc and restore it back if it does not work. It is legal to use any disc as long as you use your serial/oem info with it. MS even had it online for a while. eBay has anytime upgrade DVD's for something like $10.

 

Oh, good news. The webcam doesn't work either. Every time I try to open the MediaSmart software, it says the webcam is being used by other software that needs to be closed first, which it clearly isn't (there wasn't even any other software open, and I haven't even installed anything besides web browsers and CCleaner).

This is just a big bag of fun. I don't think I'll ever buy an HP for myself. It's really disappointing to spend this kind of money on a computer and have so many problems out of the gate. I can't even browse ESPN.com because there's so much lag.

 

Norton Corporate sucks. I used to use it myself since it was free from my university but it uses way too many resources.

Webcam issues are well chronicled, figured they would have fixed that by now. There is a thread with a driver you can install and it will work- do a search for webcam fix/fingers crossed.

Not sure why your laptop is like that, but it's definitely not normal.

I would do a clean install and give it a run before installing anything- I think you will be more than satisfied with the performance at that point.

 

I've never had a problem with Symantec on the computers I've used. Sure, it's not as good as Kapersky or the likes, but it's free and nowhere near as bloated or annoying as the Norton or McAffee junk that comes with computers.

Either way, my other concern with reinstalling is that HP will void the warranty, as I've read around here that they do that sometimes. Is there any way to get HP to send me a Vista disc, or will they only send stupid restore discs?

 

I'm not seeing any of those issues on my dv4z with 64-bit Vista but I'm using AVG for antivirus and no registry cleaners. I was lazy and didn't bother with a clean OS install. Webcam works. Memory usage is pretty high, 64-bit Vista is like that in part due to the larger 64-bit binaries. I recommend sticking with 64-bit Vista since 32-bit Vista is limited to ~3GB RAM.

Reinstalling the OS will not void the warranty. Worst case you can use the factory OS restore DVDs you burned before you send the notebook in for service since HP will wipe the drive anyhow. HP just won't help you straighten out software problems caused by your new OS install. No great loss there.

 

So... yeah... I'm an idiot. I put the computer in power saver mode in Vista when it was on battery, assuming that when it was plugged up, it would go back to High Performance mode (like it does on my Dell). But it didn't. And yeah, performance was terrible.

So I changed it back to High Performance mode, and everything is fine now. Yeah.... I'm an idiot. I apologize.

Now to get this webcam working...