New Laptop Running Slow, any suggestions?

thebiggestjim

Hi All,

I bought a laptop of Dell there about a month ago and she is running very slow and I can't quite figure it out. Im talking after a few startups, IE is taking 4 minutes to open, never mind outlook express. All I have installed since I got the laptop is microsoft office. When I take the battery out and restart its normal but after a few restarts it gets slower to the point its unusable. At its worst there is 940MB of RAM been used with nothing running but Taskmanager. After battery out restart 550-600MB ram been used with nothing running. If anyone has any suggestions they would be appreciated.

SPECs
Dell Inspiron I6400
Intel Dual Core Pentium 1.73Ghz
1GB Ram
32 Bit OS
Vista

What I have done to resolve it thus far
contacted dell and held remote debug session
1)uninstalled Google desktop
2)adjusted virtual memory settings (not sure exactly changes made)
3) uninstalled microsoft works

Thanks,

Jim

uch

Run a scan with new version of ad-aware7 and see what turns up

matrim

thebiggestjim wrote: »

1GB Ram
Vista

This is your problem here. 1GB RAM is not enough for Vista. You should have 2Gb+

thebiggestjim

matrim wrote: »

This is your problem here. 1GB RAM is not enough for Vista. You should have 2Gb+

This was my initial thought also but dell tech help said its normal for vista to use 550 MB of RAM. However im finding its using ~900MB sometimes. So options

1) Uninstall Vista and install XP
2) Upgrade to 2GB of RAM (is this difficult for a laptop?)

Jim

ecaf

Just on this topic, I heard recently that Vista runs very slowly. As I am considering buying a new laptop, does anyone recommend buying with Vista (2GB Ram), or should I stick with Windows XP?

Sean^DCT4

Windows XP, at least wait until Vista SP1 is released.

kaizersoze

matrim wrote: »

This is your problem here. 1GB RAM is not enough for Vista. You should have 2Gb+

While 1gig would be sluggish and 2gig would be nicer, IE taking 4 minutes to open would suggest something is hogging resourses. I've had alot of Vista laptops with 1 gig of ram and none of them were as bad as that.

OP, What anti virus are you running? If you're using McAfee or Norton anti virus, dump them and install AVG or something lighter. You'll notice an improvement straight away.

thebiggestjim

kaizersoze wrote: »

While 1gig would be sluggish and 2gig would be nicer, IE taking 4 minutes to open would suggest something is hogging resourses. I've had alot of Vista laptops with 1 gig of ram and none of them were as bad as that.

OP, What anti virus are you running? If you're using McAfee or Norton anti virus, dump them and install AVG or something lighter. You'll notice an improvement straight away.

Thanks Kaizersoze, Ill give this a go first. See how things go. This laptop will not be running anything very intensive so this might be enough. Ill let ye know how it goes.

thebiggestjim

ecaf wrote: »

Just on this topic, I heard recently that Vista runs very slowly. As I am considering buying a new laptop, does anyone recommend buying with Vista (2GB Ram), or should I stick with Windows XP?

Stick with XP, Vista is a pain in the ass

ressem

I uninstalled the bundled McAfee of a friend from a new Dell with 2GB ram and Vista Ultimate as it was causing heavy slowdown, and replaced it with Nod32. The program just appears to be flawed.

Otherwise, have you got the two fixes.
KB941649 and KB938979?

thebiggestjim

kaizersoze wrote: »

While 1gig would be sluggish and 2gig would be nicer, IE taking 4 minutes to open would suggest something is hogging resourses. I've had alot of Vista laptops with 1 gig of ram and none of them were as bad as that.

OP, What anti virus are you running? If you're using McAfee or Norton anti virus, dump them and install AVG or something lighter. You'll notice an improvement straight away.

Just an update, I did what Kaizersoze suggested I uninstalled McAfee. Upon restart the difference was very noticeable. Computer is now running at the speed you would expect. Installed AVG. IE running with 8 tabs 675MB Ram been used. Ill keep an eye on this over the weekend and provide another update monday.

Thanks again Kaizersoze

PogMoThoin

thebiggestjim wrote: »

Just an update, I did what Kaizersoze suggested I uninstalled McAfee. Upon restart the difference was very noticeable. Computer is now running at the speed you would expect. Installed AVG. IE running with 8 tabs 675MB Ram been used. Ill keep an eye on this over the weekend and provide another update monday.

Thanks again Kaizersoze

McAfee is a hog, I've noticed it being more than 10 different programs running @ startup if you don't disable the privacy guard, email scanner etc. Nod32 ftw

kaizersoze

thebiggestjim wrote: »

Just an update, I did what Kaizersoze suggested I uninstalled McAfee. Upon restart the difference was very noticeable. Computer is now running at the speed you would expect. Installed AVG. IE running with 8 tabs 675MB Ram been used. Ill keep an eye on this over the weekend and provide another update monday.

Thanks again Kaizersoze

Good stuff.:)

Cryos

matrim wrote: »

This is your problem here. 1GB RAM is not enough for Vista. You should have 2Gb+

just for your info Vista runs fine with 1GB of ram on:

Intel Centrino 1.7ghz
Intel core 2 Duo 6500
Intel Pentium 4 HT 2.8+

Capt'n Midnight

don't forget that Vista uses more of the available memory then previous version of windows and as long as it releases it for you applications it's not going to slow them down. Better IMHO than an OS than ignores your memory.