Help with an Inperion 9100

[GraingerGuy]

Hey all...

This is my girlfriend's laptop and it's starting to run REALLY slow!

I have taken everything out of startup that I could
I've run hijack this, MS spyware program, Adaware and spybot and nothing was found.
I've run a virus scanner, no viruses.

The CPU usage is jumping all over the place and I don't know why. When I open a folder and drag the window around, it is like it isn't refreshing well. I made sure that the web options are turned in the display properties. It's a Radeon 9700 in here with 64MB RAM, P4 3 Ghz. It is also plugged in so the CPU is running at a full 3Ghz. When I open up task manager, the CPU usage for that program is also jumping all over the place!

Possessed maybe? ;)

Alright, thank a lot for the help!

[AlpineJay]

This may be incredibly dumb to say, but if by 64MB you meant system memory that may be why. Otherwise if it's running slow it may be one of the notorious P4 laptop's heat issues. I've seen that in a handful of machines that's come into my office - P4 machines overheating and causing erratic problems.

[mechmike0034]

If it were mine, I'd:

- Download driver updates from Dell (particularly chipset and BIOS) and update to the latest/greatest. Get them here: http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/devices.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd&SystemID=INS_PNT_P4_9100&os=WW1&osl=EN#

- Get EasyCleaner from http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/ecleane.htm and use it to clean out temp files and dead reg links.

- Then, run NTREGOPT from here: http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/ to tighten up the registry once you've gotten all the dead links out.

- Go to Windows Explorer, right-click the C: Drive and select Properties, and UNCHECK the check box at the bottom that says "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching". How often do you search for a file anyway? It'll speed things up and hopefully reduce your CPU activity.

- Defrag after all of the above is done.

[GraingerGuy]

This may be incredibly dumb to say, but if by 64MB you meant system memory that may be why. Otherwise if it's running slow it may be one of the notorious P4 laptop's heat issues. I've seen that in a handful of machines that's come into my office - P4 machines overheating and causing erratic problems.

I'm sorry, that 64MB meant the video card. The computer itself has 512MB.

Thanks mech...I'll try that and we'll see how it goes

[AlpineJay]

oh, and also I'd run a free scan at www.housecall.com. Seems like that's the one thing you may have not tried yet.

[GraingerGuy]

Yeah...I thought about that but didn't do it since I did Norton AV already...but it would be good to have one that wasn't compromised (if I do have a virus)

btw...

Mech, I did everything...except the optimizing part. It would get to 9% and freeze the whole computer on me. Any other suggestions?

[mechmike0034]

Mech, I did everything...except the optimizing part. It would get to 9% and freeze the whole computer on me. Any other suggestions?

You mean defrag? Run defrag in Safe Mode.

Try dumping the contents of C:\Windows\prefetch

Try turning off System Restore, rebooting, and then turning it back on, adjusting the disk space for same down to 3-4%.

Norton is famous for hogging resources. Try disabling it (if you can) and see if it makes any difference.

[GraingerGuy]

No, I meant the ntregopt program you pointed me to.

[mechmike0034]

No, I meant the ntregopt program you pointed me to.

Run that in Safe Mode as well...