MY DELL IS FAILING!!! HELP ME OUT, LAGGING BADLY

[Horizon438]

Hello All, I have a Dell Pentium PII 450 that I bought a little over a year and a half ago. I'm not sure what kind of motherboard it is..but the basics are...128mb ram, 16 gb maxtor hd, Turtle Beach II sound card and a STB nVidia TNT video card.

Now for the situation:

Ever since a few months ago, my computer is REALLY SLOW...it takes sometimes up to 5 minutes to boot up. The thing is, I've only used up about 4 GB of hd space and most of it are MP3s....at first, I thought it might be because I dl too many songs at once..so I tried DEFRAG....and for some odd reason, the only way I can defrag the hd was in SAFE MODE...and it took about a good 12 hrs. The problems keep on recurring and its bugging the crap out of me. I also removed most of my start up items and to no good effect. ARGH!!! To better describe the problem...whenever I try opening some programs it lags really bad and sometimes even freezes. I've even tried reformatting my hd..and still..after a week of use..its no use... Could it be a hd problem? I feel like the hd is not scanning fast enough? But if that was the problem..my comp would crash...right? ARgh..its just frustrating ??? Does anyone have any suggestions on where to go about solving the problem? I've called DEll..and they basically said, unless there's something mechanically wrong, i can't send the comp back to them. I'm running out of options...please HEEEELP!!!!!!!! I've tried everything!


Mike

[i6s1]

Is it just slow during bootup? You could tell Dell that you're loosing data, and reinstalling windows doesn't fix it, and they might take it back.

[Jeffbx]

Let me get this straight - you've formatted your C: drive, reloaded windows from scratch, and you're still having the problem - correct?

[Horizon438]

Yes, thats what I did exactly, format C drive, and reinstalled everything from scratch..and after loading everything, its still REALLY slow and LAG.

How do I convince Dell that its losing data? Cuz wont they do a walk through? I dont know enough about troubleshooting to fake what SHOULD happen if they start making me go along with them to solve the problem...It would be awesome if they'd just send me a new system! ARgh...HELP PLEASE!!!

[Jeffbx]

Well, they're probably not going to send you a new system, so don't even worry about that. The only time you get a new system is if you're within 30 days of purchase and you have major problems.

Now, what have you added to the system since you got it from Dell - both hardware and software? If you've added anything, remove it. They're going to have you bring it to the same system configuration it was at when you first unpacked it, so you may as well save yourself some time on the phone & do that before you even call. Call Dell & tell then what you've done & what the symptoms are. If they try to blow you off, ask for a supervisor. If that doesn't work, call & talk to a customer service rep. If you have a legitimate problem, they'll take care of it for you.

[Startide]

There are any number of reasons why you could get that problem. DLL Hell can cause it. Memory Leaks can cause something similar as you run out of resources. Etcetera.

You need to analyze the problem step by step to find out at which point the problem starts. So, rather than reloading every program before trying them out, load one program at a time and try the system out to see where it goes bad.

First, formatting and reloading everything before trying out the system again doesn't solve DLL Hell (it could cause it again), it also doesn't solve memory leaks because you would load the problem-causing program again, etc.

If you've been mixing beta, small business, and regular versions of Office 97 on the same machine, you can have DLL Hell for example. So, that is why knowing what order you reload whatever programs you are using is important.

After you formatted and loaded the basic operating system, I presume you tested the plain vanilla system, right? Was Win98 fast and sleek after the vanilla reload?

If the answer is YES, then that narrows your problems way way down and excludes 90% of the hardware problems. You could still have bad memory at that point, so you may want to run a system stressing program to check but at this point, your problems are probably software and not Dell's hardware.

Now, I presume you reloaded each of your programs one at a time and then checked if the system was slowing down or not. To make the point clear, I will grossly exaggerate. First, you formatted the PC and then loaded ALL programs before testing. Among the programs you loaded were spywareIII, Virus 3.14b3, and Melissa9. If you loaded all the programs before testing if the system was slow or not, well, it will always be slow if you loaded the above obnoxious programs....

If the answer to the first question was YES, then send email and we can try to identify the problem faster.

Before you send email, eyeball the bootup messages. If they are obscured by the pretty screens, you can temporarily remove them to see the underlying bootup messages (as explained in your manual). If there are errors there, they should be fixed before going further. If this is fine, then reboot once more and use the F8 to bring up the boot control screen. Select the setting that lets you continue booting but archives each step to a logfile. After the boot is done, you will look at the logfile with notepad and then use FIND on any word containing "fail"....

[dcllee]

Format everything...

[ChrisMG187]

sounds like a software problem

[Startide]

Horizon438, how is the problem going along? Anything in the file "c:\bootlog.txt"?

[satish_GT]

Some of the dell systems come with a restoration cd, which automatically formats and installes what ever OS they sold you when you bought it. I would try that first, if not, try a sector-by-sector format of your hard drive (could take a long time, but will find any bad sectors)