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April 5th, 2015 10:00
System Detect
I have an Inspiron One running Win 8.1. Although it is officially 15 months old it was only set up and started at the end of December. Thus far it is absolutely the worst computer experience I have ever had. Switching between programs is brutally slow, switching between documents within an open program is brutally slow, programs (Outlook, Word, Adobe) constantly non respondsive for seconds to minutes. A nightmare. I cannot get Dell system detect to open and operate. When I go online it tells me that I need to update system detect but it will not connect and update. And when I try to run the self diagnostic test it always stops early and tells me there is a problem with my internet connection. I can connect to every other internet site it seems but not to the Dell system diagnosis site. Any ideas what to try?
kirkd
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April 5th, 2015 11:00
Slow performance with Win 8.1 is not normal. I run a ten year old D9100 on Win 8.1 and it is not real slow.
Run Task Manager and see what programs are running at boot up and see if they are needed. Anything that is using a large amount of CPU time or lots of memory is suspicious.
The first thing to do is check if you have all the updates installed. There was a major update along with many necessary updates you may not have. Make sure the updates are set up to install automatically.
Go to the Device Manager and see if any drivers are not installed or have problems - look for the yellow asterisk on any item. You shouldn't need to worry about driver or BIOS updates at this stage; most are sometimes useful, but most are NOT necessary. You could go to the driver page for the Inspiron 1 and check all the drivers dated after your purchase and see what issues they cover.
You need to try to uninstall programs that you really don't need an try to clean up junk that is present. Right click the C:\ drive, click on properties and run the Clean Disk function. Run a scan with your anti-virus program. If you don't have one, then Windows Defender is running; perform a scan with it. Download Malware Bytes and run a scan.
If this all fails to help, Go to the Recovery pages (Charms Bar - PC Settings - Update and Recovery) and do a Reset; this will repair the OS and keep Windows Store Apps and your data, but lose any Desktop applications. If this doesn't help, run Reset, which will reinstall the OS to new.
speedstep
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April 5th, 2015 16:00
Your performance is consistent with malware infection.
RoHe
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April 5th, 2015 16:00
That's called a REFRESH, not a Reset... :emotion-5:
How much RAM is physically installed in this system? Does BIOS see all the RAM that's physically installed? And does Windows see the same amount of RAM?
gflowers01
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April 5th, 2015 18:00
RAM - 8 GB. How do I determine if BIOS sees all the RAM? How do I determine if Windows sees all the RAM?
gflowers01
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April 5th, 2015 19:00
I have done everything except Refresh. Would like to avoid that if possible and that shouldn't impact my other problem. Can you provide any insight into why I am unable to run Dell Detect online detection. Everytime I try to run it I get the same message - there is a problem with your internet connection. Except there isn't. I can surf the web all day but I can't connect to the diagnostic site. Frustrating.
gflowers01
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April 5th, 2015 19:00
Malwarebytes says I'm clean. Advanced Systemcare 8.0 Pro says I'm clean. Don't know what else to check.
RoHe
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April 6th, 2015 13:00
Is your anti-malware software (eg, Norton or McAfee, etc) blocking it? Not that I'm recommending you disable the protection.
You can open BIOS setup by pressing F2 IMMEDIATELY after you power the system on. If you can't get that to work (you have to be very quick to press F2) read this about how to set Windows to open BIOS on the next boot. Once in BIOS setup, look for details about how much RAM is being seen.
To see how much RAM is being recognized by Windows:
Control Panel>System & Security>System>Installed RAM
How much bloatware is running in the background? Press Ctrl-Alt-Del and open Device Manager. On the Processes tab, see what's hogging CPU time, aside from System Idle process.