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Extremely slow Inspiron 5100
I wish I had looked on these boards earlier for I have lost my past two weeks dealing with a suddenly slow system on my Inspiron 5100. Currently my OS takes about 15 to 20 minutes just to boot and then after Windows XP starts another 5 minutes for completion of startup. For starters I have tried everything, adaware, spyware, antivirus, even removed SP2 and reinstalled Windows XP without formatting, reinstalled all updates available, and reinstalled SP2. It all started two weeks ago when all of a sudden my system slowed down to intolerable levels. As I say, I took the logical steps even though my system was protected, antivirus check, firewall intrusions, spyware, hardware checks and eventually was on the verge of formatting my hard disk. I decided it was not worthy of losing all the information and programs I have on my computer because even though it was too slow, it started up afterall. So what I did was uninstall SP2, updated BIOS, reinstalled XP, and reinstalled all updates and SP2. SP2 installation stalled on the first try but then on the second instance it worked fine, not to mention it all took me about 48 hours to achieve because the system was so slow through it all.
However I am back to square one, my system is still taking 15 minutes to boot and even XP configured my network devices as #2 devices, which is something I do not understand for they displayed correctly previously, although to my knowledge the devices are still working fine. I have read the issue with the Inspiron 1100 with Celeron processor, the rollback drivers solution, and also the probability of power management settings solution related to the new drivers SP2 installs. My question is why would such simple things as power management settings, or drivers cause such a downgrade on computer processor performance? Is there a similar solution by Dell for my Inspiron 5100? I am not willing to format my drive because after patiently waiting for the boot to complete the system works relatively normal. While I was reinstalling SP2 the processor worked at 100% its resources, and remained like that for about 12 hours, which made me think it was going to burn or something, but this has disappeared. If you have suggestions or fixes I will be deeply grateful to end this booting nightmare. By the way, my system is a Dell Inspiron 5100 with XP Pro, P4 processor at 2.66 GHz, 256 MB ram, 30GB drive. Help will be appreciated. Regards. Patient Roland.
Message Edited by notinspired5100 on 03-27-2005 10:28 AM
SR45
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March 27th, 2005 18:00
Lets talk about possible solutions to your problems that may or may not work....When I do a re-install, I also do a reformat as well. Just a install over the old OS may not correct the problem you had, and the reformat would be the way to go. Always back up all the programs you want to keep just in case everything goes south. There is a proper way to re-install the OS, that has been talked about on this forum and has been suggested from a number of computer mag's.
First step is to back up everything you want to keep
2. Unplug your printer and modem
3. Reformat and re-install windows.
4. Install SP-2
5. Install the Chipset driver for your system..Very important...Some cd's that came from Dell will have the Chipset driver installed when you install the OS and some do not.
6. Install the video driver and reset the resolution according to the screen you have
7. Download the Critical updates, but make sure the firewall is on.
8. Install everything else including a good anti virus software and spyware program.
9. Plug your printer cable back in.
Your notebook has been known to have a heating problem because of the dust build up. You must use a can of compressed air directed into the vents on a weekly basis to make sure no dust is built up that will cause the system to slow down or turn off all together. If dust has build up over time it will bake onto some of the hardware inside and the only way to clean it, is by opening the notebook and clean by hand. Not something many of use want to do.
Cannot think of anything else at the moment and hope someone else with more knowledge than I on that notebook will come by and answer those other questions..Good luck
wrxtuan
1 Message
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March 31st, 2005 18:00
Not cool,
T.Vo
jwatt
4.4K Posts
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March 31st, 2005 18:00
Jim
jtd333
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June 10th, 2005 04:00
Mielie
1 Message
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May 17th, 2020 12:00
Had the exact same problem! Managed to solve it by updating all drivers. I used AVG Driver Update software.