Don't get rid of the machine just yet...there is hope. A P4/2.4 is a great start. I do have a couple of suggestions for performance though...
- Increase memory. 512 is good for most things but video and editing software will quickly fill it up. Ideally you only want to be using 1/4 (or less) of the machine's physical memory at idle.
- Faster HD. If it's a stock HD it's probably only 5400 rpm. Get at least a 7200 rpm drive and SATA if your motherboard supports it.
- Partition, partition, partition. If you have a drive bigger than 40 GB split that baby up. The way I configure my machine is I put Windows and only Windows on the C: drive. I'll make this partition about 8 GB to leave room for file build up and expansion. Then create a second partition for program files and storage. Install all "other" programs here. Most programs will let you do a "custom" install where you can change the installation path. Moral of the story... the machine will have to cover less space to find critical OS files.
- Reconfigure Paging Files. Now you have two partitions to play with. Right click on My Computer and select Properties>Advanced>Performance Options and under the Virtual Memory box click change. You can manually set the amount of space to be used or set it to system managed. You can do this for both drives. If you make changes you will have to reboot.
- Defrag. You can use the built in drefrag utility in windows but it's garbage. I recommend DisKeeper. It can defrag the files, page file, boot files...the whole 9 yards. Doing this regularly will help keep the files together and in order which will keep your hard drive from bouncing all over the place trying to find files resulting in faster read times.
- Clean house. Clean that bad boy out. Heat is a computer's worst nightmare and WILL cause it to slow down. As it gets worse it will even make it crash. So, break that fan housing open and clean it out. Whatever you do don't shove a vacuum in there. They build up a static charge from the brushing of the carpet. You don't want to frag your computer while trying to fix it. I have actually seen that happen.
- Turn off all the useless s**t. Unused services running in the back round will slow your machine down big time. All you need to do is go to : Start>Run and type in MSCONFIG. There is a tab in there for startup. In there you will find all of the add-on stuff that starts when Windows starts. Be careful what you turn off though...some of that stuff is required. You can either search each one on Google or check out this site... http://www.answersthatwork.com/ It's pretty good but Google will find the ones that aren't on there. Turn the ones that you don't need/want off and reboot.
-Turn off the stuff you do need. When you are watching a movie you don't need Norton's huge memory hogging services running in the back round. Right click on the system tray icon and disable it while watching a movie. Same goes for MSN, Yahoo, and anything else you aren't using while watching the movie. Ideally, your system tray should have as little in it as possible. Every one of those icons represent something running in the back round...eating up memory.
- Last but not least... third party software. I've heard good and bad about this stuff. I personally just started using TweakXP but I'm still just tooling around with it. I'll leave this one up to you to decide on.
Wow, Thanks for all the advice. I will read through this a few more times but it all looks like good stuff.
I've been on the phone will Dell OnCall for about 5 hours with 6 different people - hardware, software, video specialists, etc. It's seems to be clear at this point that there is a problem with the machine. After running the diagnostic on the Windows XP disc I got a "one or more errors found" message and after running the "fix it" I'm still experiencing the same problems. I'm told that we will get to the bottom of this problem, ie video card, hard drive, ram over the next week with additional diagnostics and possible reformat. I've received a couple of "overheating" messages when running the diagnostics which one tech thought was indicative of a chipset problem.
Whatever the problem is, it looks to be something that needs to be replaced. That being said, thanks again for the advice. When the computer's fixed, I will set it up as you recommend.
Also, I've had problems with overheating myself. The Inspirions seem to have that problem. I play Battlefield 2 online and I've had my machine crash on me more than once due to overheating. I use FanGUI and a fan pad and it still does it every once and a while. I've seen core temps rise over 160F on my machine. Bad engineering and not enough fan power.
CheshKat
53 Posts
0
April 13th, 2006 18:00
Don't get rid of the machine just yet...there is hope. A P4/2.4 is a great start. I do have a couple of suggestions for performance though...
- Increase memory. 512 is good for most things but video and editing software will quickly fill it up. Ideally you only want to be using 1/4 (or less) of the machine's physical memory at idle.
- Faster HD. If it's a stock HD it's probably only 5400 rpm. Get at least a 7200 rpm drive and SATA if your motherboard supports it.
- Partition, partition, partition. If you have a drive bigger than 40 GB split that baby up. The way I configure my machine is I put Windows and only Windows on the C: drive. I'll make this partition about 8 GB to leave room for file build up and expansion. Then create a second partition for program files and storage. Install all "other" programs here. Most programs will let you do a "custom" install where you can change the installation path. Moral of the story... the machine will have to cover less space to find critical OS files.
- Reconfigure Paging Files. Now you have two partitions to play with. Right click on My Computer and select Properties>Advanced>Performance Options and under the Virtual Memory box click change. You can manually set the amount of space to be used or set it to system managed. You can do this for both drives. If you make changes you will have to reboot.
- Defrag. You can use the built in drefrag utility in windows but it's garbage. I recommend DisKeeper. It can defrag the files, page file, boot files...the whole 9 yards. Doing this regularly will help keep the files together and in order which will keep your hard drive from bouncing all over the place trying to find files resulting in faster read times.
- Clean house. Clean that bad boy out. Heat is a computer's worst nightmare and WILL cause it to slow down. As it gets worse it will even make it crash. So, break that fan housing open and clean it out. Whatever you do don't shove a vacuum in there. They build up a static charge from the brushing of the carpet. You don't want to frag your computer while trying to fix it. I have actually seen that happen.
- Turn off all the useless s**t. Unused services running in the back round will slow your machine down big time. All you need to do is go to : Start>Run and type in MSCONFIG. There is a tab in there for startup. In there you will find all of the add-on stuff that starts when Windows starts. Be careful what you turn off though...some of that stuff is required. You can either search each one on Google or check out this site... http://www.answersthatwork.com/ It's pretty good but Google will find the ones that aren't on there. Turn the ones that you don't need/want off and reboot.
-Turn off the stuff you do need. When you are watching a movie you don't need Norton's huge memory hogging services running in the back round. Right click on the system tray icon and disable it while watching a movie. Same goes for MSN, Yahoo, and anything else you aren't using while watching the movie. Ideally, your system tray should have as little in it as possible. Every one of those icons represent something running in the back round...eating up memory.
- Last but not least... third party software. I've heard good and bad about this stuff. I personally just started using TweakXP but I'm still just tooling around with it. I'll leave this one up to you to decide on.
Hope this helps...
Bryan
kevindalyus
2 Posts
0
April 13th, 2006 23:00
Wow, Thanks for all the advice. I will read through this a few more times but it all looks like good stuff.
I've been on the phone will Dell OnCall for about 5 hours with 6 different people - hardware, software, video specialists, etc. It's seems to be clear at this point that there is a problem with the machine. After running the diagnostic on the Windows XP disc I got a "one or more errors found" message and after running the "fix it" I'm still experiencing the same problems. I'm told that we will get to the bottom of this problem, ie video card, hard drive, ram over the next week with additional diagnostics and possible reformat. I've received a couple of "overheating" messages when running the diagnostics which one tech thought was indicative of a chipset problem.
Whatever the problem is, it looks to be something that needs to be replaced. That being said, thanks again for the advice. When the computer's fixed, I will set it up as you recommend.
CheshKat
53 Posts
0
April 14th, 2006 11:00
Right on. Good luck.
Also, I've had problems with overheating myself. The Inspirions seem to have that problem. I play Battlefield 2 online and I've had my machine crash on me more than once due to overheating. I use FanGUI and a fan pad and it still does it every once and a while. I've seen core temps rise over 160F on my machine. Bad engineering and not enough fan power.