Dell laptop (Core Solo) very slow when booted from cold but ok booted warm

Jamp

Thanks for your help. I don't recall it ever having Norton installed but it may have had a trial preinstalled from new. I'll ditch the toolbars as you suggest, although they only seem to apply to IE and Firefox is the main browser in fact.

I take it from your suggestion to format and start afresh you don't believe it could be a hardware fault?

closed

Hardware faults are very rare, something is hogging the processor, if it's fast in safe mode it's a software problem, removing adaware and google desktop search might help

aliEnRIK

I dont think its a hardware fault as I cant see how it could possibly work badly from cold and well from warm. I know all electronics tend to work better warm/hot, but I would expect it to completely fail if it wasnt working properly from cold so im definitely leaning towards the software/operating system

busenbust

I take it from your suggestion to format and start afresh you don't believe it could be a hardware fault?

If absolutely no virus or malware detected, then a clean re-install would be the way to go IMO. A system restore is another option but given the longevity - as I infer - of the problems I suspect a restore point harking back that far might be absent (?) Oh, and which operating system?

Jamp

Thanks for the further replies. Have removed the toolbars and run Norton remover so we'll see how it goes on the next cold boot.

If something were really hogging the CPU, why is it not showing up in taskmanager, and why is the CPU running so cold?

I'll set about doing the registry cleaners now.

closed

You'll be wasting your time with registry cleaners, you said it does show up with explorer or kasperksy using most of the processor cycles.

Jamp

Busen, yes the problem has been around for months so I don't think a restore point will do any good. OS is XP SP3.

I've also realised that the slow running occurs after a while in standby, so it's as if the problem occurs when the machine is literally cold.

closed

If it's only after standby, change to hibernation or disable power saving, some drivers and software don't handle power saving very well, and cause the pc to grind to a halt.

Jamp

Hi All. To update this, it does seem to have been a CPU fault. I found a Core Duo T2300 for £10 on ebay so thought it was worth a punt, and it seems to have solved the problem.

debitcardmayhem

Jamp wrote: »

Hi All. To update this, it does seem to have been a CPU fault. I found a Core Duo T2300 for £10 on ebay so thought it was worth a punt, and it seems to have solved the problem.

:j Well done, nice to see someone returning and updating everyone