Dell Inspiron on a massive go-slow

fluffnutter

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

Have a look in Task Manager > Processes, and filter by CPU. Is there anything using a lot of the CPU's resources (except system idle process)?

The main culprits are the Dell DataSafe stuff. I was also getting an 'Upgrade' message in the bottom right that I couldn't get rid off.

It's not running at the moment because I stopped all non-MS services using msconfig and haven't re-started them yet.

fluffnutter

macman wrote: »

It's running W7 but is a few years old? So this is not the original OS it came with?

I guess it will have installed automatic updates over the years, yes.

macman

fluffnutter wrote: »

I guess it will have installed automatic updates over the years, yes.

But it won't have updated from Vista to W7 automatically!
W7 was only released mid 2009, so the laptop must be no more than 2.5 years old-when you said 'a few years', I assumed Vista.
How much RAM is installed?

fluffnutter

macman wrote: »

But it won't have updated from Vista to W7 automatically!
W7 was only released mid 2009, so the laptop must be no more than 2.5 years old-when you said 'a few years', I assumed Vista.
How much RAM is installed?

OK, I get you. It's always run W7. Bought in April 2010 I think.

Here's some info:

OS: W7 Home Premium. SP1.
Processer: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 900@2.20GHz 2.19 GHz
RAM: 2GB
System Type: 64 bit

macman

I'd consider that upping the RAM to 4GB (cost about £20 from Crucial) would be a good investment on that machine, though W7 will run on 2GB.
The 1545 can take up to 8GB.
But with an old and slow processor (Celeron) it's never going to be a fast machine.

fluffnutter

macman wrote: »

I'd consider that upping the RAM to 4GB (cost about £20 from Crucial) would be a good investment on that machine, though W7 will run on 2GB.
The 1545 can take up to 8GB.
But with an old and slow processor (Celeron) it's never going to be a fast machine.

No, I appreciate that. But it really is painful. And suddenly. It was working fine the last time I was asked to take a look but now it's virtually unusable. Apparently it just went like that - she hasn't noticed a slow deterioration.

closed

once you backup, creating a W7 dvd takes about 5 minutes, and a factory restore (using partition, not disc) should take about 15 minutes or less.

some other things you could try in the meantime

full malwarebytes scan - not quick
try it without the battery in
run chkdsk on the c: drive
scan with tdsskiller
try safe mode with networking

it should run fine with 2GB

fluffnutter

closed wrote: »

once you backup, creating a W7 dvd takes about 5 minutes, and a factory restore should take about 15 minutes or less.

some other things you could try in the meantime

full malwarebytes scan - not quick
try it without the battery in
run chkdsk on the c: drive
scan with tdsskiller
try safe mode with networking

it should run fine with 2GB

It runs fine in safe mode with networking. I tried that yesterday. I'll try some of the other suggestions but I think I'll need some help with backing up, and creating a W7 disk/doing a restore.

What should I use to back up? It's got Dell DataSafe on there but it seems to be in a right pickle (it's currently disabled).

macman

What new software has been installed recently?
If you don't want to do a Factory Restore, then do a Sys Restore to a date prior to when it slowed down. Then remember to run Windows Updates again.

closed

if you have an external hard disk, just copy the data/bookmarks/music/pics to it in explorer. check you can read these before continuing. And/or burn to dvd

if you want belt and braces, do a windows 7 system image backup to external hard disk, and create the boot disc at the end.

Create the windows 7 dvd using datasafe, so if anything goes wrong with the factory restore, you can reinstall from dvd.

http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kcs/document?c=uk&l=en&s=gen&docid=DSN_362066&isLegacy=true