Upgrade Dell Laptop

bsod

prowla wrote: »

So the above should not be simply dismissed as urban myths.

They should, you've added a few more for good measure. They are the exceptions rather than the rule, so countless time, energy, money and natural resources are wasted because of misinformation about the cause and the cure.

The incredibly rare battery issue you refer to, is caused by software, so isn't limited to Dell laptops. It doesn't just make the machine sluggish, (like every other 5 year old machine that hasn't had a re-install is sluggish), it makes the keyboard totally unresponsive, until the battery is removed or the monitoring software is disabled. The bug may have been fixed by now, I haven't seen it since Vista.

Jivesinger wrote: »

Maybe not an issue for the OP, but if you add music and photos to a disk until you've used up 99.99% of the disk space, I pretty much guarantee you that the machine will slow down.

Low disk space notification has been built into windows for ages, windows does a good job of releasing sufficient space if things are getting tight and disks are now so big it takes a very determined user to ignore all the warnings and achieve this scenario blindly. The problem machine in question has 33GB free on the c drive, seemingly small in these days of terabyte drives, but in reality a considerable amount of legroom for windows temp files.

prowla

bsod wrote: »

They should, you've added a few more for good measure.

So, to clarify, are you stating categorically the following?:

1. These models of Dell computer do not go slower when their battery fails/is failing.
2. Newer software releases do not tend to use more resources than older versions.
3. Disk fragmentation does not cause performance issues.
4. Disk errors do not cause performance issues.
5. Disk space utilization does not cause performance issues.
6. Running two anti-virus utilities does not cause performance issues.

If that is what you are stating, then you are wrong on each item.


Incidentally, you seem to speak with authority; have you ever had to fix a Dell 1545?


On the CPU front, I've put a P8700 (2.53 GHz dual core) into one; it cost me something like £20 for the part and was an upgrade from the Celeron it came with. It is a cost-effective way of breathing life into an older machine.

bsod wrote: »

The incredibly rare battery issue you refer to, is caused by software, so isn't limited to Dell laptops. It doesn't just make the machine sluggish, (like every other 5 year old machine that hasn't had a re-install is sluggish), it makes the keyboard totally unresponsive, until the battery is removed or the monitoring software is disabled. The bug may have been fixed by now, I haven't seen it since Vista.

Nope - that's not the issue I'm referring to; neither (a) being totally unresponsive, nor (b) running Vista, and it's not the subject of this thread.

bsod

That's the difference between someone told me's and experience.

Possible is very different to probable. With the exception of a hard disk failure, (also incredibly rare), the cause is always poor software or configuration.

prowla

Incidentally, there's a P8700 on ebay for £8.96 BIN with free shipping right now.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Core-2-Duo-CPU-P8700-2-53GHz-Dual-Core-3M-Cache-1066MHz-FSB-/271826467364?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item3f4a1eba24

prowla

I'd also suggest running a disk check...

Right-click the drive, Properties, Tools, Check now (I think that's it).

It'll need a reboot to do on the C: drive.

J_B

prowla wrote: »

Actually, another thought occurred to me - it's worth checking whether there are two virus checkers installed; I've seen situations where that has happened, and they work against each other.

Nope

prowla wrote: »

I'd also suggest running a disk check...

Done - what should I look for in it.

grumpycrab wrote: »

Go for a restore...if factory partition is present you'll soon find out...
http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/DSN_362066?c=us&s=gen&cs=4&l=en

Can't I just bang in my W7 disk?

J_B

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Unless you have changed the hard drive, it's 500 GB. So you have a separate data partition.

Still can't find any more room :cool:
Maybe I need to get the back off to see what it says??

bsod wrote: »

Dells of that era in their original state usually came with a recovery partition (at least 9GB, and a 100MB or so diagnostic oem partition), as freddy pointed out, both should be visible in disk management if still there,

It says 'system reserved, 100MB, NTFS (70% free space)

bsod

disk management or device manager should clearly tell you what disk you have installed, it's total capacity, and it's volumes if you really want to know, but it's not cooking the chicken - done a backup?

if it is a 500gb disk, disk management should say something like

disk0 465.76gb

10MB 1st partition
20 GB recovery
rest 446GB allocated to c

NiftyDigits

J_B wrote: »

Nope


Done - what should I look for in it.


Can't I just bang in my W7 disk?

Have you 'backed up' your important data?

I've re-sent the installation disk, in case you don't have the 64 bit version.
With 3GB of RAM, both 32-bit and 64-bit are fine.

prowla

J_B wrote: »

Done - what should I look for in it.

Just allow it to fix things if it needs to; when you reboot it'll do the scan & fix before Windows starts (It may take a while).

My work laptop was on a go-slow a couple of weeks ago, and that improved it for me.