Re: Slow Hard Drive on Dell Dim-3000

Usually i see reloading the operating system as a last resort.

In most cases it will cure the problem (and only if a full format is done because quick formats will not cure viruses and/or rootkits that affect the boot records or are otherwise operating below the operating system), however, it will not do any good if the user is going to continue to make the same silly mistakes by sticking bloatware on his computer, or installing malware, or doing other odd things that cause programs to clash and cause system slowness.

in this case, the OP never posted his list of running processes for us to see because if he did, it might show a clash of software, perhaps running bloated norton with zonealarm, spysweeper and other piggish programs, with a host of other nonsense that would cause his symptons.

usually i like to get to the root of the problem, and know what it is and how it got there, and get rid of it. otherwise, the same mistakes will happen. i hate to see users reinstall their OS for no reason.

If the OP states that his computer ran faster in the past and now is slower, then I believe him because I see it every day. there is something there causing it and I could usually find such a problem by examining the computer. benchmarks on his drive showed it running within spec.
if there are bad blocks on the drive, that could also be causing his problem. again, if he rebuilds the operating system, unless he does a full format and checks for bad sectors, the problem will not go away.

and by the way, i don't know about you all, but i have a lot of apps on my systems, not to mention customizations. to casually rebuild operating systems is a royal pain in the *** for anyone that uses the computer for serious work.

i know other consultants who make a living going into customers with slow computers and telling the customer that his system got messed up and needs to be reinstalled from scratch and winds up billing the customer for 4 hours worth of time. I usually go in and fix most problems within an hour and they are as good as new if not better. I can even do this remotely from my desk here.

If this OP or any other user of this site would like me to remotely connect to his computer for diagnosing, i'd be willing to help out.
Jay


S.Lewis wrote:
"Brian K" <iibntgyea4 REMOVE_THIS@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:ZxZpf.67832$V7.56897@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


I'm betting that once you have a fresh install of WinXP SP2 on the machine w/o all of the bloatware of the factory image, you'll be surprised at the responsiveness of the system.

I've done this myself more than a few times.




Stew, you don't find that uninstalling the bloatware is sufficient?




Generally, yes. But even when so, one is leaving all kinds of bits, pieces, parts, keys, files and folders in the registry and on the drive itself.

What a clean install can do is give one an extremely helpful baseline into the machine's performance with nothing but the OS installed. That allows you to see any performance hits as individual apps are added - and also rules out any chance of remnants of programs creating any problems.

I'm not saying this route is for everyone, but in the case of this thread, the OP ought to back up his files and try it. If his problems are indeed software related (as they do not appear to be hardware by his own measurements from benchmarks and diags), then a clean install should prove the point.

The bloatware/trial versions of apps. installed by Dell and other OEMs are significant.


Stew 


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