Inspiron 9400 Problems

Smarmore

Hi All, I recently bought a Dell Inspiron 9400 with the following specs:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.83 GHz.
RAM: 2GB

There is also a DVD burner which is where my problems started. Basically the laptop seems good and flies through general processes. However the DVD drive is a disaster. It plays CDs and DVDs fine without any adverse effect on the system. I got a new iPod the other day, installed iTunes and went to rip a few CDs through the iTunes application. Basically the process does actually work but it basically kills the laptop in the process. The CPU jumps to between 50-80% and it's impossible to work on anything else while the files are being ripped. For a laptop with the specs I just mentioned I would have thought a basic enough process like ripping files from a CD would not have this effect. I killed a couple of processes, e.g. DELL Network Assistant, which seemed to help a bit. I've heard a lot of couple complaining about DELL bloatware and people reinstalling Windows as soon as they receive laptops. So what I would like to know is:

1) Has anybody had problems with DELL DVD R/W drives before and do you think it's a faulty drive?
2) Does anybody think the problem could be caused by DELL software which should either be uninstalled or the laptop should be reformatted and Windows reinstalled.

For the second option could someone please tell me any possible disadvantages/problems that can be caused by reinstalling. I'm not sure I want to get rid of all the pre-installed software. Any help with this would be much appreciated because if I can solve the problem without having to deal with DELL technical support it would be great!!

Karoma

1) Yes. But not necessarily in this scenario.
Check the Dell website for a DVD firmware update.
http://support.euro.dell.com/support/downloads/devices.aspx?c=ie&l=en&s=gen&SystemID=INS_PNT_P4_9400&os=WXPX&osl=EN# [I hope that's the right link. Otherwise, just go back to dell.ie -> support -> drivers and downloads -> select your model & OS]
(You can obtain the optical drive model info. installed in your machine from Device Manager [Start -> run -> devmgmt.msc ])

and download something like CdEx (Free) and test ripping with that.


2) Can never rule it out. It could also be other software that you've installed. It's difficult to say. Try a firmware upgrade (if available). If it's new, and you haven't installed much - re-install Windows and test again.

Ghost Train

might be worth checking the itunes settings and make sure its not doing an analog rip of the cds, thats the only reason i can think that it would be slow. i havn't used itunes in a long time so i may be way off, cant even remember if thats an option. ripping a cd should probably take 5-10 minutes a cd i'd say, is ripping a cd with other software as slow?

Smarmore

Hi lads, thanks for the replies. I checked for a firmware update but there's none available for my OD. I tried ripping the files through Media Player as well which seemed a bit faster but it's not much good to me because I want to rip the files onto iTunes and it's too much hassle ripping them using MediaPlayer and then having to transfer them to iTunes. Another problem which I didn't mention is that the Internet Connection breaks every time I try to rip a CD. I was using a dial-up connection at home over Christmas so I thought that it might just have been a bad connection but it wasn't happaning on the home PC which has a worse spec than my laptop. It's very frustrating when the internet connection breaks every time I need to rip a CD, not sure what's causing it to happen. I checked the iTunes settings and everything seems OK there. I'm still not sure if I want to re-install Windows for the reasons I said before so I think I'm gonna have to contact DELL and see what they have to say. Hopefully they're not as bad as people make them out to be!

thebman

Can you check Device Manager to see if it is using generic windows drivers or if it has its own drivers installed?

TempestSabre

Make sure if you reinstall Windows you don't format it. That Media Direct is on a hidden partition, along with some other stuff. iTunes isn't that great at ripping CD's. Try using Lame with something like AudioGrabber. Adding them to iTunes takes seconds.

A machine that spec shouldn't have an issue ripping CD's even with all the Dellware bloat. I'd suspect the driver for the DVD drive isn't configured or you've error checking cranked up in iTunes (if there is such a setting).