Weird Computer Problems

Rb

Hi Guys,

I re-installed Windows XP today after a spate of problems recently and due to running out of space on the internal HDD.

1: After I stuck a fresh copy on, I installed the drivers and program for Intel PROset/Wireless and reconnected to my network.

For some bizarre reason it seems that my internet is now going slower. In IE and FF3 the pages are taking much, much longer to load up than previously and all other computers on the network are working fine.

The download speed seems ok-ish, getting about 80kbps on an Eircom 2mb line, can't recall what it was before the re-install though and haven't checked on the other computers as of yet.

Any ideas why it's doing this? It was working absolutely fine until I re-installed it and I definitely wasn't using one of those web accelerator things I've seen around, the wireless network is working fine etc...?


2: The computer is still running a bit on the slow side. It only has the bare essentials installed at the moment, but it seems to be running only slightly faster than when it had a few mbs left out of the 90 or so gigs.

Is this a problem with the ram or what? I ran the hardware diagnostics earlier and everything came up fine, oddly enough.



Cheers,

Rb

Overheal

make sure all your device drivers a functioning, and are definitely the latest version

Explosive_Cornflake

Could be a video card issue. 80k doesn't sound great fro a 2mb line, but other on here will advise you.
What you could try, is some livecd like buntu or something. I'm not saying go towards the dark side, but just d/l an ubuntu cd, boot it, use FF in that. See if that feels any quicker.
If it does we'll have a further go at fixing this.
As said above check the drivers, esp the video card.

challengemaster

Specs?..

Lazarus2.0

Make sure Windows is fully updated .

Check your speeds using a reliable test site like speedtest.net .

Ping a couple of computers on your network - what are the ping timings ? Are transfer rates over the network slower too ?

I'd be looking at drivers , OS updates and network settings/hardware in that order although it's in the nature of wireless networks that speeds can vary dramatically . You've also lost your browser cache although that shouldnt make such a noticeable difference .

stevire

For 2:
Bump up the RAM. Also, I'd tweak XP. There's loads of little tweaks to speed up XP from startup to general desktopping, try tweaking before upping the RAM.

http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2007/02/06/the-complete-guide-to-optimising-windows-xp/


For more, search "top 100 optimisation tips for windows xp". Loads of articles out there. In general stay away from 3rd party downloads, most tweaks can be done within the OS.

Voodu Child

Your download speed doesnt sound right at all for a 2Mb line. How are you measuring it?

Check speedtest.net, you should be getting around 2000 kb/s on there, and 250kB/s when you look at your download manager.

Also connect directly into your router with a cable, just to check if the problem is related to your wireless drivers/settings etc.

Rb

Overheal wrote: »

make sure all your device drivers a functioning, and are definitely the latest version

I've updated every driver through Dells website. Some of them, such as the video card driver, are quite old though and they no longer update it.

I downloaded "testmyhardware" which I'm going to run, but ran windows diagnostics and it said all the hardware was working fine, including memory, video card etc.

Explosive_Cornflake wrote: »

Could be a video card issue. 80k doesn't sound great fro a 2mb line, but other on here will advise you.
What you could try, is some livecd like buntu or something. I'm not saying go towards the dark side, but just d/l an ubuntu cd, boot it, use FF in that. See if that feels any quicker.
If it does we'll have a further go at fixing this.
As said above check the drivers, esp the video card.

Yeah I have the ubuntu cds, might partition my external hdd and install a small copy of it to see how it goes.

Could be a video card issue alright but it was working fine until I re-installed it?
The video card itself is an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400. Previously it had been causing memory errors/bsods, researched it and it appears it's a problem with the card itself which Dell never bothered addressing.

Oddly, the bsods only started appearing after about 2 years of use. It's something I've been meaning to upgrade, however as I said it wasn't causing any speed issues previously.

challengemaster wrote: »

Specs?..

Dell Inspiron 9400
1gig ram
ATI mobility radeon X1400 video card
100 or so gig hdd

nessyguin wrote: »

Make sure Windows is fully updated .

Check your speeds using a reliable test site like speedtest.net .

Ping a couple of computers on your network - what are the ping timings ? Are transfer rates over the network slower too ?

I'd be looking at drivers , OS updates and network settings/hardware in that order although it's in the nature of wireless networks that speeds can vary dramatically . You've also lost your browser cache although that shouldnt make such a noticeable difference .

Yeah I've fully updated Windows XP to SP3, and as above have done all the drivers also.

Went to speedtest.net and got the following
d/l : 1761 kbps
u/l : 100 kbps

Does that sound any way right?

stevire wrote: »

For 2:
Bump up the RAM. Also, I'd tweak XP. There's loads of little tweaks to speed up XP from startup to general desktopping, try tweaking before upping the RAM.

http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2007/02/06/the-complete-guide-to-optimising-windows-xp/


For more, search "top 100 optimisation tips for windows xp". Loads of articles out there. In general stay away from 3rd party downloads, most tweaks can be done within the OS.

Cheers, going to go through that guide now and see what happens

voodoo_child wrote: »

Your download speed doesnt sound right at all for a 2Mb line. How are you measuring it?

Check speedtest.net, you should be getting around 2000 kb/s on there, and 250kB/s when you look at your download manager.

Also connect directly into your router with a cable, just to check if the problem is related to your wireless drivers/settings etc.

Yeah good idea re: the router, will give that a go in a short while.


Fwiw, this has started popping up the odd time since the re-install



Would this be one of the causes?

Cheers for the help.

Voodu Child

Rb wrote: »

Went to speedtest.net and got the following
d/l : 1761 kbps
u/l : 100 kbps

Those figures sound ok for a 2mb service. u/l is slower than i'd have expected, but nothing to worry about, it can be +/- from one test to the next. Nothing 'wrong' there anyway.

Rb

voodoo_child wrote: »

Those figures sound ok for a 2mb service. u/l is slower than i'd have expected, but nothing to worry about, it can be +/- from one test to the next. Nothing 'wrong' there anyway.

Ran speedtest on another computer and it clocks about 140 u/l a slight difference there but there was little difference in the d/l.

I've done absolutely everything in this guide to optimisation.

Oddly, I disabled the services as advised and am now getting an error at bootup about some Win32 Generic Host so I take it there's a problem with one of the services I disabled...

Other than that, everything seems to be running really well apart from browsing the web. Pages are still loading really slowly compared to how they were doing previously.


Edit: Have now re-re-installed the driver and software updates for the video card and wireless adaptor, no difference really. Although, it appears the computer is running a bit slower again. Would these re-installs have overwritten many of the optimisation changes I made?

Explosive_Cornflake

Rb wrote: »

Fwiw, this has started popping up the odd time since the re-install



Would this be one of the causes?

Cheers for the help.

Hmmm, I'd be concerned about that.
Get one of those ubuntu cd's. Boot from it. You don't need to touch your HD at all.
From the boot menu on the disk, run Memtest. Just so we can rule that out.

Is it a laptop or a desktop?
Desktop, just go to the ATI site and Download the drivers.
Laptop, Omega drivers used to be the way, but last time I checked they weren't updated. Hopefully someone else knows another source?

unnameduser

I would definitely test the RAM before going any further. Alternative to memtest is
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Memory-Tweak/Microsoft-Windows-Memory-Diagnostic.shtml

Anti

Rb wrote: »

Fwiw, this has started popping up the odd time since the re-install



Would this be one of the causes?

Cheers for the help.

Your windows install looks to be fubar. Best bet would be to just reinstall. Make sure when reinstalling to format the drive, unless you are reinstalling from the dell recovery partition.

AlmightyCushion

Did you try using the laptop before installing sp3. I've had problems with sp3 on my inspiron 9400. When I installed it, it slowed it down a lot. I re-installed windows and installed sp3 from a fresh windows install and it still slowed it down but only a little and no where near as much as the first time. My specs are better than yours though. 2Ghz core 2 duo, 2GBs ram, 120GB hard drive, 7900gs. Could be a problem with the 9400 and sp3 maybe.

Rb

Explosive_Cornflake wrote: »

Hmmm, I'd be concerned about that.
Get one of those ubuntu cd's. Boot from it. You don't need to touch your HD at all.
From the boot menu on the disk, run Memtest. Just so we can rule that out.

Is it a laptop or a desktop?
Desktop, just go to the ATI site and Download the drivers.
Laptop, Omega drivers used to be the way, but last time I checked they weren't updated. Hopefully someone else knows another source?

It's a laptop. According to ATI, they're no longer updating the driver for it and Dell haven't bothered since the start of 2007 iirc.

unnameduser wrote: »

I would definitely test the RAM before going any further. Alternative to memtest is
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Memory-Tweak/Microsoft-Windows-Memory-Diagnostic.shtml

Cheers. I already ran the hardware diagnositics thing that tested all the memory for like 3 hours or something and everything came up fine?

Anti wrote: »

Your windows install looks to be fubar. Best bet would be to just reinstall. Make sure when reinstalling to format the drive, unless you are reinstalling from the dell recovery partition.

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Did you try using the laptop before installing sp3. I've had problems with sp3 on my inspiron 9400. When I installed it, it slowed it down a lot. I re-installed windows and installed sp3 from a fresh windows install and it still slowed it down but only a little and no where near as much as the first time. My specs are better than yours though. 2Ghz core 2 duo, 2GBs ram, 120GB hard drive, 7900gs. Could be a problem with the 9400 and sp3 maybe.

Oddly enough, I don't think I ever bothered upgrading to SP3 before, but when I put this re-install on the first thing I did was update everything including SP3.

I think you're both right and I might just bite the bullet and re-install it again, but not bother putting SP3 on it. Oddly the optimisation stuff I did seems to have really sped up the computer in general, but Firefox3 and IE7 not only run shít slow, they keep crashing every five minutes.

Another problem is blue screens are still happening citing "PAGE_LOAD_IN_NONPAGED_AREA" or something similar, told me to shut off shadow caching and the like but couldn't find it in BIOS options.

It's kind of funny, the computer, though running a bit slower, was running better before I re-installed it

Anti

Aye, bite the bullet and reinstall. To save time grab all the drivers on a usb key or cd before hand. You shoudl have it up and running within 2 hours. Also, you can try a repair install ( boot from cd to do this ) But it might not work. It just seems to me you have a corrupt install of xp

vibe666

if you have the ubuntu CD i'd boot off it and run the memtest option to make sure you've not got problems with your RAM. there's a few errors I've seen in your posts that whilst they're not screaming 'faulty memory' would at least make me want to have a look at it to be sure.

another thing to try if it's just browser problems is checking the install version of java and make sure it's the sun version not the ms one cos it's cack!

Rb

Right, good news!

First time I went to re-install it, once it got on it wouldn't detect any of the hardware and then blue screened

So, re-installed again and half way through it crashed due to some problem with the install CD not copying files properly, so back to the start I went.

Third time lucky though, just got it re-installed there and installed only the updated drivers rather than the originals, leaving SP2 out and will do any critical updates but the web browsers are flying along again.

There's definitely some problem with the memory of either the RAM or the video card but it's not a huge problem (will blue screen when the computer heats up too much) because I plan on upgrading both within the next 6 weeks or so.

Thanks for all the help!

AlmightyCushion

You can upgrade the ram but upgrading the graphics card won't be easy or cheap.

Rb

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

You can upgrade the ram but upgrading the graphics card won't be easy or cheap.

Oh really? I know a good graphics card will set me back a few bob alright but I really like this laptop... that said, could replace it for like 300 more than the cost of the video card alone I guess.

Btw, which graphics card did your 9400 come with? The geforce? From reading around, Dell really ought to have got all the ATI cards back in and replaced them free of charge like what happened with those batteries, absolutely loaded with problems.

AlmightyCushion

Laptops take different graphics cards to desktops and they work out more expensive. Some are even soldered onto the motherboard. Mine came with the geforce 7900gs. Great card, bumped up the price of the laptop a bit though.