Dell Inspiron Laptop running very slowly

briN_s

Make and Model: Dell Inspiron 2200

Operating System: Windows XP Home SP3

CPU, RAM: 1.4Ghz Intel Celeron; 504 MB RAM (according to system properties)

Hi All, as the title suggests the laptop is running very slowly, there are only a few programs installed on it, the main drain on resources I presume is Zone Alarm other than that the only programs installed are chrome, firefox, skype and MS office. It used run fine with these programs but has gradually gotten slower and slower. The Hard drive still has a reasonable amount of space free (3GB). I know the laptop is pretty old, but for the little use it gets it doesnt justify getting a new one. The laptop is my girlfriends, my own laptop is the older version of this (Inspiron 1200 1.3GHz) and runs alot faster, and I easily have three times as many programs installed and running on my machine.

Is there anything which may be causing the laptop to get so slow, we are talking about 15 minute between turning on the laptop and being able to browse the net properly! I was thinking of just formatting the drive and reinstalling windows, but I dont know if this will improve anything? Do processors just slow down with age? Could there be a problem with the RAM? Any information would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Brian

mordeith

You should proably do a run of the must common houskeeping tasks first, like defragmet the HD, run a disk cleanup and a also a complete virus/malware scan. No harm in cleaning the regsitry either. Chances are this may not improve things much so a clean re-install wolul be your best bet if none of the above solve the problem. (that's may advice anyway ).

Alanstrainor

Reinstall XP. Seriously, it's the only thing that will make it as fast as it was the day you bought it. You'll have to back up all of your music/photos documnets etc.

sparksfly

I agree with previous poster, did it on my inspiron 1300 with similar specs. I would also suggest popping in a bit more ram as microsoft/antivirus updates makes the software a lot bulkier than when you first bought the machine.

briN_s

Thanks for the replies, when ye say reinstall windows, is that just a matter of running the windows CD again or should I format the drive before running the windows CD? Sorry its been a while since I have done it cant remember.

Also would ye recommend any good free anti virus and firewall software? My zone alarm is out of date at the moment

Alanstrainor

briN_s wrote: »

Thanks for the replies, when ye say reinstall windows, is that just a matter of running the windows CD again or should I format the drive before running the windows CD? Sorry its been a while since I have done it cant remember.

Also would ye recommend any good free anti virus and firewall software? My zone alarm is out of date at the moment

Completely reformat the drive. When you boot from the windows cd it will prompt you to do it anyway. But make sure you back up all your data before you do anything!

briN_s

Cool, thanks will do that.

Just another question ye might be able to shed some light on. My own laptop an inspiron 1200 gives an error for the last few weeks immediately on start up (before the windows splash screen) " Disk read error. Press Ctrl Alt Del to restart" or something along these lines, and will start up fine then after doing this two or three times. Does this sound like a hard drive problem or is it possibly an issue in the BIOS?

Alanstrainor

briN_s wrote: »

Cool, thanks will do that.

Just another question ye might be able to shed some light on. My own laptop an inspiron 1200 gives an error for the last few weeks immediately on start up (before the windows splash screen) " Disk read error. Press Ctrl Alt Del to restart" or something along these lines, and will start up fine then after doing this two or three times. Does this sound like a hard drive problem or is it possibly an issue in the BIOS?

It sounds like the hard drive is on the way out. I'd make a backup of everything important on it tbh.