Dell Laptop Problems

[bevills1]

Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop running WinXP SP3 with 512MB RAM became very slow and has numerous "The program is not responding" message problems. Chkdsk /R was run resulting in slight improvement, but problems persist. Memory passed tests with no errors found using memtest, and hard drive passed tests using Seagate Tools. SP2 was reverted to by uninstalling SP3 which didn't help. Then the SP2 system was upgraded to SP3 using slipstreamed SP3 CD to do upgrade install which didn't help, and repair install was done with same results. A fresh windows install was also done, but the same problems persist.

I noticed everything seems to work at normal speed without problems when memtest, Seagate Tools, Windows setup or other programs are running from CD, but many problems are encountered when booted to and run in Windows. Is it possible the memory or hard drive could still be bad even though they passed tests, or could there be some other hardware problem like cpu, motherboard or power supply?

[aedipuss]

did you check to see if it's overheating? coretemp or something similar might work. the heat sink/air flow might be clogged up.

[Nelson37]

What problems did the chkdsk log indicate? Have you run a defrag?

Check the temps as suggested.

The CD test you have run isolates the hard drive and controller out of the equation. Assuming you did a complete delete partition, create partition, long format, and re-install, then load NOTHING ELSE but the diagnostics, that removes the Windows software install from the equation.

You are left with hard drive and controller. Can they pass tests and still be defective? ABSO - Freakin - Lutely. Tests are indicators, not proof.

Were any changes, ANYTHING AT ALL, made to the PC at the time it became slower? Did anything at all unusual happen?

[bevills1]

I'll give coretemp a try. What temp should the cpu be for the Dell Inspiron 6000? Both Disk Cleanup and Defrag were run with little if any improvement. I've not checked the chkdsk log file, but I will.

Hard drive was upgraded from the original 30GB drive to a 160GB Seagate drive about 2 years ago, and problems began after SP3 was installed in January 2009. I happen to have a new hard drive I had ordered for another laptop which was never used that I could try if the 160GB Seagate drive might still be bad even though it passed tests. Maybe I should try that if the cpu temp isn't found to be high.

[aedipuss]

anything over 70c is not good, i think 90c was complete shutdown for that cpu.

[bevills1]

Coretemp was run, but it shows the cpu isn't supported. Are there any other temperature programs that might support the cpu in this Dell?

[aedipuss]

if you boot into the computer's bios screens is there one for hardware monitoring? most do - dell's may not.

google cpu temp and you will find several other temp monitoring programs, you'll need to find one that works with older hardware. maybe hardware monitor or siw would work.

[TBoneit]

If you haven't wiped out the Dell diagnostic partition, available as an option when you press F12 at startup you can run the Memory test and the Hard Drive test as well as other hardware tests.

If you did wipe it out you should be able to F12 and boot from a optical drive and run the tests from the Driver DVD(CD).

Run the tests and then you'll know. BTW if the air coming out of where the CPU fan exhausts is cool then most likely not running hot.

FWIW I have seen hard drives that passed all diagnostics from the maker that were still running very slow and replacing them sped things up.

[bevills1]

Problems resolved by restoring Ghost image created April 2009, and everything's back to normal. This seems to indicate there was no hardware problem and likely some program(s) were installed after the Ghost image was created that was hogging resources.