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I need some help please.

B

bonghitter400

Weaksauce
Joined
Apr 5, 2007
Messages
75
I was at a friends house today because his computer began running super slow a while back and after doing all the basic stuff like deleting cookies, defrag, registry cleaning, spyware removal, it was still slow as hell.
he has a Dell (First problem) 9100.

Here are the specs:
CPU: Pentium D socket 775 stock at 3.2Ghz
RAM: 2 x 512 Gb pc4300 clocks:4-4-4-12
Ati x300
350w psu
80 Gb hd
160 Gb hd
Xp Home sp2
Speedfan would not recognize any temps other than his disc drives, which were fine.

After installing CPU-Z I dicovered his core clock speed would spend 2-3 seconds at 2.8Ghz and then shoot to the stock speed of 3.2Ghz for less than a second and go back again. I immediately thought that it may be thermal throttling, so I removed the heatsink, seen that the thermal compound was really beat, cleaned it up really shiny, applied some Arctic Silver and reinstalled the hs. No luck.
After looking further, I seen his ht link was around 780 or so. That seems kinda low don't you think? I didn't know how or even wanted to get into his bios before checking with the best group of overclockers on the 'net.
I appreciate any help. I'm kinda stuck on this one.
Thanks!
 
bonghitter400 said:
I was at a friends house today because his computer began running super slow a while back and after doing all the basic stuff like deleting cookies, defrag, registry cleaning, spyware removal, it was still slow as hell.
he has a Dell (First problem) 9100.

Here are the specs:
CPU: Pentium D socket 775 stock at 3.2Ghz
RAM: 2 x 512 Gb pc4300 clocks:4-4-4-12
Ati x300
350w psu
80 Gb hd
160 Gb hd
Xp Home sp2
Speedfan would not recognize any temps other than his disc drives, which were fine.

After installing CPU-Z I dicovered his core clock speed would spend 2-3 seconds at 2.8Ghz and then shoot to the stock speed of 3.2Ghz for less than a second and go back again. I immediately thought that it may be thermal throttling, so I removed the heatsink, seen that the thermal compound was really beat, cleaned it up really shiny, applied some Arctic Silver and reinstalled the hs. No luck.
After looking further, I seen his ht link was around 780 or so. That seems kinda low don't you think? I didn't know how or even wanted to get into his bios before checking with the best group of overclockers on the 'net.
I appreciate any help. I'm kinda stuck on this one.
Thanks!
Click to expand...

The core clock speed going up and down is probably the intel speed step doing its thing, stepping down to 2.8GHz at idle and back up to 3.2 under any kind of load.

The HT speed is only on AMD systems, what you saw in Cpu-z was probably the bus speed (quad pumped, 200MHz X 4), which on a PD would be 800MHz stock.

You say you did some spyware removal? Was in badly infected? If so, maybe time to back up important documents and do a fresh install. Might run better than ever being a fresh install would get rid of all the dell trial softwar crap.
 
Yeah, I took out about 18 pieces of spyware and a lot of the bloatware that normally comes with a Dell. I used my own paid subscription to SpySweeper for it so I know it's clean on that front. I managed his startup and cleaned his registry using my registered RegCure and it still starts out really slow and just gets slower as you open things up.
I was afraid he would have to do an all-out reinstall of Windows, but what's got to be done has got to be done.
As a matter of fact you are correct, it isn't the ht link. Don't I feel like a dummy. :eek:
So I shouldn't have to turn off his stepping, because it seems to be working normally. I just never had any experience with an Intel cpu other than my old Dell which I never did anything to anyway.
Thanks bro.
 
Might be software problem only. Your hardware is find, I know people who ran their computers so slow after doing a clear install of windows it was like night to day:p .
Even you clean the spyware, it might already corrupt or mode your registry cause it to run slow and ad a lot of junk in it.
Best thing to do is reinstall windows, I bet it will run as new. I did the same thing before.
 
check to see how much HD space he has left.

did you check background processes? that can slow any computer down.
 
SO, you have:
Cleaned and reapplied the thermal paste on the HS,
Cleaned the registry and cleared up the startup,
de-spywared and de-trialed

(this being for those who apparently cannot read, above)

I would reccommend:
-check out his services listings. Sometimes Dell's have a tendency to randomly turn ALL services on at startup, or to be bad at turning them off.

-Check his windows updates and driver versions, especially if he has some extra USB devices that might be causing a hang somewhere. OR unplug them.

-Start her up in safemode, and copy and past a bunch of large files from place to place. If it still runs slow there, you have a hardware problem, probably (lol). If it's fast, you have a driver somewhere that's buggin' out.

-Does he have a firewall program running? I know Zone Alarm has caused this kind of behavior on some of the [H]-reviewed Dell's.

-Tell him to stop dl'ing pr0n, and switch to Firefox to prevent more spyware.

-Run adaware and ewido antispywares, they will catch stuff spysweeper won't.

-Uninstall any dell 'help' or 'diagnostics' or similar software. They are bad.

-Run memtest or OCCT, check for memory issues

Just some common fixes i have found for this kind of thing.
 
He does have a ton of room left on his hard drive and I already disabled or uninstalled any stupid Dell Help software or support garbage they put in there. Maybe I'll go over there and do the safe-mode thing. Do you think there may be a better way to see how fast it's running by some sort of other benchmark other that just moving a bunch of files? I know I can't run any sort of graphical benchmark because it will be using the generic drivers in safe mode, so maybe the moving files would be a good way to tell.

I could sit there all day and check his drivers against the current ones out there, and I could run every spyware program out there hoping it will catch something SpySweeper hasn't, and I could spend the next six months tweaking his machine, but quite frankly, he's not paying me so I'm going to try these things and if it doesn't work, I'll just go with the data migration/reinstall technique. Then it's gotta speed up enough to where he'll be happy again untill it's time to put the thing in the ground.

Thanks for all of your help!
I love you guys.:)
 
as far as a benchmark. You could run superpi. It's results are relatively consistent.
 
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