Hi,

I have a WinXP Sp2 portable (dell inspiron 8200) with 750Mb Ram installed.
(all updates installed)
HDD 80Gb 7200 Rpm.
Secondary bay : HDD 40Gb 5400Rpm

Since a few days CPU flatlines some time after startup (this differs from a
few minutes to a few hours).

When taskmanager is active it shows that explorer consumes somewhere between
5-25% CPU and taksmanager consumes up to 65%.

Kernel activity is very high as well (although there is no apparent hd
activity, no flashing light).

This slows down the portable to an unacceptable level. This occurs in the
same configuration as before, no new software, no new updates. There are no
apparant errors, or warnings, in eventviewer showing pointers how to solve
this.

From time to time (when you have been in a program for a fair amount of time
with almost no activity, such as save, open, print) CPU drops to 20-40% and
kernel drops also. As soon as you switch between programs or print/open/save
something it flatlines again and you have no more activity.

to give an idea, changing folder in explorer takes up to 1 minute before the
files are visible, changing from explorer to outlook takes the outlook
window up to 2 minutes before reacting/showing the mails.

Can anyone help me with this?

regards

david

Apparently there is a problem with a memory module since after one more
restart it gave a warning about memory and memory is now down to 677Mb in
stead of 756Mb.

Is there a way to check this better? To find out which module is
malfunctioning?

regards

david

"David De Smet" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi,
>
> I have a WinXP Sp2 portable (dell inspiron 8200) with 750Mb Ram installed.
> (all updates installed)
> HDD 80Gb 7200 Rpm.
> Secondary bay : HDD 40Gb 5400Rpm
>
> Since a few days CPU flatlines some time after startup (this differs from
> a few minutes to a few hours).
>
> When taskmanager is active it shows that explorer consumes somewhere
> between 5-25% CPU and taksmanager consumes up to 65%.
>
> Kernel activity is very high as well (although there is no apparent hd
> activity, no flashing light).
>
> This slows down the portable to an unacceptable level. This occurs in the
> same configuration as before, no new software, no new updates. There are
> no apparant errors, or warnings, in eventviewer showing pointers how to
> solve this.
>
> From time to time (when you have been in a program for a fair amount of
> time with almost no activity, such as save, open, print) CPU drops to
> 20-40% and kernel drops also. As soon as you switch between programs or
> print/open/save something it flatlines again and you have no more
> activity.
>
> to give an idea, changing folder in explorer takes up to 1 minute before
> the files are visible, changing from explorer to outlook takes the outlook
> window up to 2 minutes before reacting/showing the mails.
>
> Can anyone help me with this?
>
> regards
>
> david
>
>
>
>