HOW TO FIX - Performance Issues After SP2 Install

[S Doughty]

Hi all,

Once again, I have wasted several hours of my life trying to
troubleshoot Windows. In an effort to save others time, here's the
answer if you are having performance/processor issues with a Dell
Inspiron after installing XP Service Pack 2:

What happened:

I have an Inspiron 1150. Downloaded and installed SP2. Extremely slow
to install and reboot. Had very poor performance with the CPU running
close to 100%. Tried shutting down various processes,
uninstalling/disabling software, turning off Windows firewall, nothing
worked. I was about to go uninstall SP2 when I found the answer
here...

Roll Back the Processor Driver. Now it's working fine. Thanks to the
guy who posted this. I am making it a new subject because it's going
to be a popular problem.

Details on how to do this:

Right click My Computer. Go to Hardware Tab, then Device Manager.
Expand Processors, highlight your proc. Right click and go to
Properties. Click Driver tab, then Roll Back Driver. XP will complain
about the driver not being signed, tell it to continue anyway.

Your other option is to uninstall SP2, but from what I have read it
takes hours to uninstall because of the performance issues. So I
recommend doing the roll-back even if you are still going to
uninstall. I suspect this problem is limited to Celeron processors.

Good luck,

Shauna
(e-mail address removed)
www.shauna.net

 

[JGG]

Roll Back the Processor Driver. Now it's working fine. Thanks to the
guy who posted this. I am making it a new subject because it's going
to be a popular problem.

Many thanks to the original poster and Shauna for reposting this. I
upgraded a new Dell 1150 to SP2 yesterday and ran into exactly the
same issues. I noticed that the taskmanager alone was grabbing 15% of
the cpu consistently. I rolled back the processor driver and the
computer returned to great performance.

Thanks again,
JGG.