Slow laptop

[Guest]

Hi,

I am not really new to XP but I have just bought a new laptop and decided to
get one without an operating system installed. I put XP on it and went to
the vendor's site to download the drivers for the VGA card, chipset, audio,
keypad, etc..

Having set this all up, I find the laptop isn't really performing as I
expected, especially as it has a 2GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. In fact, it
loads the OS and all programs slower than my desktop which only has a 1.66GHz
processor and 1GB of RAM.

Is there something I need to do to tell the laptop how much RAM to make use
of, or something similar? This is the first time I have installed my own OS
from scratch so I am sure that there is something that I am missing.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

 

[Gerry]

Please post copies of all Error and Warning Reports appearing in the
System and Application logs in Event Viewer for the last boot. No
Information Reports or Duplicates please. Indicate which also appear in
a previous boot.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer. When researching the meaning
of the error, information regarding Event ID, Source and Description
are important.

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427/en-us

Part of the Description of the error will include a link, which you
should double click for further information. You can copy using copy
and paste. Often the link will, however, say there is no further
information.
http://go.microsoft.com/fw.link/events.asp
(Please note the hyperlink above is for illustration purposes only)

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Guest]

Hi Gerry,

I have checked the event log having just turned the laptop back on.

There is nothing in the Application log for today and in the System log
there is a lot of stuff from the Service Control manager (telling me that
certain services started successfully). All of these are Information, no
errors or warnings.

There is one different entry (the first) with Eventlog as the source, and it
reads:

"Microsoft (R) Windows (R) 5.01. 2600 Service pack 2 Multiprocessor Free"

I have checked the properties of My Computer and it shows that the 2GB is
present and that the processor is running at 2GHz.

Can you think of what may be wrong?

 

[Gerry]

I need a complete copy of the Eror Report to comment.

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.

Try Ctrl+Alt+Delete to select Task Manager and click the Performance
Tab. Under Commit Charge what is the Total, the Limit and the Peak?

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Hi,

I am not really new to XP but I have just bought a new laptop and decided
to
get one without an operating system installed. I put XP on it and went to
the vendor's site to download the drivers for the VGA card, chipset,
audio,
keypad, etc..

Having set this all up, I find the laptop isn't really performing as I
expected, especially as it has a 2GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. In fact,
it
loads the OS and all programs slower than my desktop which only has a
1.66GHz
processor and 1GB of RAM.

Is there something I need to do to tell the laptop how much RAM to make
use
of, or something similar? This is the first time I have installed my own
OS
from scratch so I am sure that there is something that I am missing.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

A few things. First, systems aren't all the same and performance isn't
necessarily the same for two different systems with the same clock speeds.
Second, performance then is dependent what is being loaded.

Third, laptops, unlike many desktop systems, are often designed to reduce
clock speeds to reduce power consumption and increase battery life. Check
the power settings; if you want full speed, that costs in power terms.

Fourth, if you just turn on an XP system and use it in a "normal" fashion,
by which I mean having Word, Outlook, OE, a few IE windows and Explorer
open, 1 gig or 2 gig memory won't make any difference in speed. The
extra memory won't ever speed up your system - it will delay it slowing
down under load (for example, if you are processing large images), by
keeping data from the disk page file.

Fifth, what else did you load? Some utility applications, such as
antivirus and firewall packages from large companies, can really, really bog
down a system. It may be simply that your choice of applications is
what's at issue.

Finally, if you want to see what's using processor cycles, get Process
Explorer and use it instead of Task Manager.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Utilities/ProcessExplorer.mspx

HTH
-pk