Computer issues

Aquarius0015

Aquarius0015

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Sep 29, 2003
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Richmond, VA
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My computer has decided it hates me. I bought it last year through dell.com with enough ooomph to make it through 3 years of college. It's a Dell Inspiron 8500.

Here are the specs I can think of that might be important:
Windows XP, Service Pack 2
Intel Pentium 4, 2.5 ghz
640 megs Ram
auto-updated Corp. edition Norton virus scan (runs daily)
weekly scans with Ad-Aware

The first thing that I noticed was about two weeks ago. The keyboard started feeling really hot to the touch and a few times a day it would go to the blue screen of death.

After a week of that (with me getting progressively more worried) the blue screen problem went away on its own. It still gets a sorta warm, but nothing scary.

Within the last few days it has started behaving badly again. Programs are taking too long to load, windows won't maximize or minimize without a significant delay, mp3 playback is choppy at best, and sometimes the programs just don't respond at all. Incidentally, I chanced upon a discovering: sometimes turning the laptop on its side will break the spell (free up memory or something) and programs will launch, windows will open, etc... but only until i set it back down again...

I know I should call Dell Tech Support (an oxy moron if there ever was one) but I don't want to sit on hold for four hours talking to seven different non-native English speakers and still have the problem unresolved.

I know there are a lot of you tech types out there. If I asked really nicely, do you think you could give me an idea of what's going on? Is it something I could fix myself? Pretty please?
 
i hate computers, all of them. honestly, if i had all the know how i would have made my own computer by now, but unfortunantly the most i can do is fool around.

i have an upgraded inspiron 600 with about the same specs, and i sometimes have the same problems. Your RAM cache might be too low, but it might be something much much easier.
so, does your computer take a few min(2-3) before you can open any programs when you turn your computer on?
if thats the case, its Norton. I hate that darn program. Uninstall it anyways, even if it isnt the problem, get something like McAffe. Im not exactly sure whats up with the pre-installed nortons in dell inspirons, but it screws everything up.

*A bit off topic*
This is why computers suck, you buy something "with enough ooomph to make it through 3 years of college", which means a bunch of pre-installed crud that you dont need. The only way to bypass all this confusion is to buy (or build) a computer and re-format and upgrade the crrap out of it

At any rate
if you think your memory might be a bit low, or if your computer is lagging (and its not that darn norton) it can be one of two things.

a.) its either that you have a load of spyware (different than adware) on your computer. Adware programs dont catch this stuff unfortunantly
or
b.) your cache is a bit low (a bit more complicated)

You can download a program called "spy-bot search and destroy", generally computer viruses arent nearly as common now a days, its all about spyware and adware.

if your worried about memory you can open up your "control Panel", go to "system", then to "advanced"
under advanced you will see a "preformance" area, and a "settings" button. In settings, under "visual" click on the "adjust for best preformance" button. That wont do much, but it might open up a little processing speed.

I dont know why tilting your computer makes it any faster. Maybe something is loose in your laptop, bring it into a tech support somewhere and have them look at it if your worried about that.
As far as the heat is concerned Inspirons get really hot, i upgraded everything in my computer except the cooling fan, which isnt very powerful, so it gets super hot. That can cause damage, hopefully not too much. But think, if your computer is running 3x as fast as the fan can cool, its gonna fry something eventually.


if you have any questions i can see what i can do, i dont know much more than the simple things. hopefully ive helped



ps
anyone know why everything i put in "parenthesis" turns bold? its wierd
 
If its more than 1 year old, you may want to reformat the computer. You will lose everything in my documents, and all the programs will be deleted, but you wont lose any media. When I dowload a program, I keep the install file in a seperate folder, and format my computer about every 6 months. Then I just reinstall all the files. Its a bit extreeme, but it does keep the computer running at its max speed.
 
Are you running XP Home or Pro? And when did you install Service Pack 2? Shortly before the problems? That would be my first guess for problems as SP2 is the worst bugfest ever released.

If your keyboard is getting warm, toss it and get a new one. There's a short somewhere.


On a side note, are you using DDR ram? If so, you're fine for now unless you use movie or music editing software or you're playing graphic intensive games.
 
I agree, keyboards should not run hot. Either send it back to Dell or get a new one. I love my logitech but any cheap keyboard should work fine. Dell should still replace it though and will probably just send a new one and tell you to toss the old one.

SP2 is horrible. Did you intsall SP2 yourself or did it come with it?
 
Ayrianth said:
...That would be my first guess for problems as SP2 is the worst bugfest ever released.
Click to expand...
This really isn't the place to get into an argument over it, but I will say this. XP SP2 has suprisingly few bugs and, in my opinion, is by far the best thing released by Microsoft in a very long time. SP2 fixed a slew of security problems which, unfortunately but necessarily, changed the way some things work. Application vendors had ample time to update their software to make it compatible with the upcoming service pack, but many did not. When software stopped working after installing SP2, it was either because the vendors did not update it as they should have or because the Windows firewall needed adjusted to allow network access to the program. Installing SP2 is kind of like getting a gash in your head stitched up; it is incredibly painful, but it needs done and will make things much better in the long run.

About the laptop, it sounds like a heat issue to me. All laptops will get warm, but it shouldn't just start getting hotter than usual all of a sudden. It could be that a cooling fan had gotten jambed up or stopped working all together or maybe a component was faulty and started burning up. That would account for the heat. Also, many modern processors and motherboards have a feature that underclocks the CPU if the temperature gets too high. This slows things down, but it can prevent permanent damage. Even if nothing was permanently damaged by the heat, the heat can cause random errors which induce BSoDs among other things.

Since I don't have it here in front of me to look at, I really can't say anything for sure. You should call tech support though. They'll probably tell you to reinstall everything using their recovery CD first then, if/when that doesn't work, maybe have you return it so they can replace random parts.
 
Thanks for all of the input guys, it makes me warm and fuzzy and happy.

Poo, my computer *does* take 2-3 minutes of extra time to start up and I suspect it's at least partially Norton's fault. However, my school mandates that we install Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition 9. They force it to run nightly virus scans around 2am, which is just great, cause we're trying to sleep and our computers start whirring and clicking... However they are able to tell if we're running it or not, and we're not allowed to connect to the network if we don't have the antivirus software installed.

Also, I do have Spybot S&D, haven't run it lately, but I'll give it a whirl.

tel0004, I could easily save most of the programs and documents, but I have a few (3-4?) gigs of mp3's that I wouldn't know where to store. Even so, just for reference, how does one go about reformatting a computer?

Ayrianth, I can't toss the keyboard, it's part of my laptop! And SP2 was installed for two weeks before the problems started showing up.

Cgrabe, the fan definitely works, it even sounds like it has two modes: normal operation, and overkill. It might be that it's not up to snuff, but it does at least spin.

I wish Dell had local stores I could take it to... I guess I'll get my mother to send the recovery CD. Is the recovery CD specific to my computer, or can I use any recovery CD from Dell or any Inspiron 8500, etc?
 
Aquarius0015 said:
...Is the recovery CD specific to my computer, or can I use any recovery CD from Dell or any Inspiron 8500, etc?
Click to expand...
They're usually specific to a particular model or line, not a particular system. Any Inspiron 8500 recovery CD should work fine.
 
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