Dell Inspiron 6000 running super slow

G

gene2u

New Member
My Dell Inspiron 6000 is running very slowly even after a recent reformat to factory settings. I reformatted after the performance of the computer really started to suffer. I was also getting blue screens of death. I wrote down a bunch of the errors.

Here are some of them: STOP 50 (page fault non-paged error), STOP 77 (Kernel stack inpage error), STOP 7A (Kernel data inpage error)

Seems to me that 7A and 77 were the two most common ones. It also seemed the crashes were more likely with the system running from battery power, but I sometimes saw them while the computer was either plugged in or plugged in with the battery removed.

Anyway, after the re-format, the blue screens have pretty much stopped, but the computer now takes a long time to boot up, and it is very slow in opening programs. Regular web surfing and email functions are fine once the machine is running and the actual programs are finally loaded up.

Here are some details about the machine:

Windows XP home - SP2 + all the updates.
15.4" WSXGA+ LCD
80536 - Pentium M
60GB HD - hmmm... my invoice says it's Fujitsu, Control panel says Hitachi.
12 cell battery, has been replaced
From the invoice: DIMM,256,400,32X64,8K,200,512

Also, I have run a DOS diagnostics on the HD using a bootable CD. It returned a "no errors" result. Currently checking RAM with Memtest86. It's been running about 2.5 hours, no errors yet.

Can anyone help? Thank you.
 
Your hard drive might be corrupted (I've heard more horror stories about Fujitsu and Hitachi than Seagate, Maxtor and Western Digital combined three times over:P). The DOS drive diagnostics aren't as useful and thorough as, say a utility from the manufacturer.
 
Thanks concorde. The diagnostic was from the manufacturer of the drive, but it's possible that it just didn't pick up any errors. Could it be that while the hard drive works, it just works really slow? Would be great if I had a hard drive to replace it to test it, but I would have to buy one.

There's reason to suspect the drive, as I have heard the odd click from it. Might be worth a try. The other option is junking the thing and buying a new laptop.
 
I wouldn't throw it away just yet! You can get a Seagate drive (2.5") for around $60. If it keeps acting strange, well, then, spend an extra $15 for an enclosure and remove the drive and it's something else, but, you said it had an erratic clicking noise, so it is very likely a hard drive problem. Go with Seagate. They are most reliable (and besides IBM, are the oldest and most experienced with hard drives). Their drives work well in desktops and laptops. I have NEVER had a Seagate drive fail on me, even so much as giving me one iota of a problem.
 
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Well, found the problem! Apparently Windows had slowed my IDE cables down to POI speeds (probably due to some CRC errors it was experiencing). So, my hard drive and dvd drive were operating at super slow speeds.

I was able to fix it by running the script on this page:

http://winhlp.com/node/10


It's still not super quick, but I'd like to delay any expenditures on this ageing laptop and replace it when it completely dies. Kind of like my '94 Ford Taurus station wagon.
 
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