Need help with a *urk* Dell

[Penance]

Girlfriend's parents insisted on buying her a Dell about 3 years ago. Warrenty is expired, so they won't do anything to help her out.

The problem was that all of a sudden her machine became EXTREMELY slow, taking upwards of 3 minutes to do anything like opening programs, switching windows, etc. Also, the task bar and start button do not show up on the screen.

I had her call Dell tech support and they just had us reformat and reinstall the OS. This did nothing to help the problem and installing Windows took FOREVER as well. As in, overnight.

I figured it was most likely a hard drive problem, but just to be sure I told her to call tech support again and gripe until they gave her a real answer. They said it was most likely a hard drive problem as well.

So...I ordered her a new drive from newegg, installed it, reinstalled the OS...and it's the same thing: no task bar, no start button, slow as hell. She gave up on trying to install the drivers off the Dell CD after the system wouldn't read the drive after like 10 minutes.

Any other ideas on how to fix this monster? :bang head :

[David]

I would first of all check that it isnt clocked up with dust and throttelling back. Open the case, get a can of compressed air and clean out all the dust from the case. Check all connections and make sure its all secure.

Grab a copy of memtest86 from www.memtest86.com and run it on her PC. See if the RAM is OK. If possible check the PSU rails using a multimeter.

[Super Nade]

It would also be a good idea to defragmet the HDD and check for spyware.

[skou]

So...I ordered her a new drive from newegg, installed it, reinstalled the OS...

Yep, running defrag, and checking for spyware should fix it. :rolleyes:

If you have replaced the HDD, and the OS, it sounds like some kind of hardware issue. Overheating, possibly?

Does it start up, at the very beginning, at a decent speed? Then, after being on for a minute or so, start slowing down?

Are you using the Dell recovery disks, or a real copy of an OS?

steve

[Penance]

Hey, thanks for the replies.

Ran memtest86 and there were NO errors after letting it run overnight.

The harddrive I put in was BRAND new and the computer has no network access so it couldn't possibly have any spyware or viruses on it.

Before I put the hard drive in there WAS quite a bit of dust around the CPU heatsink, but I cleaned all that off. Since that didn't work, I also dusted everything out with compressed air.

It still runs very slowly. Occasionally when she boots up the system the startbar will show up, but most of the time not.

So yeah, it's probably a motherboard issue of some kind. Which really sucks for her because she doesn't have money for a new case, mobo, and power supply (damn Dell and their proprietary crap). Anything else in there that's proprietary I should know about?

[batboy]

Actually, the case can probably be used. Dell generally uses a oddball start button and power switch connector, but using the reset switch as a power switch will work if you change mobo. Typically the power supply will need to be changed too if you get a new mobo since Dell usually uses nonstandard PSU.

But, I'm not totally convinced it's a motherboard problem unless it's the controller going out. Usually when a mobo fizzes out it just plain stops working or you get random reboots that become worse and worse. Like the other senior members said, it almost sounds like it's overheating badly.

[Avatar28]

Depends on the model if you would need to change the power supply. You didn't mention what model system it was. One thing to check that can cause it is to go into the BIOS and look under the CPU information to make sure the CPU isn't in compatible mode. That turns off the L2 cache on the CPU and cause issues like what you're describing.