TSGL: Dell Dimension - too slow

[Tilman Brandl]

Dave,
and Glen,

>  ... there's nothing peculiar about Dell systems.

Understood. This may make it easier for me to successfully do what I've 
done in the past already <g>

Since as I believe she has plenty of space left on her 2 HDDs (40 + 8 
GB) maybe defragmentation can improve things, but there's no real 
bottleneck. Cleaning out some of the temp files could however help too, 
that's never a bad idea ;-)

> On the boot program, might you mean just making a bootlog?

No <s> - it was actually bootvis.exe. And I'm not even sure that this 
will help me much. The bootup process (and possible problems there) may 
not have any relation with whatever reasons there are for an overall 
slowness.

last but not least, thanks for your ideas too, Glen:

Unfortunately I haven't had the time to stay long enough with her and 
check for Spyware & clean up everything. But you're right, I should 
check that possibility too. Her machine however isn't an obvious 
suspect, she's not too often browsing the web, and she's also not prone 
to click at each and every link like others may do. OTOH, her kids have 
got games on CD which - on second thought - might be worth scrutinizing 
more closely.

Thanks
Tilman

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- 
Von: "Dave" <heydave at pacbell.net>
An: "Tech Support Guy Mailing List" <list at tsgserver.com>
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 11. Oktober 2006 01:59
Betreff: Re: TSGL: Dell Dimension - too slow


> As Ron said, there's nothing peculiar about Dell systems.
>
> Check how full is her hard drive.  If it is too full, there may not be
> enough room for
> the Windows swap file, or excess fragmentation can cause the swap file
> to fragment
> exacerbating the problem.
>
> Check for redundant files, particularly browser and email client
> profiles.  Some will
> duplicate everything whenever a new profile or new program version is
> installed, but
> not delete the previous.
>
> Particularly check all the Temp and TMP directories.  I just did some
> rescue work
> on a system that had 90 MB of temp files because the person using
> constantly used templates, but never saved the new docs under a unique
> name;
> just printed the files, then closed Word, adding another temp file 
> each
> time.
>
> If she running safety net programs like ERUNT or even System Restore,
> check that
> there are not excessive numbers of backups hogging disk space.
>
> If her RAM slots aren't already all occupied, suggest adding 
> additional
> RAM up
> to whatever maximum is specified by her motherboard/CPU  combination.
> That is easily determined by visiting Crucial.com or other RAM vendors 
> and
> plugging in the Dell model number (assuming the MB or CPU are OEM)
>
> On the boot program, might you mean just making a bootlog?
> Start/Run/msconfig
> Click on BOOT.INI tab, check the /BOOTLOG box.
>
>    *When in msconfig,
> also click on the HELP tab, which will open System Configuration 
> Utility
> overview, with a lot of diagnostic hints.*
>
> You can also install Process Explorer
> http://www.sysinternals.com/Files/ProcessExplorerNt.zip
> Startup Inspector or Startup Monitor
> http://www.windowsstartup.com/startupinspector.php
> http://www.windowsstartup.com/startupmonitor.php
>
> hth
> dave r