Hi, hoping someone can help with this query. Just had a custom built P3 800 PC built. There is 128Mb RAM. The problem is that its performance is so slow. One little application can use up nearly 100% of the processor and installing from CD seems to take forever. Is there something obvious I should be looking at? Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks!
Peor

Welcome! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif A P3 800 should be pretty fast, so I suspect something is not configured properly if it is running that slowly. What OS are you using (Win95/98, Win2K, NT)? If Win95/98, the first thing I'd do is open Control Panel, System, Device Manager, and check to be sure there are no yellow exclamation points or red Xs on any of your hardware devices. Then look at the last tab, Performance. Does it say your system is configured for optimal performance? If you see a box midway down the page showing your hard drive and CDROM running in MS-DOS Compatibility Mode, that could be the problem right there. Please post back after checking these things and we'll try to help you speed things up! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif

Kim

Thanks for the reply. I have Windows ME and Windows 2000. I will still try your suggestion and let you know if it makes any difference. Thanks again for the response. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

Hi. I checked the device manager in Win 2000. There are no yellow exclamation points or red Xs on any of the hardware devices. I couldn't see a performance tab but it does optimal performance and there is nothing about hard drive and CDROM running in MS-DOS Compatibility Mode. I hope this helps in answering my query! Thanks! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

Well, I'm stumped! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif With 128MB RAM on a P3 800, your system should be much faster than what you described! I'm afraid I don't know anything about WinME and 2000, so I wouldn't even know where to tell you to look for the source of the poor performance. Hopefully someone else here will be able to help you!

Kim

Hi Kim
Well thanks for trying. I appreciate it http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif Wish I knew whats wrong with it! If anyone has any ideas pleasseee let me know! Thanks!

Peor,

Are you running a dual boot system?

With a new PC, I'd say take it back and let them figure out what the problem is. However, if you installed a second OS, I'd suggest that you re-format, then re-install one OS only to see how it runs. The less complications the better when trying to troubleshoot.

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Hmm Ok number one I would most likely clean format the sucker (heh heh call Dell and that's their #1 advice http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif ). But besides that hmm Go to your bios and make PNP/OS aware to DISABLED then Reset your PCI/PNP configuration (that way your BIOS will run the IRQ and DMA handling). Next kill all of your things running in the background (task bar) sometimes you might have software that's incompatible (kill one by one and see what happens). Now Go to Control P>System>Advanced>Make sure it's not set for "Background Applications" since this setting is used for servers and will mostl likely create a 100% CPU strain. OH YEAH THE CPU!!! HEHHEH Go to your friendly TASKMANAGER 3-finger salute and look at Aplications there you can see which one is eating up your CPU clock cycles and what's your memory drain. Also make sure that you swap file is set to MIN 256 MAX 256. I am not on win2k machine now so I can't realy tell you more since I have the ideas I just don't recall how the screen really looks like. For example Win2k has no provision for UDMA66 that you have to insert a DWord into your registry and set it to 1 hexal but I can't recall the exact key w/o going inot it myself. Also get rid of your SErvice Pack 1 it's mostly crap, keep the IE 5.0 or 5.5 and do the compatibility updates.