Help! very slow Dell Latitude XT SSD

I have a Dual core 1.2Ghz, 3GB ram (Crucial) Dell Latitude XT with a 32gb SSD, I've been having problems with it since January, it stalls, you can't even switch between tabs in Internet Explorer 7 or Mozilla, Scrolling was very slow and glitchy. I stopped using it because I was tired of Dell's useless CS i.e spending an hour on chat without any useful info, they replaced the HDD with a refurbished sandisk 5000 that was slightly better than the original but still too slow to use. A couple of month ago, I asked them to send a regular hdd so I can see the difference, they sent me a refurbished 80GB that worked a lot better than the other two but started clicking a week or two afterward.

I'm thinking the cells might have been worn out on the replacement SSD, and I don't know how to do a wipe to refresh it.

I would appreciate all the help,
Thanks.

 

I don't think the SSD / HDD will affect the speed at which you switch application unless you have so little RAM that Windows has to move everything between physical and virtual memory.

3GB RAM should be plenty provided it is all working. How much available physical RAM does Task Manager show (on the Performance page). Another indicator of virtual memory usage is the Page Faults column on the Processes page. Also, what is your typical CPU utilisation?

John

 

the regular HD (80gb 4200RPM) is a lot faster than the SSD, the stuttering problem is minimal but still there, it's as if I'm typing in slow motion.
to answer your question I have 2189532 k available out of 2881392 (total)The cpu usage keeps going up and down in spikes while I'm typing this message from 14 to 60%, the pf is 639mb

 

I wonder if the drive interface is in PIO mode, which is slow and CPU-intensive, whereas it should be in UDMA mode (which by-passes the CPU).

Go into Device Manager, check the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller properties and check the current transfer mode of the IDE channels. The HDD/SSD should be connected to the primary channel. See here for an explanation of what may be happening.

John

 

The Issue you're referring to does not apply to Vista.
any other ideas?

 

Maybe the problem should not occur in Vista but can you check the current transfer mode?

John