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    M1530 XP Users: Is this normal?

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by ydfz, Jun 21, 2008.

  1. ydfz

    ydfz Newbie

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    I upgraded from Vista 32-bit in favor of XP 32-bit on my new M1530. Installed drivers, working fine without any obvious technical issues.

    But now I'm wondering if the grass might have been greener on the Vista side. XP is a little more sluggish in running explorer-related tasks and starting up programs. I looked in the task manager and found an unusual number of running processes. I've been exclusively a desktop user until now, so I'm not sure if this is normal for a laptop:

    Is this normal considering I have no running programs other than IE and the command prompt, and have just installed XP a couple of days ago? There's a bunch of svchost.exe's and I don't know why that is either.

    Maybe I'm just paranoid. But for some reason Vista seemed faster. Even though I hate it.

    I have 4GB RAM and the Intel T9300 2.5GHz 6MB cache if that makes any difference. Also, I have the /3GB switch enabled.
     
  2. JCMS

    JCMS Notebook Prophet

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    Yes it's normal... XP has ~30 processes while Vista has ~55

    For everyday tasks, Vista can be faster on a nice system, because of superfetch
     
  3. owais

    owais Notebook Deity

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    yeh, thats just vista, it isnt because you have a laptop.

    thats why vista isnt recomended for anyone with less then 1gb of ram, it takes loads of ram :(
     
  4. JCMS

    JCMS Notebook Prophet

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    From 2001 RAM standard, XP too
     
  5. Udi

    Udi Notebook Consultant

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    You can run XP with far less processes. Go start > run > msconfig, and change the entries in the services and startup tab.

    Nothing is critical under startup, and for the services you can google for a list of what they do.

    I have ~14 processes running on boot in XP, with vitals intact (windows wireless management, windows installer, windows cd burning, etc). Booting, shutting down, and general OS tasks are much faster under XP for me than when I ran Vista.