1721 Arrived Today - Somewhat of a Disappointment

Well, my 1721 arrived today...and I am a little (well, a lot) disappointed. The screen is great. But the thing is sooooo slow. When I first booted it up and it went thru the Windows startup screens (where you setup time zone and users)...I got through the first user setup and the pc just hung. I had to kill the power and start again....second time.....SAME THING. Third time it worked fine. BUT.......everything runs so incredibly slow and I receive error after error with applications that I loaded (Rhapsody, AIM, etc.) - I haven't actually checked to see if there are known problems with those apps on Vista - need to do that tomorrow.

Bootup & Login takes about 15 minutes.

Opening IE takes about 1.5 Minutes.

Trying to close any window by clicking on the X button results in everything clocking for about 45-60 seconds before the window closes.

I have a 5 year old desktop that runs so much faster than this brand new laptop. I'm not sure if something is wrong with mine....if anyone else has a 1720 or 1721, can you let me know if you are having the same problem? Thanks.

Here are my specs:

Inspiron 1721, AMD Turion 64 x 2 TL-60 (2.0GHz/1MB)
Jet Black Color with Matte Finish
2GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm
Glossy, widescreen 17.0 inch display (1440 x 900)
ATI RADEON Xpress1270 256MB HyperMemory for Inspiron 1721 (Integrated)
160G 5400RPM SATA hard drive
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, English
8X DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive
Dell Wireless 1505 Wireless-N Mini Card
Integrated 2.0M Pixel Webcam
85 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery, for Inspiron 1721

 

i'm pretty sure something is wrong

 

I don't really know anything about it, but I suggest maybe running Windows Update, and maybe try to find updated drivers for your ATI card.

 

Hmm thats pretty bad, was gonna say buy more ram! but i see you have 2GB already.

It could be windows vista just doing its thing. I don't know exactly what it does but theres a lot of hard drive activity for no apparent reason when you start it up for the first time, it will index everything and maybe defragment things etc. It could just be that.

Have a peek at the BIOS settings, check around for anything that could be wrong, like maybe L2 CACHE = Disabled, or something.

 

Clean re-install might help and an Core 2 Duo

 

A couple of things for you to do...

1) Dell laptops ship with an incredible amount of bloatware installed on them. Get a Windows Anytime DVD Upgrade disc (found for less than $10) if you do not have a CD already. Reinstall Vista after a full reformat and just blow away all that bull crap.
2) Are you running the laptop in the most powerful power profile available? A CPU that is forced to run at 800MHz or something all the time will be a little slow at boot up. Just an idea though, but I do not think this is your problem.
3) Download and run MemTest86. You'll have to burn the program to a CD and boot off of the CD. However, it will check the system RAM byte for byte to make sure there are no problems. Bad RAM will always cause errors out the rear so you may need a new stick.
4) Download and run HDTune, do a full health scan of the hard drive (no quick crap either). Make sure the hard drive is working properly...a malfunctioning drive will also cause major issues . When that is done, have Vista do a full Disc Check on the drive...make sure it agrees that there is no physical problems. ChkDsk will also see if there are corrupted files on the hard drive, which again can/will cause issues.

Other than that, get a copy of your OS restore discs from Dell while you are at it, and feel free to call them and complain.

 

Thanks. I will give it a try tomorrow. I also noticed that the hard drive is only 135GB (calc'd by adding free and used) - wondering what happened to the other 25GB???

 

You got the almost the same laptop specs that I ordered, just the screen and processor different.

You've definitely got some kind of issue there, it should not be that slow.
And they are right about the bloatware. As soon as mine comes, it's getting a reformat and fresh install of Windows XP Pro. F*** Vista.

 

Restore partition, Media Direct partion, Windows system restore, swap file & the fact that HD GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes (ie 160GB = 160,000,000,000 bytes = 149GiB).

 

As for the upgrade discs... Isn't Dell supposed to be shipping copies with all the systems anyways?

 

The newest version of AIM works without a problem on Vista. Check the Task Manager by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL. Click processes, then see which applications are using too much memory. Click them and then click End Process.

 

Dude somethings wrong with that.I have the exact same laptop,but with 1.8 ghz proccessor,and mine hauls ass.boots in about a minute,or less,and IE,in nano seconds.I would return that P.O.S