Dell Laptop

[NJLOAD]

I picked up the above laptop and have a few questions about it's performance. Right off the bat, I'm not really impressed. It seems slow and on occassion different programs stop responding. Here are the details:

Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit SP1
Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 2.0 GHz
4 GB DDR2 800MHz Dimm x2
ATI mobility Radeon HD 3650
320 Gig 5400 RPM SATA Hard Drive

Plus all the other included junk.

My first question, if I upgrade to Vista Ultimate will it enhance the performance? I also have automatic updated enabled, is there an SP2 for this OS?
And another question would be, is there a place to get good tips and tricks on setting this thing up?

My old laptop is a 5 year old Toshiba Satellite A45-s121 running XP=Pro and it runs better than this lead sled.

Any help and tips are appreciated.

NJLOAD

 

[IlllI]

Originally posted by: NJLOAD

My first question, if I upgrade to Vista Ultimate will it enhance the performance? I also have automatic updated enabled, is there an SP2 for this OS?

a. no

b. no

 

[mpilchfamily]

Vista is Vista. No matter what version of it you have its still a resource hog. If you had the exact same laptop but with XP on it then the XP one would be faster. Problem is you can't install XP on that laptop since you will never be able to find all the XP drivers the system will need.

If you want things to go faster then remove all teh bloatware on the system. Then go threw and disable all the background prosseses that are not needed. If your not a gamer then go into the bios and reduce the amount of memory the video card is using. Since the GPU shares teh system memory it can slow things down. If you purchased this as a gamer system then you will run into problems. Most laptops don't make good gaming systems unless they support dual GPUs.

 

[NJLOAD]

Thanks for the replys, I didn't buy it for a gaming PC but would like to find some tips that show how to set it up. I'm not familiar with the OS so I'm not sure where to go or what to really do. I will google and see what I can find, but if anyone could point me to a good site it would be appreciated.

Thanks again.

 

[mpilchfamily]

The main thing you should do is go into the Programs option in the control panel and unistall the blote ware.

 

[NJLOAD]

Thanks for the help.

My wireless router is a D-Link Xtreme N? Gigabit Router (DIR-655). I have an old desktop with a printer attached to it. I am haveing trouble printing from my Studio 17. Any thoughts. I have installed the vista drivers on the laptop but it still has trouble printing. Is there a way to run a printer right from the router? The desktop is running XP Pro.

Using some tips I found on the Net, and getting rid of some blote ware, it seems to be running a little faster.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Set the desktop to share the printer.

 

[NJLOAD]

Sorry guess I should have mentioned, the printer is set up for sharing. I'll have to pay attention to the error message and post later.

 

[NJLOAD]

Sorry for the bother, but I opened the bottom of the laptop and noticed a second bay for another hard drive. Where would one get the steel mounting bracket in order to run another drive? Searching on Dell's site is next to impossible. Finding the HD is no problem but mounting hardware is another story.

Any help is appreciated.

As far as the printing problem, I just plugged the printer into the USB port on the router and installed the USB driver on the computer and it works fine.

 

[NJLOAD]

Found everything I need.

thanks

 

[NJLOAD]

HELP, folks the above computer was factory shipped with Vista Home Premium and I upgraded to Vista Ultimate. When I installed Ultimate it found a driver conflict and doesn't give any ideas what the bad drive might be. Everything seems to work OK. To make a long story short, I also bought another HD and wanted to revert back to Premium but when going through the boot process, hitting F8 does not give me the option to do a system recovery. Before the OS upgrade the option was there because I used it. Does anyone have any ideas on this, also when going into control panel, I can not remove some programs that I installed. Tiger Woods 2008 was installed but when I click on it to unistall, it does nothing, also I installed a network printer and can't remove it from the printers folder. I would really like to restore the factory settings and start with all fresh installed programs and clone the new drive I bought,

any ideas are more than welcome.

The recovery partition is still on the D: drive and seems to contain data, I just can't access it during the boot process.

If I use the OS restore disk provided, will it restore the system to factory settings?

 

[IlllI]

yes. if you have a restore disk, then you can use that

 

[NJLOAD]

I am still having trouble here. Is there a way to access the recovery partition from some sort of dos prompt and run the recovery process that way? I can't figure out how to run the factory restore process because when I installed Ultimate it removed the feature when you press F8 on the boot. I'm worried that if I put in the Dell O/S disk all its going to do is format the drive and re-install Vista Home Premium.

Somehow if possible and someone knows how, can I restore to Factory Image without messing up any more?

 

[gorbs]

jeez take that thing back and get your money back lol. wait for windows 7 to come out and stick with xp for now. just my opinion.

 

[clipperfixer]

Geez, I game on a Dell e1705 with a dedicated video card. I run Vista Home Premium and would not go back to XP unless forced to. I don't know what is wrong with his lappy, but would take it back.

 

[JWade]

if you have a dell xp or dell vista disk, it will work in reloading your laptop and no need to activate it. doing an install/restore that will will also have it so you dont have any bloatware on it. you will more than likely have to download drivers from Dell's support site.