Work Laptop is a dog

[TheStu]

Some IT depts will let you connect if you have up to date AV/firewalls etc, several companies I've worked at have allowed this in the past.

If you did get them to agree to adding a Win7 build to the domain then you could always use XP Mode to run any legacy IE apps that didn't work in 8/9.

Well, they are apparently vetting Win7, so i will just tough it out.

I have made a tenuous peace with the performance of this system.

 

[SMOGZINN]

You could try running the following command and see if it helps.

WARNING: This script will kill all running applications under your username. Save your data first!

taskkill /F /FI "USERNAME eq XXXX" /FI "IMAGENAME ne Explorer.exe" /FI "IMAGENAME ne DWM.EXE"

replace the XXXX with your username and run it. See if that fixes the issue, if so you have a problem with some running application.

 

[TheStu]

Ok, so new development/realization. It is the laptop screen that is having the problems, not the external LCD. It is the one that is having the lagginess and everything else. The system is responsive, but the screen isn't so it gives the illusion of being a complete and total POS.

The latest (from Dell) display drivers have been installed, anything else that I can do?

 

[trollolo]

i might be wrong here but why are you using 4 gigs of ram on a 32 bit system?

 

[TheStu]

i might be wrong here but why are you using 4 gigs of ram on a 32 bit system?

Because the image that IT has is for 32bit XP.

 

[jrocks84]

I'd now guess that's either Dell made a really poor choice of components or had poor QC. Maybe contact your IT department and see if others who have that model experience the same issue.

 

[Emulex]

two 2gb dimms is faster than mixed - and the cost of ram is so low. some programs like superspeed ramdisk can use the ram and of course windows server enterprise can use the extra ram

 

[Steltek]

Ok, so new development/realization. It is the laptop screen that is having the problems, not the external LCD. It is the one that is having the lagginess and everything else. The system is responsive, but the screen isn't so it gives the illusion of being a complete and total POS.

The latest (from Dell) display drivers have been installed, anything else that I can do?

I'm wondering if you might have a hardware fault. Dell integrated graphics in my experience are middle of the road -- they aren't the greatest, but also consistently aren't the worst I've ever seen either. You simply shouldn't be seeing this level of lagginess and tearing. One thing you could always try is to boot up a Linux live CD or better yet a WINPE based diagnostic CD like UBCD4Win to see if these video problems recur independent of your OS installation.

Absent your IT folks lending you a blank hard drive so you can try to install Win7 for testing out this problem, I don't know what else you can do. However, if it were me, at this point I'd be calling up Dell (or my IT people) to talk them into doing a warranty service call....

 

[Emulex]

i'd be not buying dell products stick to tried and true hp elitebok.

anyhoo - win7 is far better for resource challenged pc's and of course if you can get SSD in there any way possible it will fly.

the cheapest wal-mart special (junky amd APU) with a $90 128gb samsung V+ ssd will outrun a quad core elitebook with 5400rpm drive for casual/business use.

time to go scourge for more $90 128gb ssd