Lagging performance on brand new laptop

[lior]

I just bought a brand new Dell XPS 15 laptop. It has the new i-7 2630 processor, 8 gigs of RAM, 1gb nvidia 525m video card, 750 gigs WD hard drive, R+GBLED display (1920 x 1080), etc. As soon as I received it, I performed a clean install of Windows 7 HP. All the updates and drivers are current.

There's just one small problem: the performance sucks!

It feels as though something is always running in the background and it's seriously screwing up my experience. The whole thing just lags. For example, whenever I edit posts in Wordpress, it takes forever to delete characters while typing (I'm using FF6). Going back and forth between Thunderbird and say MS Word takes like two seconds to switch between the windows.

The interesting part is I'm not playing any games or running programs that are draining the memory. In fact, I only have MS Office, FF, Thunderbird, Adobe Reader, and Skype installed. And yet the performance sucks. The whole system feels like it's lagging, nothing is smooth. Moreover, the fan is on almost all the time, which was almost non-existent with the older system.

The system is replacing my Dell Inspiron 1545 which despite having only the Core 2 Duo processor, half the memory of this one, and on-board graphics, it works far smoother than this one with no lag whatsoever.

I tried isolating the problem by minimizing the number of start-up applications but it did no good. Next I used the built in "display quality troubleshooter" and the report came back as "visual effects settings aren't optimized for best performance". But then again, the settings are exactly the same as the Inspiron. And that system ran fine on on-board graphics, let alone a dedicated graphics card available on this system.

I checked the processor usage and there isn't anything unusual. I also ran diagnostics on the hard drive and no issues were found. So I'm guessing it is some kind of a display issue. But I just don't know what it could be or why it's causing problems on a supposedly higher end system.

Any suggestions?

 

[NeroDevil]

Could be a Graphic Driver not installed correctly. Go to the Dell Support website and fill out the necessary fields to download the latest Graphic Driver for your laptop.

Dell Support is here:
http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsupport.dell.com%2Fsupport%2Fdownloads%2F&rct=j&q=dell%20drivers&ei=pBR-ToV4x6jQBbfGmdwP&usg=AFQjCNGyvTHJd_rI3sF6j5EZyry_NpKjNQ&sig2=lX1-en7tbxD8sQn2NqMSYQ&cad=rja

However if that dosen't work, try removing some of the programs that came preloaded with your new laptop as these can often be a culprit for slowness.

 

[The Howling Wolves]

Like NeroDevil stated..........New computer's come loaded with junk and trial software.
Also check in msconfig and see what is listed in Start Up.

Welcome to 7 Forums and be sure to check out great tutorials and do a search on "how to remove bloatware!"
THW

 

[seavixen32]

As it is a brand new computer I'd certainly be inclined to bend Dell's ear over the perceived poor performance.

Having said that, the performance should improve once Windows has indexed your hard drive and superfetch has learned which programs you use the most.

 

[DBone]

As soon as I received it, I performed a clean install of Windows 7 HP.

Since he did a clean install of W7, Dell's bloatware isn't the issue. I'm typing this on a 1545 with a clean W7 HP install right now, and it is faster then my Wife's Dell 17** with an i-7 and clean W7 install. Her fan screams 24/7, while mine hardly ever comes on. I know that's not what you want to hear, but I agree with your experience.

 

[cluberti]

Lior, can you expound on what is slow, and when? Is it slow to boot, is it slow to open applications, etc? Your post is quite useful, but if you could give some specifics about what you're doing and what you're seeing, and when, that will help us help you in determining what tools to use to determine what's going on.

 

[python134r]

You prolly tried this but to start go into advanced sys settings, performance and set the performance options t to best performance. This laptop is chuck full of top end hardware and should be able to handle most graphics loads very well. As already stated, try a different driver and/or reinstall current one but also make sure all of the one uninstalled is all gone, use driver sweeper or similar.

I assume the os is on the 1tb drive, is it?

I

 

[slurp812]

spindle speed of the 750 gig?

 

[lior]

Hi chaps,

Thank you very much for all the responses.

Nerodevil: it's a clean install and none of Dell's usual bloatware is install. It has a clean install of Win7 and the necessary drivers. Everything is installed properly and I checked everything in device manager to ensure there aren't any problems.

Howling wolves: haha the only way to remove all the bloatware is do a clean install. I actually asked Dell if they will ship the system without installing anything but they said they can't do it on consumer machines, too much headaches.

Seavixen: Dell sent me a brand new system as a result and also because there were a bunch of dead pixels on the screen (about 10 of them). Having said that, I've the system for about three weeks and given that there aren't any games or heavy multimedia items installed, I would assume the drive should be indexed by now. I'm only using about 100 gigs out of 750 so far.

Dbone: that's certainly very familiar to what I'm experiencing. The fan is a bit trigger happy. It isn't going full blast all the time but I'm surprise when it comes up while reading the news online, etc. That's something that my Inspiron never did unless I had a few videos running together and that's with on-board graphics. In fact, I have FF6 open right now and as I'm typing this the fan keeps coming on and off with nothing else open. I realize it's a faster quad chip compared to the other one (Core 2 Duo) but still, I must say it's annoying hearing it come on for the most mundane of tasks.

cluberti: the boot time is actually very good, it's once Win7 loads that it lags. For example, if I move the mouse very rapidly across the screen, you can easily tell it's lagging, it's as if something is running in the background. Another problem is with Thunderbird 6. Whenever it loads, if I want to scroll from one email to another, it takes like a second and a half. With the other system as well as my XPS desktop, it's instant. FF6 exhibits a similar behaviour and even MS word is not as smooth as it should be in contrast to how it runs on the other systems.

python134r: I did that and it reported that my display options weren't optimized. So I did what it suggested and it hasn't really changed anything. Besides, I'll be really pissed if I have to disable the Aero interface to get around this problem. As you said, this system has more than plenty of resources to accommodate it without any issues. The drivers are all up to date and downloaded from Dell's website.

slurp: I checked out out the benchmark for the hard drive. It's a WD Scorpio black 750 gigs drive 7200 rpms. The results indicated I should be seeing better performance than even my Inspiron which has a Seagate 5400 rpms drive.

 

[slurp812]

Man, something is up, but its hard to say. Some weird driver issue possibly. Good luck...

 

[cluberti]

cluberti: the boot time is actually very good, it's once Win7 loads that it lags. For example, if I move the mouse very rapidly across the screen, you can easily tell it's lagging, it's as if something is running in the background. Another problem is with Thunderbird 6. Whenever it loads, if I want to scroll from one email to another, it takes like a second and a half. With the other system as well as my XPS desktop, it's instant. FF6 exhibits a similar behaviour and even MS word is not as smooth as it should be in contrast to how it runs on the other systems.

Sounds almost like potential interrupt problems from a driver (and given the behavior, it does seem potentially video or network-related). There are ways to determine what is causing this, but you'd need to install the Windows Performance Toolkit (as per my linked tutorial above) and run an xperf command to trace while the issue is occurring. If you're willing, we can do that.

 

[lior]

cluberti: the boot time is actually very good, it's once Win7 loads that it lags. For example, if I move the mouse very rapidly across the screen, you can easily tell it's lagging, it's as if something is running in the background. Another problem is with Thunderbird 6. Whenever it loads, if I want to scroll from one email to another, it takes like a second and a half. With the other system as well as my XPS desktop, it's instant. FF6 exhibits a similar behaviour and even MS word is not as smooth as it should be in contrast to how it runs on the other systems.

Sounds almost like potential interrupt problems from a driver (and given the behavior, it does seem potentially video or network-related). There are ways to determine what is causing this, but you'd need to install the Windows Performance Toolkit (as per my linked tutorial above) and run an xperf command to trace while the issue is occurring. If you're willing, we can do that.

Let's do it!! Where can I download the tutorial and kit?

 

[The Howling Wolves]

cluberti: the boot time is actually very good, it's once Win7 loads that it lags. For example, if I move the mouse very rapidly across the screen, you can easily tell it's lagging, it's as if something is running in the background. Another problem is with Thunderbird 6. Whenever it loads, if I want to scroll from one email to another, it takes like a second and a half. With the other system as well as my XPS desktop, it's instant. FF6 exhibits a similar behaviour and even MS word is not as smooth as it should be in contrast to how it runs on the other systems.

Sounds almost like potential interrupt problems from a driver (and given the behavior, it does seem potentially video or network-related). There are ways to determine what is causing this, but you'd need to install the Windows Performance Toolkit (as per my linked tutorial above) and run an xperf command to trace while the issue is occurring. If you're willing, we can do that.

Let's do it!! Where can I download the tutorial and kit?

READ the following tutorial several times as it is not for the weak at heart.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...up-shutdown-sleep-hibernate-reboot-trace.html

Proceed with caution.

 

[lior]

Thank you sir!

 

[jramjee]

Hi Lior, I have almost exactly the same problem as you (Dell Inspiron 17 5748). Did you figure out what was causing it on your end?

I've raised my issue on the DELL forum as well: Inspiron 17 5748 - sluggish! - Laptop General Hardware Forum - Laptop - Dell Community

 

[gregrocker]

Work through the steps to Clean Up Factory Bloatware.

Most tech enthusiasts would never run the factory preinstall larded with bloatware and duplicate utiltiies which interfere with better versions built into win7. Consider doing a Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 which will result in and maintain a perfect install. Otherwise you'll never even experience Win7 native performance on a factory install.