Help with Dell Hell please

[tonysmith1929]

:partytimeYet another friend has a problem.He does a lot of the things we no longer discuss. Recently encoding with any of the 3 available programs has taken 70 minutes for a normal 90 min video, often completely shutting down half way through.
Its so slow you can watch at nearly normal play speed via the preview window.
Everything else goes sooooo slow, even keyboard you have to hold key down for a least one second per letter !!!!
This machine is not, and never has been connected to the web. Could possibly have got a virus from dvds/cds he gets from lots of friends.
CPU heatsink gets VERY hot, too hot for fingers, heatsink is very big, silly little fan mounted in case, not normal fitting as I know it.
Cant say what model Dell it is, but 2.4 ghertz processor, only 512mb ram (woopy) and was always a pretty useless thing,but now unuseable.
Any ideas from our experts ?????? (apart from dump it please ) Thanks Hope this not to near banned subjects....

[atifsh]

check if cpu usage going 100 % all time. if not
safest and time saving option..... reinstall frm scratch.
[finding problem, tring to fix, may consume more time.]

[tonysmith1929]

CPU usage is mostly around 75%. Everest does not show any temps apart from HD, presume no sensors on a Dell board ? Would love to reinstall cos the whole b....y thing is a mess, but no backup partition or disc with it, unless Dell will part with one (printer and scanner came with it as a bundle,could probably get drivers for them). Dont think its ever had a defrag, but at moment it would take weeks !!!!
Thanks for the thought.....

[NightTran]

Dell will send you just have to call them

[MilesAhead]

One thing you could try is delete a lot of large files and do a quickie defrag with Auslogics or JkDefrag. If you use JkDefrag just select analyze and defrag, not optimize. Either app should minimize the defrag time. Then when you use the machine you can get a feel if that is part of the problem. If it seems just as slow then maybe you have a hardware conflict, or tons of spyware, or some settings in Device Manager are hosed or something. If it improves then maybe it's swapping like crazy due to the fragmentation.

[MilesAhead]

Oh yeah, another thing you might look for is check the HD. If it's doing retries to read the data it could be ready to die. Something like HD Tune should be good enough to check it.

[NightTran]

haft gig of a ram seem little

[tonysmith1929]

Thanks to all of you for very prompt replies. Will have another go at it over the weekend,probably format and start over. Thanks again......

[locoeng]

I wouldn't reformat just yet as it sounds like a heat issue. Are the fans actually spinning inside the case? Cleared out all the dust bunnies? If you have a room fan you could maybe point it into the open case while trying to do another encode project and see if you get the same shutdown etc.

[Chewy]

check and make sure that fan mounted under the cpu heatsink hood is clean and running properly, my dimension 2.4 Ghz P4 ran a little hot but the cooling design was actually superior to standard cooling(as long as you are intaking cool air?)

chewy with a dell?

it was given to me in a trade

[tonysmith1929]

Does that heatsink hood come off easily Chewey???
Doesnt seem much airflow but cant see fan.

And thanks to Atfish for PM.....will try Dell first for disc.....Cheers

[doctorhardware]

One thing with the Dell recovery disk, don't count on having all the correct drivers. Dell is notorious for not including all the drivers or having the incorrect drivers.:deadhorse