Hi all-
I'm a pretty frequent visitor to these forums though I lurk most times.
Anyhow, I've always had invaluable help from here. And rather than go thru
the frustrating walk-through a Dell tech, I thought to get your opinions with
my problems as of late. I have an XPS Gen 2 laptop (WinXP Home, 2.0ghz,
2gb RAM, 60gb 7200rpm) which has been extremely reliable for about a year.
Recently, however, I've been experiencing the following:
- Frequently get the error message saying that the power adapter is not the
right one, and to replace it with the correct adapter (though I'm using the
stock Dell adapter that came with the laptop).
- Laptop has been running extremely sluggish. While the UI has been
responding normally, apps and games have been pretty slow to response (in
some indication of this, I'm currently getting only about 35 fps in UT2004 at
1024x768).
- CPU load is always maxing out whenever an application is running. This might
be something that's normal, but I've never seen apps eat up so much CPU
before. Additionally, huge amounts of disk activity and mem as well.
Some things I tried already:
- Virus check (with a couple of different apps). Which revealed nothing -
seems to be clean as a whistle.
- Mem test (again with a couple of diff checkers). Again, seems to be fine.
- Disk defrag. I didnt think this was the cause, however, I felt that defragging
the drive would at least eliminate one factor.
Based on the above, I'm suspecting it has something to do with either the
power adapter message (and the laptop is throttling back the CPU) or, even
worse, the motherboard itself. I searched on here for issues with the power
adapter, and it seems to point in this direction (though there were no
symptoms mention like the above). I recently had Dell fix the laptop for
another prob - to which they swapped out the mobo. Hopefully if it is
mobo-related, its covered under a new warranty.
Anyway, if anyone has experienced the above, or has thoughts about what it
could be, I'm all ears (or eyes in this case).
tia,
Robs
I'm a pretty frequent visitor to these forums though I lurk most times.
Anyhow, I've always had invaluable help from here. And rather than go thru
the frustrating walk-through a Dell tech, I thought to get your opinions with
my problems as of late. I have an XPS Gen 2 laptop (WinXP Home, 2.0ghz,
2gb RAM, 60gb 7200rpm) which has been extremely reliable for about a year.
Recently, however, I've been experiencing the following:
- Frequently get the error message saying that the power adapter is not the
right one, and to replace it with the correct adapter (though I'm using the
stock Dell adapter that came with the laptop).
- Laptop has been running extremely sluggish. While the UI has been
responding normally, apps and games have been pretty slow to response (in
some indication of this, I'm currently getting only about 35 fps in UT2004 at
1024x768).
- CPU load is always maxing out whenever an application is running. This might
be something that's normal, but I've never seen apps eat up so much CPU
before. Additionally, huge amounts of disk activity and mem as well.
Some things I tried already:
- Virus check (with a couple of different apps). Which revealed nothing -
seems to be clean as a whistle.
- Mem test (again with a couple of diff checkers). Again, seems to be fine.
- Disk defrag. I didnt think this was the cause, however, I felt that defragging
the drive would at least eliminate one factor.
Based on the above, I'm suspecting it has something to do with either the
power adapter message (and the laptop is throttling back the CPU) or, even
worse, the motherboard itself. I searched on here for issues with the power
adapter, and it seems to point in this direction (though there were no
symptoms mention like the above). I recently had Dell fix the laptop for
another prob - to which they swapped out the mobo. Hopefully if it is
mobo-related, its covered under a new warranty.
Anyway, if anyone has experienced the above, or has thoughts about what it
could be, I'm all ears (or eyes in this case).
tia,
Robs
