Notebook troubles

[Acelius]

Hey all

I have an old Dell CPx, here are the specs
Pentium 3 500MHz
128MB RAM
8MB Rage Mobility
11GB HDD

Here's the problem, it takes 8 minutes for it to boot from off to fully loaded in windows 2000, which frankly, is a long time. My question is, what can I do to fix it? I should probably get another 128MB of ram, but the thing is, its pc100 ram, and hard to find, and when you do find it, its expensive.

My second option would be to load linux or BSD on it, Ive had experience with linux, but only on fast machines (2ghz+).

What would you do with this thing? I would like to try and save money, but if the best option is to get the 128, then Ill get the 128.

Thanks!

[EDIT]: I should also mention what i plan on doing with it. Just surfing the web, email, music, word processing, I have a dvd player for it, but I dont really plan on watching dvds.

 

[Wuzup101]

I just put redhat 9 on a Dell XPS system: 600mhz P3, 128mb, 20gig@7200rpm, 32mb GF2 Pro (I put that in had it laying around). It runs like a champ. I'm very happy with the systems performance, though I'm just learning linux so I haven't really tested it. I also just put XP on 2 almost identical machines (but with worse graphics) and they work fine.

Edit: reinstall windows... it should take nowhere near that amout of time to load. Both machines that I just worked on load in under a minute. Granted they are fresh installs, but 8 min is crazy.

 

[SJP0tato]

I agree with Wuzup, the first thing you should do is backup any personal files/documents, and do a format/re-install of windows. This will help you isolate the problem to either software (very likely) or hardware (less likely). Most of the time adding RAM doesn't change the flat-out performance of a machine, especially if it's something straightforward like loading the OS, or running single reasonable applications (of course this varies with gaming/rediculously small amounts of RAM/ect). Give it a shot & report back if it doesn't solve your problem.

 

[Acelius]

Thanks for the replies.

I have tried a reformat and reinstall of W2K, not much luck unfortunatly, it really hangs when loading the wireless program (for the linksys wpc54gs pcmcia wireless card) and norton, it POSTs and gets to the windows login screen rather quickly, so I was pretty sure it was windows acting silly.

Also, i mentioned that the ram was pc100, so its not too fast. The hdd is 4200 rpm, UMA66, again, not fast at all.

I mentioned I had worked with linux before. I have slackware installed on an old dell, with gnome. The thing is, linux boots to gnome incredibly fast, but its loading gnome that takes a while (for you non-linux users, gnome is the graphical part of linux), of course, its also loading extra apps like system monitors and whatnot.

I'll try another reformat and see if it changes, but I'm pretty sure its either norton and the linksys program, or just plain windows.

Thanks!

 

[Wuzup101]

It very well might be the wireless problem. I had a linksys PCI card for an older 300mhz PII desktop that absolutely refused to work). I actually couldn't boot up with the machine when the card was installed... it would just not load the OS (win98). I would say it's not norton, but hey wierder things do happen. I can tell you that I just did another reformat/reinstall today for a company on another identical pIII 600mhz machine to the one I stated above and norton was loaded (also loaded it on the other 2 machines I did) and it wasn't a problem. You could try downloading the newest drivers from linksys's site and see where that takes you.

 

[Acelius]

I did notice one thing with norton, is that it has to scan EVERYTHING. Every web page I go to, it pops up and says its scanning it, which I figured was contributing to the slowdowns. I disabled it and saw a nice bit of increase in speed, obviously at the cost of security. As for the linksys, I do have the newest drivers. The wireless has always worked, just took a while to load, are there any other wireless programs that could do this? Maybe more light-weight that linksys's driver and configuration package. I will go looking for alternate virus programs as well, I got norton with a peice of hardware or something for my desktop, and thought I would put it on the laptop, looks like that wasn't the brightest of ideas.

Thanks again for your help

[UPDATE]: I uninstalled norton and tried again, this time, the boot took just about 3:30. Pretty much goes without saying, norton took almost 5 minutes to load. I found a free virus scanner, avast, which I'm going to try now.

 

[Wuzup101]

crap... which version of norton were you using. I personally have the corporate symantic verson on both my PC and my Mac... neither cause any slowdowns... then again I'm not sure if they check the pages that I go to either. As I use my Mac a lot more than my PC now b/c it's portable... i dont really have to worry either way