- Jun 24, 2001
- 24,195
- 857
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My sister's Vista Home Premium laptop (a Gateway MT3705 w/ Pentium Dual-Core T2060 CPU) has had performance issues ever since my brother and I got it for her at the Vista launch.
BEGIN MOSTLY IRRELEVANT CRAP THAT IS USEFUL FOR USERS OF THE SAME LAPTOP
First, it would choke in Media Center using the included Microsoft codec *despite* having a dual-core CPU, but a switch to the (also included) Cyberlink one using a utility I found online worked like a charm (why didn't Gateway do this?!). DVDs would never play in Media Player and the Microsoft decoder utility listed it as MCE compatible and also indicated not Media Player compatible. Other than an arbitrary license limitation, I didn't see how it could cupport one and not the other, considering that they were the same application, but it still meant "mystery solved" as far as that was concerned. Later, I found that it couldn't play subscription DRM music from SpiralFrog even though it could still sync to a player that could, so I dug deep in the SpiralFrog Vista help and found that "some" Vista machines had the ability to play DRM tracks turned off in the registry. Sure enough, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Audio "DisableProtectedAudioDG" was set to "1" (TRUE). Setting it to "0" and restarting fixed both the subscription music and the DVD playback issue in Windows Media Player. Both would act as if the media was of an unsupported file type before. SpiralFrog insinuated that some other application had disabled the ability to play DRM in WMP11, and I can only finger the DVD codec... I mean, how else can it "support" one version of Media Player (MCE) and not the other (WMP)?
END MOSTLY IRRELEVANT CRAP THAT IS USEFUL FOR USERS OF THE SAME LAPTOP
Now, after all this, it still performs like ass where windows and applications take several seconds to become responsive despite low CPU usage and adequate disc performance. Memory usage is also low, but it only cost $50 for 2GB Crucial DDR2 667MHz memory and it behaves as if that is what it needs. Perhaps Vista's background loading of applications into memory doesn't reflect in memory usage and doubling it from 1GB to 2GB will give it plenty of room to work with.
So I throw in the 2GB of memory and boot Windows. I was checking the System Properties and getting ready to re-evaluate the "Experience" score when I had to just let the system catch up and finish loading/booting (slow as molasses). While I was checking a Gateway "BigFix" message (just a registration notification due to a recent system restoration), Aero just disappeared and I was staring at a blank blue desktop. Upon the next boot, it did the same thing as soon as the "Experience" evaluation checked memory (as if I didn't have enough reason to suspect the memory upgrade
). Thinking that the BIOS was stupid enough to use the previous module's timings and SPD settings if I didn't enter CMOS setup and change them, I went in, verified "by SPD" and saved settings.
After booting again, the memory test didn't crash it and I never saw the blue desktop again. Instead, 10+ minutes in and Explorer and Internet Explorer and other processes would randomly "stop working" (according to Windows). Considering that the problem did not go away, I have no idea what made them get less severe.
I began to think that perhaps selecting "by SPD" was running the module faster than the FSB and faster than the chipset supports just because the module supports it as specified in the SPD. I then verified that the CPU's supported FSB was 133MHz/533FSB and set memory to "sync" in the CMOS setup. Other than the fact that things seem to be taking longer and longer to crash and stop, there was no change. Explorer and other processes were still crashing left and right after a little usage.
I then downloaded Memtest86+ and ran it all night: No errors. None. After booting this morning, the crashes seem to have gone away (haven't crashed it the last 2hrs of intensive use). Can a burn-in like Memtest86+ actually fix instabilities?! What explanation do I have for the previous instability? Loose memory? I follow a strict troubleshooting code so if I don't know what has happened and why, it's going to bug me forever.
BEGIN MOSTLY IRRELEVANT CRAP THAT IS USEFUL FOR USERS OF THE SAME LAPTOP
First, it would choke in Media Center using the included Microsoft codec *despite* having a dual-core CPU, but a switch to the (also included) Cyberlink one using a utility I found online worked like a charm (why didn't Gateway do this?!). DVDs would never play in Media Player and the Microsoft decoder utility listed it as MCE compatible and also indicated not Media Player compatible. Other than an arbitrary license limitation, I didn't see how it could cupport one and not the other, considering that they were the same application, but it still meant "mystery solved" as far as that was concerned. Later, I found that it couldn't play subscription DRM music from SpiralFrog even though it could still sync to a player that could, so I dug deep in the SpiralFrog Vista help and found that "some" Vista machines had the ability to play DRM tracks turned off in the registry. Sure enough, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Audio "DisableProtectedAudioDG" was set to "1" (TRUE). Setting it to "0" and restarting fixed both the subscription music and the DVD playback issue in Windows Media Player. Both would act as if the media was of an unsupported file type before. SpiralFrog insinuated that some other application had disabled the ability to play DRM in WMP11, and I can only finger the DVD codec... I mean, how else can it "support" one version of Media Player (MCE) and not the other (WMP)?
END MOSTLY IRRELEVANT CRAP THAT IS USEFUL FOR USERS OF THE SAME LAPTOP
Now, after all this, it still performs like ass where windows and applications take several seconds to become responsive despite low CPU usage and adequate disc performance. Memory usage is also low, but it only cost $50 for 2GB Crucial DDR2 667MHz memory and it behaves as if that is what it needs. Perhaps Vista's background loading of applications into memory doesn't reflect in memory usage and doubling it from 1GB to 2GB will give it plenty of room to work with.
So I throw in the 2GB of memory and boot Windows. I was checking the System Properties and getting ready to re-evaluate the "Experience" score when I had to just let the system catch up and finish loading/booting (slow as molasses). While I was checking a Gateway "BigFix" message (just a registration notification due to a recent system restoration), Aero just disappeared and I was staring at a blank blue desktop. Upon the next boot, it did the same thing as soon as the "Experience" evaluation checked memory (as if I didn't have enough reason to suspect the memory upgrade
). Thinking that the BIOS was stupid enough to use the previous module's timings and SPD settings if I didn't enter CMOS setup and change them, I went in, verified "by SPD" and saved settings.After booting again, the memory test didn't crash it and I never saw the blue desktop again. Instead, 10+ minutes in and Explorer and Internet Explorer and other processes would randomly "stop working" (according to Windows). Considering that the problem did not go away, I have no idea what made them get less severe.
I began to think that perhaps selecting "by SPD" was running the module faster than the FSB and faster than the chipset supports just because the module supports it as specified in the SPD. I then verified that the CPU's supported FSB was 133MHz/533FSB and set memory to "sync" in the CMOS setup. Other than the fact that things seem to be taking longer and longer to crash and stop, there was no change. Explorer and other processes were still crashing left and right after a little usage.
I then downloaded Memtest86+ and ran it all night: No errors. None. After booting this morning, the crashes seem to have gone away (haven't crashed it the last 2hrs of intensive use). Can a burn-in like Memtest86+ actually fix instabilities?! What explanation do I have for the previous instability? Loose memory? I follow a strict troubleshooting code so if I don't know what has happened and why, it's going to bug me forever.
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