# New acer laptop running slow



## Graham_07 (28 Feb 2008)

A friend of my wife's recently bought an Acer laptop. It's a 1.73Ghz running Vista basic. Her main use would be photos & correspondence. No internet use as yet. Ever since the start it's been slow. She dropped it in to me to look and running task manager I can't see a huge number of applications running but the performance meter is constantly running at between 50 to 100 % CPU usage as if there something eating up the resources. It's had little use & nothing added. The retailer where she bought it sisn't seem to have any clue when she asked him. Anyone got ideas as to how might speed it up?


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## Towger (28 Feb 2008)

Can you see what processes are running and their individual CPU utilisation?
Can you see that speed the CPU is actually running at, if it over heating it will throttle down to a couple of hundred Mhz. A badly fitted heatsink can cause it to overheat with in seconds of switch on.
How much memory does it think it has?
Failing that reinstall a clean copy of Vista or XP. You could also google backround indexing under Vista and check it first.


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## Dearg Doom (28 Feb 2008)

How much memory is installed? My minimum recommendation for Vista is 2GB, 1GB isn't enough and anything less is disastrous.


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## Leo (28 Feb 2008)

How much RAM is installed? I know Acer were selling laptops with Vista pre-installed with only 512meg, which really isn't enough.


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## Graham_07 (28 Feb 2008)

The main processes running seem to be 
csrss.exe ?
eNMTray.exe  described as Acer eNet Tray
Acer power management
Windows explorer
Windows defender user interface
task manager

The performance graph is constantly peaking every minute or so to 100% cpu usage then it driops again to about 5% then 34% then 100%, in a fairly rhythmic cycle as if something is cuting in every so ofen and eating up the CPU usage. TBH these parts of the PC are not my forte so I'd be reluctant to mess with it but there does seem to be something running constantly which isn't very obvious. Thanks for the help tho. This was my first view of Vista and not terribly impressed regardless of the power issue.


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## Graham_07 (28 Feb 2008)

The spec on the label is :-
celeron 530 processor
1.73Ghz, 1mb L2 cache
512 MB DDR2
80GB hdd

does the 512mb DDR2 mean what Leo said, that Vista is a disaster on it ?


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## Dearg Doom (28 Feb 2008)

> 512 MB DDR2



There you go. Vista hasn't a hope of running well with this amount of memory. The processor is old hat too and isn't really up to the job. If possible, downgrading to XP will be the cheapest option to get a workable laptop.


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## car (28 Feb 2008)

> There you go. Vista hasn't a hope of running well with this amount of memory. The processor is old hat too and isn't really up to the job. If possible, downgrading to XP will be the cheapest option to get a workable laptop.


You could get some additional memory, try www.shop4memory.com but if the CPU is causing issues as well you may be better just putting XP on or upgrading the laptop. 
Also download procexp for better process management.


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## Graham_07 (28 Feb 2008)

So it seems a brand new ( out of box at xmas 07) laptop is fitted with insufficient processing power for the basic programs pre-installed. Would that be considered "not fit for the purpose for which it was designed" I wonder under the Sale of Goods Act ? I doubt she'll be a happy camper when I tell her the news. Thanks folks.


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## Dearg Doom (28 Feb 2008)

> Would that be considered "not fit for the purpose for which it was designed" I wonder under the Sale of Goods Act ?



It is if you ask me, but I'm no legal expert. I have a customer who purchased a cheap desktop and now have the same problem. After having me look at it, they are going back to the retailer to ask that very question.

If you're not successful, you can't in fact down grade - this isn't allowed with home versions of Vista - this would have been the cheapest option had it been available to you.


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## ClubMan (28 Feb 2008)

Try booting another operating system off a live bootable _CD _image - e.g. GNU/Linux or Windows etc. If that runs relatively smoothly then you have pinpointed the problem as _Vista _on your hardware configuration.


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## Graham_07 (28 Feb 2008)

ClubMan said:


> Try booting another operating system off a live bootable _CD _image - e.g. GNU/Linux or Windows etc. If that runs relatively smoothly then you have pinpointed the problem as _Vista _on your hardware configuration.


 
Tks ClubMan, will give that a shot


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## ClubMan (28 Feb 2008)

Bear in mind that live bootable _CD _versions of an operating system will often run slower than a hard disk installation but even so this should be a useful test - e.g. if a live bootable _CD _system runs faster than your existing _Vista _installation then the problem is most likely with your _Vista _installation or due to your hardware configuration being insufficient for _Vista_.


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## soy (29 Feb 2008)

Graham_07 said:


> So it seems a brand new ( out of box at xmas 07) laptop is fitted with insufficient processing power for the basic programs pre-installed. Would that be considered "not fit for the purpose for which it was designed" I wonder under the Sale of Goods Act ? I doubt she'll be a happy camper when I tell her the news. Thanks folks.



Dissent at Microsoft over the claim 'vista capable'

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080229/microsoft_vista_price_cut.html


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