Is it me or is it Dell?

[squid]

Hi everyone,

 

I recently performed a clean installation of Windows 2000 on my Dell laptop and noticed that everything works much faster (i.e. boot-up, loading applications, working in photoshop, etc.) All hardware configuration remains unchanged. I couldn't believe it was the same machine afterwards. Has anyone had similar experiences on their Dell machines or knows why?

 

Thanks,

 

Squid

[Jeff Mottle]

This is not unique to just Dell machines. All workstations need to be rebuilt, as you have done, about every 6 months. That's my experience anyway. If you install a lot of applications and then uninstall and change system configurations, over time your system does and will get slower. If I new why I think I'd be a very rich man. I've experienced the same thing and rebuild my systems all the time.

[squid]

Hi,

 

I probably need to re-install some of the other machines here, thanks for the tip!

 

Is it a good idea when re-install the OS after receiving a new computer to get some more performance out of the computer or is the performance gain engligible?

 

Squid

[Greg Hess]

All prebuilt computers are completely loaded with tons of crap you don't need. Dell puts all these crap applications on, with all their crap startup and spyware shit and just loads down a fast machine with so much smut, that it does the pocket book harm to just buy one and use it at its default settings.

 

One of the first things I do upon getting a computer at work (either one thats been used, or new) is backup all the files (cause even though people tell you they did, they always miss tons of stuff) then wipe the drive.

 

If the drive is less then 40 gigs, I replace it with a newer model WD for an instant performance boost. I then go through and flash and update every piece of hardware before even considering to install the os.

 

I check the bios manuals and allocate all the devices to not share any irq's in hardware. I fiddle with the bios settings to disable anything not in use, and to maximum memory bandwidth and cpu throughput. Then I start the hardware level memory testing, and once thats all verified I install win2k, not across the network, but locally from a cd.

 

Alot of admin's will use the same generic install for win2k on all machines, which though useful, doesn't take into account all computers are usually fundamentally differnet. This of course means sometimes drivers are installed that aren't necessary, allocated files are null and void, and names might be duplicated. All little things that can degrade performance over time.

 

Other things to do...while installing apps, always do custom installs, even with stuff like winzip, uncheck everything you don't use. This makes a huge difference. Run apps like adaware and regcleaner, control services and startup items. Tons of stuff to tweak.

 

As for rebuilding workstations...I'd say yearly if your maintaining it and its Nt4 or win2k. With 98, about every 6 months, with ME's self destructive capabilities every 2-3.

 

Of course, if your using windows ME, you should do yourself a favor and just quit the industry now.

 

[Greg Hess]

Ghost, Partion Magic, Spinrite, and File Restorer Pro are my admin's toolkit...that and a little vm linux 3.5 floppy which can break through microsoft's SAM encryption. (For when people forget their pwd)

 

Actually on all new workstations I'm following a new method of redundancy....

 

On normal systems, I'd either get a promise TX4 100 Raid card, or get a mboard with it built in (like the abit BD7 II-Raid) and setup a Raid 1 (Mirror array) internally to the machine. The price difference is so utterly small (like 120 if the raid is on the mboard, around 200 if not) and the peace of mind is priceless.

 

If you don't know what raid 1 does....it basically prevents catastrophic data failure due to harddrive loss by duplicating all the data on a second drive. Write performance is about 1-2% less then a single drive, but read performance is doubled (both drive heads search the data), and access time is reduced to near scsi levels.

 

(Current raid rigs are using WD800JB 8 meg cache 80 gig 7200 rpm Westerndigitals, about 88 megs/sec buffered read)

 

On machines requiring additional protection, I install the second raid drive as a 5.25 external drive, and purchase a 3rd drive that I can swap back and forth. This way I can force a raid failure on a monthly basis and reclone the drive, capturing the entire setup as it was at the time of cloning on the extra external drive.

 

Its already saved a prof's ass once .

 

[ September 09, 2002, 10:37 AM: Message edited by: Greg Hess ]

[bigcahunak]

Of course, if your using windows ME, you should do yourself a favor and just quit the industry now.

hehe

 

every word is true.

Just to add to Gregs lesson here...

In case you are not an admin, and you don't enjoy installing machines all the time, and in case you tweak all your programs, toolbars, plugins scripts, sortcuts, themes... and so on...

Just in case all the above takes you about a full day to get it install right the way you like it, than use Ghost.

Finish installing your machine exactly the way you want it, Set up everything to be ready to work the way you want, except for your files (working files). Than, just ghost the whole HDD to a ghost image. Later on, if you have a crash, a disk damage, serious virus damage or jsut your system got slow due to too many demos and stuff, throw the image back on to your hard drive, and you got yourself the whole installation, customized to your own hardware and working habits within 10 minutes of work.

 

Don't know how big is your hard drive, but in case of a laptop, I would recommend partitioning the hard drive to a system partition and a storage one. That way you save yourself a lot of time finding all your files to backup before throwing the old image back to the system partition.

 

Good luck.

Isaac.

[squid]

big thanks for pointing out all the fixes!

 

here's the spec. for my laptop:

 

inspiron 4000

850mhz p3

256mb ram

10 gig hard drive

 

i partition the hd into two drives. one for data and the other for programs. i use this laptop primarily for presentation with lcd projector. i only have a few prgrams installed on this laptop for presentation (not too much real work done on this computer.)

 

but looks like i have to re-install w2k on the other dell here. i'll post a viz. radiosity bench. before & after for those who might be interested in the performance difference.

 

thanks,

 

squid

 

since installing w2k, i haven't had any performance or stability issues in contrast to the previous os on this laptop (win98se) i am really glad to be rid of win98 now that i've seen how fast and stable this computer is now.