Hi there. I have a toshiba laptop with 256mb ram and Intel Celeron processor
at 1.8Ghz. I have the following problem:

until a week ago, everything was working fine. One time I had shut the pc do
wn, and the next time I ran it, it started working very very slow. It would
take like 2-3 mins to load Internet explorer, or even to load Windows OS. I
couldn't run any program. At first, I thought it was a virus, but I am convi
nced it is not. I formatted the hard drive, used the System Recovery CDs and
reinstalled the whole system. Didn't fix anything. So, I think it is some k
ind of a hardware problem. I wish I knew what, though. What I notice in the
Task Manager is that the CPU Usage is almost 100% every time u run a simple
task (even if you just click on the Start menu button in Windows or any othe
r simple task you perform). Also, when the system is idle, the CPU usage is
fluctuating - 20-30-40-50% usage.

Could anyone please give me any idea what it might be? And, the laptop is st
ill under warranty, so do you think Toshiba will fix that for free???


Thank you.

That's very odd behaviour, but it initially sounds to me (and probably a Toshiba engineer) that it's a software problem. If you do ring up, they'll bring you through all the boring steps - that you've already done - to finally admitting it may be a hardware problem. Try upgrading the drivers too, just in case. (www.csd.toshiba.com)

But yeah I sounds to me that you've gone through all this, and you ain't at fault. Listen to see if the heat fan is blowing when you turn it on. It soulnds like a fan gone, the processor is overheating, and slows down to try and compensate. I've heard that P4s slow down up to 80%, whereas P3s just lock up. (As an aside, read www6.tomshardware.com is a fascinating article from Tom's Hardware Guide). I don't know about Celerons, but I think the latest are build on the P4 core, so your symptoms would make sense.

You could get a canister of pressurised air, and give it a blast in a air inlet, but I doubt it'll do much good.

Under warranty! Get it to them quick!
GF

Hi there, ive got a dell inspiron 5160 laptop with intel pentum 4 processor wit ht technology clocking at 2.8 ghz. its got 2mb l2 cache and has 256 mb of ram. I have got a 15gb free on my hardrive and have kept it free of all spyware and kept it defragemneted. Yet the laptop runs really slow. It takes ages to startup although ive disabled most da startup options which arent needed and sumtime.