[mcharley94]

Hey Guys and Gals,

Any help you could give me would be much appreciated as I am at my wits end on this one.

I am working on a Dell Dimension B110 for a family member. It has a Celeron D processor with 512 Meg RAM sharing it with video. My niece was watching a DVD and out of no where POOF it went black and would no longer even boot. Sounding like a HD issue I placed an old HD I had in the system to confirm it was and it booted so I ordered a new Maxtor ATA 133 HD to replace the old one that was shot.

Upon receiving the new HD I installed it in the machine and slapped in an XP disk and away she went per usual, or so I thought. My niece cannot find the driver disk that came with the system so I was going to download what I needed once it was up and running.

Here's my problem...straight out of the gate the system has run slower than a snail on hot tar on a summers day. It took over 48 hours just to install the OS, file by file, and now that it is up and running it is still running like 10-20X slower than normal. It is not choppy like one would expect were it inundated with spyware, but just sloooooowwww.

I was thinking maybe a RAID Controller, but all seems well in the device manager short of needing the video, sound, modem, wireless network card drivers. I was able to install the Ethernet driver from a floppy which I obtained from Dell and can now gain access on line, but I cannot get windows update to show me any hardware or driver updates, I get an error message after a long wait of searching for any updates and never get that far.

The motherboard has a USR (us robotics) insignia on it followed by E210882.
Next to that is a sticker with "DS/N CN-OWF887-70821-63G-01CB C/O CN"
There is also a Dell sticker on it with "REV. AOO"

Any ideas what the problem might be? I am stumped on this one.

[mcharley94]

BTW, thinking the new HD I got might have been bad I took it out and placed an old 13 gig I know is good and use as a tester in its place. I then quick formatted it and started to load XP on that drive and I got the same results....sloooowww so I am guessing it is not the results of a bad HD.

Thank you for any input

[Rich-M]

I would replace the power supply first and if that doesn't do it the motherboard is shot.

[mcharley94]

The power supply....seriously? I don't mean that like I'm questioning your expertise, enlighten me if you will I would love learn something new. Could the power supply supply power to the CD ROM, HD and MB steadily like it appears to be doing and still be faulty? Like in what way, lacking in voltage or something? In my limited experience when a power supply goes there is no power whatsoever.

Again, I am not saying you are wrong...far be it for me to make that statement when I am self taught with no formal training, but in the 13 or so years I have been tinkering with these things I have never come across a bad power supply that still put out power.

[mcharley94]

Thank You for the reply BTW Rich, it is appreciated.

[Rich-M]

Dell like all pc makers supplies exactly the wattage needed for system with nothing to spare. As the unit ages, even the same requirement with no additions eventually puts a strain on the system power supply and they eventually take a dump. yes you can have everything working, but just more slowly with a weakening power supply. But just as easily you have a bad board which if you look at the capacitors for either bulging or leakage of fluid, you can sometimes in the making.
The other thing I would look at is the ide controllers in Control panel, System, Device Manager to make sure the drives are enabled in ultra dma and not slower pio mode. This sounds really weird to take that long to accomplish tasks.

[mcharley94]

Originally Posted by Rich-M

This sounds really weird to take that long to accomplish tasks.

I agree, I have never experienced this before. It reminded me of installing WIN 98 without smartdrv.exe. The odd thing is the mouse seems unaffected by the whole thing and everything looks normal when idle.

I am going to try your suggestions starting with the IDE controller first followed by replacing the power supply as this is a cheap fix for a low end system like this, but if that doesn't do it and no other ideas come up I think it will end up in the parts pile.

Thanks Rich for your help

[Rich-M]

Welcome please keep us posted here...

[mcharley94]

well there isn't much to update just yet but I shall do this when I find something out. I am presently trying to install EVEREST to determine temps, voltage values and manufacturers of the MB and such to update drivers before I sink any more $ into this thing, but being it is so slooooooo it is taking all in a day just to get to the websites and pull the downloads. Remember 14000 kbs ? I think it is slower than that in modern day circumstances

[Lurker1]

Well if its that slow you should probably check in the bios to be sure that the processor speed is set to normal not compatable. Heres a link to the manual. You should get any drivers you need from the Dell website also.

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...B110/index.htm

[mcharley94]

Thanks Lurker, thats where I'm at right now.

I have downloaded an updated BIOS and driver for the chipset from Dell as well as EVERLAST. I just finished flashing the BIOS and am now going to check the stats, both what you suggest, as well as the power supply outputs and processor temps.

And yes it is that slow....this is unreal. If it were not for the fact that everything works like it should accept for the speed of the machine itself I would toss it in the bin right now, but I am getting no errors and it is able to accomplish every task I ask of it...just at a snails pace which leaves me hope that eventually I will cross that hurdle eventually once we determine where it is.

I think it is a matter of principle at this point. I have yet to be beat when it comes to diagnosing and repairing a system that shows any glimmer of salvage and I do not want to claim defeat just yet. I am hoping with determination and the help of you folks here that I remain undefeated

[mcharley94]

Rich, Lurker, thank you for your input.

Lurker, you were spot on. It was in the BIOS...CPU Speed was set to Compatible, so I switched it and that did the trick.

Again, thanks for your help, you have a great forum here