I am helping a neighbor with a dell 15 laptop. The light that signifies hard disk activity is constantly on. I have had it on for multiple hours and cannot see what is running to cause this.
According to service tag number 113RFW1, that laptop is this Dell Inspiron 15 3521 model.
It was purchased in January 2013 in the U.S.A. and came with Windows 8 64-bit.
I've never owned or used Windows 8/8.1, so I'm not familiar with its settings and file system.
Besides that laptop's hard drive light showing almost constant disk activity, is it running alright?
We have no way of knowing what's installed in it and how many running processes it has, so there can be any number of reasons for that "annoyance".
OK, I downloaded process explorer and discovered that mcCSPSserverhost is running continuously at 34 or 35 percent CPU usage. I tried to suspend it but it won't allow that. there are several other mcafee elements running as well. I am going to try to shut the total process.
OK, I tried to find a way to shut Mcafee down but have not found the switch. I am a Win 7 guy and this system is win 10. I am having trouble finding things that are obvious in win 7.
Unfortunately connecting to the internet is another problem. My Mac works and my Dell 6700 laptop works but this Insperion 15 cannot find the router and I have poked around all over the place and cannot get it to locate the router and connect. Win 7 was easy, win 10 is not so easy, so far.
OK, I downloaded the program on another machine and transferred it to a stick and put it on the Dell 15 and it ran. I copied it and tried to paste it to a file so I could transfer it to the stick and load it on the Mac and send it. Paste is not one of the options available when I right click on the new folder! I tried to paste it directly to the stick and paste is not an option. Here is the info typed in .
OS WIN 10 HOME 64 BIT
PROCESSOR INTEL PENTIUM CPU 2117U 2 1.80GHZ INTEL64 FAMILY 6
MODEL 58 STEPPING 9
PROCESSOR COUNT 2
RAM 3965 MB
GRAPHICS CARD INTEL(R) HD GRAPHICS, 2046MB
HADRIVEC TOTAL 467402MB FREE 387062
MOTHERBOARD DELL ONMD5Y
ANTIVIRSU WINDOWS DEFENDER DISABLED.
That Intel Pentium 2117U 1.80 GHz dual core processor has an average benchmark score of only 1658, so it's not going to give that laptop "jackrabbit" speed and performance.
It has only 4 GB of RAM, and a good part of it is probably being used by its integrated Intel graphics, so that's also going to affect speed and performance.
It supports up to 16 GB of RAM, so there's the option to add more.
It's running a 64-bit version of Windows 10, so I would add another 4 GB and run it with 8 GB.
I would uninstall McAfee, then use its removal tool(MCPR.exe) to get rid of the leftover "debris" from the uninstall, then enable and use the Windows 10 built-in antivirus program, Windows Defender.
Try that first, then see how that laptop runs.
I would still add another 4 GB of RAM to it.
You'd be surprised how memory-hungry some programs and browsers and websites have gotten.
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