Laptop slowdown, possible driver problem? Help please!

abearatemyparen · Feb 3, 2005, 05:18 AM

First off I have a Battalion101 from ibuypower.com, simillar to this one: http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp/store/c...r.aspx?mid=126 , Athlon 64 3000+, 1024MB RAM, etc.

I recently formated the hard drive and reinstalled Windows, ever since it's been running slowly-sort of. It takes from a few seconds to several minutes to open programs, they'll freeze for a few seconds or minutes, iTunes seems to take the longest to start but runs ok once it's open, Soulseek takes a long time as well and will barely even run, every time I've tried it's just froze completely. After a couple days of this I popped in the utilities disk and saw that two drivers weren't installed, the PCMCIA O2 Micro driver and the TouchPad driver. The TouchPad driver starts installed then gives me a "serious error" message. That's not a huge deal though, the O2 Micro driver on the other hand is I think the source of my problems. After installing it I restart, and it hasn't installed. I noticed it will install and then run o2remove.exe, I tried canceling and that stopped the installation completely, I tried moving the exe out of the driver folder, it installed fine and didn't remove it, but that didn't do anything either. Is there an alternate driver I can try, or something else that would be causing this problem? It worked fine on my last Windows install, which was from the same CD! I tried searching but terms like "ram" and "pcmcia" come up with hundreds of results for all sorts of things.

edit - I think it might be cpu slowdown. In the task manager cpu usage constantly reads 100% and SpeedswitchXP seems to think my max speed is 798Mhz I don't think the problem is with any start-up programs as the only things there are required for sound, wifi, etc. I tried reinstalling the Athlon 64 driver but that didn't help either.

edit again - Not sure what I did, but CPU usage is jumping around now, it looks like it's a high number when I first open task manager, around 80%, but will drop down to 4% then up to 15% or whatever, it jumps around, but everything is running much smoother. Unfortunately my cpu is apparently still running at 800mhz.

val_parthen · Feb 4, 2005, 05:09 AM

First off, wow, that's a sexy laptop!

Now, to the meats...
If you're running XP, it's entirely possible that your system is being compromised (viruses, spyware, adware) early on in your install.

The /best/ way to combat this is to download the Service Pack 2 network install from here and burn it to a CD.

Disconnect your ethernet cable and re-install windows.

DO NO RECONNECT YOUR ETHERNET CABLE UNTIL:
After you install windows, put the CD in the drive and run that sucker.

That'll get you to XP Service Pack 2, which will have enough updates, as well as the firewall enabled by default, to keep the bad stuff out of your system.

/then/ I'd install the drivers from that Cd you have. Hopefully it won't give you that serious error.

Once you've done that, THEN you should reconnect your ethernet cable and download all of the critical updates from http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com.

As for the processor speed... ya got me. Check your BIOS and see if there's some sort of limiter turned on accidently or something.

Good luck! Keep me informed. I'll watch this thread for ya.

Feb 3, 2005, 05:18 AM	#1
abearatemyparen DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	Laptop slowdown, possible driver problem? Help please! First off I have a Battalion101 from ibuypower.com, simillar to this one: http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp/store/c...r.aspx?mid=126 , Athlon 64 3000+, 1024MB RAM, etc. I recently formated the hard drive and reinstalled Windows, ever since it's been running slowly-sort of. It takes from a few seconds to several minutes to open programs, they'll freeze for a few seconds or minutes, iTunes seems to take the longest to start but runs ok once it's open, Soulseek takes a long time as well and will barely even run, every time I've tried it's just froze completely. After a couple days of this I popped in the utilities disk and saw that two drivers weren't installed, the PCMCIA O2 Micro driver and the TouchPad driver. The TouchPad driver starts installed then gives me a "serious error" message. That's not a huge deal though, the O2 Micro driver on the other hand is I think the source of my problems. After installing it I restart, and it hasn't installed. I noticed it will install and then run o2remove.exe, I tried canceling and that stopped the installation completely, I tried moving the exe out of the driver folder, it installed fine and didn't remove it, but that didn't do anything either. Is there an alternate driver I can try, or something else that would be causing this problem? It worked fine on my last Windows install, which was from the same CD! I tried searching but terms like "ram" and "pcmcia" come up with hundreds of results for all sorts of things. edit - I think it might be cpu slowdown. In the task manager cpu usage constantly reads 100% and SpeedswitchXP seems to think my max speed is 798Mhz I don't think the problem is with any start-up programs as the only things there are required for sound, wifi, etc. I tried reinstalling the Athlon 64 driver but that didn't help either. edit again - Not sure what I did, but CPU usage is jumping around now, it looks like it's a high number when I first open task manager, around 80%, but will drop down to 4% then up to 15% or whatever, it jumps around, but everything is running much smoother. Unfortunately my cpu is apparently still running at 800mhz. Last edited by abearatemyparen; Feb 3, 2005 at 07:56 AM.

Feb 4, 2005, 05:09 AM	#2
val_parthen DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Longmont, CO Posts: 42 Rep Power: 0	First off, wow, that's a sexy laptop! Now, to the meats... If you're running XP, it's entirely possible that your system is being compromised (viruses, spyware, adware) early on in your install. The /best/ way to combat this is to download the Service Pack 2 network install from here and burn it to a CD. Disconnect your ethernet cable and re-install windows. DO NO RECONNECT YOUR ETHERNET CABLE UNTIL: After you install windows, put the CD in the drive and run that sucker. That'll get you to XP Service Pack 2, which will have enough updates, as well as the firewall enabled by default, to keep the bad stuff out of your system. /then/ I'd install the drivers from that Cd you have. Hopefully it won't give you that serious error. Once you've done that, THEN you should reconnect your ethernet cable and download all of the critical updates from http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com. As for the processor speed... ya got me. Check your BIOS and see if there's some sort of limiter turned on accidently or something. Good luck! Keep me informed. I'll watch this thread for ya.