Question:
Dell d420 advice needed
Anyone any experience with a Dell d420? Got one and it is taking about 10secs to load up the likes of MS Word. Have a Intel Centrino Duo 1.06 and in addition to the integrated 512mb, have an additional 512 mb. Would increasing the ram by another 512mb make a difference? Is there something up with this system? Any good places to run diagnostics? Help!!!#
Thanks
D
Answer:
Re: Dell d420 advice needed
What OS(operating System-VIsta or XP)?
Yes you want at least 1 gb of memory for both XP and Vista(some recommend 2gb for vista).
you will most defiantly notice a improvements in startup time of many apps and maybe the overall speed of laptop(it will feel faster)
Answer:
Re: Dell d420 advice needed
operating system is just xp
have 1gb of ram, if you include the d420 integrated ram and the additional 512mb. Not really sure what the difference is between integrated ram and the other 512mb. Can i add another 2gb?
Answer:
Re: Dell d420 advice needed
you can upgrade to 1.5gb. You might have only 1 slot(the only 512 is non removable-most likley soldered on the motherboard) available to upgrade so you can only do 1.5 gb(change the 512mb to a 1gb)
What version of Microsoft office do you have?
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Re: Dell d420 advice needed
I am running office xp on the system.
Thanks for all your help by the way.
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Re: Dell d420 advice needed
Any other advice would be much appreciated.
Answer:
Re: Dell d420 advice needed
Yes the motherboard has 512mb built on to the motherboard. I ordered a 2gb stick for mine but the notebook will only recognize 2GB of RAM. So even though it has 512mb on the MB + a 2GB stick..I only see 2GB in Windows. My advice is find a 1GB stick for cheap to give you a total of 1.5GB.
Are any of you experiencing some serious heat issues with your D420's? I wonder if your poor performance could be thermal throttling. Mine was running hotter then the fires of hell so I had to do some serious surgery on it just to keep it running below 70c. I am really upset with the way dell chose to cool this laptop. I took it apart and the CPU heatsink does not even make contact with the CPU(they use that crappy purple thermal spacer stuff they use on the chipsets). Never seen anything like it in all my computer building days. I had to find a piece of aluminum just the right thickness for a spacer between the CPU and heatsink. Then I lapped the aluminum spacer so it was perfectly flat on both sides and used Arctic Ceramique on both sides of the spacer. Had to rip the laptop down to its bare motherboard but at least now it runs at usable(but still un-impressive) temps. With its ultra low voltage CPU it should run colder than my other Dells. Not 25 degrees hotter!! The bottom was getting so hot that it would almost burn my leg.
Hey Dell.....they're called LAPTOPS!!!!!!!! In other words, we use these dam things on our laps.
Answer:
Re: Dell d420 advice needed
SO i need to find a 1gb stick of ram and you think that will make a difference?
Answer:
Re: Dell d420 advice needed
Maybe. It is a good place to start. You will enjoy that extra memory regardless. Maybe a fresh install would help as well.
Does it get very hot on the bottom?
Answer:
Re: Dell d420 advice needed
no it doesn't really get that hot to be honest. The notebook is not that old and there is not much software on it either. I think I am just used to working on faster machines and this appears to be that bit slower than my Pentium 4 3.00ghz Desktop and my other Dell laptop which has the core dou 1.6ghz processor. All machines have the same amount of memory 1gb. So maybe by boosting this one up to 1.5gb, some change will happen!
Fingers crossed or has anyone got a better idea?