It's running really slowly. So slow that its unusable right from the very start. I check the resource monitor and the CPU never goes above 30% utilization or 0.48GHz. It's like its been capped at 30%, it goes below, but never above. I'd have expected it to be working a lot harder than that.
At the bottom of the Performance tab there is a button to Open Resource Monitor. From here I found that Maximum Frequency was capped at 30%. (This should instead be showing at about 100%). This defines the maximum speed percentage which Windows will allow the CPU to run at.
I finally found that I needed to prevent the "intelppm" service from starting (and subsequently malfunctioning), using the registry. This may especially be the case when slowness occurs on Laptops which are currently plugged in.
Note: I noticed that all the battery settings for "Pressing the Power Button", "Pressing the Sleep button" and "Closing the lid" were set to SLEEP. So I guess that every day when the client went home, he closed the lid and put it in his laptop bag. This totally drained the battery, and because the setting was enabled to use Battery Saving when power dips below 20%, every morning the laptop would be SUPER slow.
Its also possible that the computer is bottlenecked (low memory, slow drive?) and thus is spending a lot of time waiting on IO so the CPU is down-clocked. In that case, you would want to remove the IO bottleneck. You may want to download specific software designed to max out the CPU but use little other resources to test this - Software like "Prime95" would help here - you need to ensure the number of threads you run it on is at least equal to the number of CPU cores you have.
I have an XPS Gen III (little more than 6 years old), but besides being old I haven't had any problems with it. However, yesterday when I turned it on, after 2 seconds the only thing that happened was the fan turned on full blast after about 2s. There was no display on the monitor and no beeps from the board. Also, there was nothing significant to my knowledge that would have caused this (i.e. no power surge).
From what I have gathered, it's either the mobo, CPU, PSU or video card. I removed all the RAM, booted and nothing changed - no beeps still. I tried jumping the CMOS, no change. I have reseated most of the components and no change.
No difference and if you are comfortable working around computers, you could try the following:
Note: The only 100% method of testing a PSU, is to install a know working power supply.
Unplug the cord from the power supply, hold the power button in for about 15/20 seconds, open the case, unplug the 24-pin power connector from the motherboard and jump the Green wire to one of the Black wires, reconnect the power cord and power the system on, if power supply's fan and the hard drive run, then the PSU should be good.
Note: Do not remove any wires from the plug, use a small piece of wire or a paper clip as a jumper.
Power supply checks out and the system still does not work, again remove the power cord, hold the power button in for several seconds to discharge the residue power, reconnect the 24-pin connector to the motherboard.
Remove all the PCI cards, the video card [if applicable], memory, all peripherals, disconnect the data and power cables to all the drives, check that the front panel cable is connected to motherboard, with nothing else connected to the system, reconnect the power cable and power the system on.
If you do not get any beep codes and/or there is no change in the diagnostic lights, it would appear that the motherboard and/or the processor has died.
Bev.
Now, I am slightly colorblind, but the power button appeared to be a solid amber. Aside from that, I was unable to locate the diagnostic lights last night ( I believe I couldn't find them last time I looked when I had a very simple problem 5 years ago).
I assume they wouldn't really be hidden, but I could not find them on the exterior of the case. I doubt I had overlooked them as my room was pretty dark and any lights would have stood out pretty well. Should I be looking inside the case for these lights, or is it possible my model for some strange reason does not include them?
First of all I would like to thank you for all your help on this issue. I wasn't sure how long it would take to get replies or how much they would help and you've been extremely helpful for both of those.
I finally got around to testing those other things last night and unfortunately there was no change. I haven't looked around and prices and availability for replacing my motherboard and/or processor, but I figure it wouldn't be worth buying new ones for an 6+ year old system. Thanks again for all your help.
Sorry to hear that and personally, like you, I would place the money the repairs cost, towards buying a new system with Windows 7, as the XPS G3 has a lot of Dell proprietary parts, especially the power supply.
Two weeks ago, I started the computer up, and got only a series of beeps, I believe 1-3-2, the code indicating a memory problem. After a couple of tries, the computer started up correctly, and I immediately did a full external backup of everything just in case. It was time to do that anyway, my system was due for its yearly reformat. :)
So, after the backup competed, I shut down the computer with the intention of cleaning out the dust that collects in the video card. After this, the computer began refusing to start, giving me a full blast from the fans. I reseated the ram modules and video card several times, and managed to get it to start once or twice before it finally stopped booting.
Now the kicker.. I went away for the past two weeks on business, and just returned tonight.. and now it works again (for the moment, no idea if it would start again). It did start up with beeps at first, but after one or two tries, it booted fine, and I'm posting from it now. Is there any way to diagnose more directly what might be wrong, or even fix it? The errors seem to indicate a memory or maybe video card problem, but I imagine fixing this system up may be a lost cause since it's so old. I don't plan on spending a bunch of money on it, but I'm going to miss WinXP if I need to get an entirely new desktop, so I'd like to keep it useable if I can.
This thing is over 6 years old now, so I kind of expect the hardware to be shot, but my hard drives seem to be fine, so I'll probably be migrating them directly to a new system when I get one. In the meantime I'm surviving on my laptop, which is only a year old.
I'm not worried about data loss, since I just backed up, and the hard drives still seem to be perfectly fine, but if it can be fixed by something like a new video card or ram, I wouldn't mind shelling out a few bucks to get it running, even with how old it is.
Mine is a XPS Gen 4. I went away on vacation for 10 days and shut my computer down, came home and now it won't start up. Turn it on, light says solid green and fan runs like crazy. Lights on back suggest video card, a & c are amber, b & d are green. So, from what I'm reading here going to remove and then put back in the video card. Right??
I've been noticing some issues with my MacBook for a while now. Firstly, kernel_task sometimes takes over extreme amounts of CPU and the whole computer starts acting slow even when I'm not using it for any heavy tasks.
I got up to check it out and the bottom plate was pretty hot and fans still going at 100%. I opened the lid and I couldn't get it to turn on. The screen would not show anything no matter how long I waited and how many keys I pressed.
The first thing I'd do is a NVRAM and SMC reset (in that order). Before following the steps below, ensure you have no external hardware connected and that you're using the built-in keyboard.
Note: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.
After I came back from a month long trip, i tried opening my laptop as usual and it asked me to unlock with a code which i thought was the standard practice, but after i closed it and opened it again it didn't automatically unlock using my finger print ID instead i had to click on the enter password and then type the password. I thought it's a bug and I shut down the machine completely and restart it and went through the same process but it still didn't work. I looked for updates, installed them, restart the machine and it still didn't work. It hasn't worked since then. I erased all the fingerprints and tried installing them again and it doesn't register.
I Have tried everything to get my MacBook Pro M2 touch ID to work. What I did discover is that if I use the bottom of my palm (where my thumb is) and let it touch the area beside the trackpad, then touch the ID with my index finger - It works every time. Plus this worked for my wife's MacBook as well! Don't know why it works, it just does - every time. Hope it works for you too.
Yes!! omg this totally works. I was having the same problem - touchid worked maybe 1/3rd of the time. Then I used your approach of resting my palm at the bottom of my thumb next to the trackpad, then use touchid, and it works EVERY TIME now. Magic.
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