Medion MD9783, snails pace

[salviablue]

Is there anyway of making this hunk of plastic any faster?
I inherited this laptop from my dad after he broke it (physicaly!) and after much taking apart and putting back together (plus replacing some parts) i have managed to get the thing to work.
Now its is supposed to be running a p4 at 2GHz with 256MB RAM (I am very soon going to be fitting another 256 RAM stick, i.e. as soon as it arrives, although i dont have much faith this will make too much difference). I have benchmarked this with several different programmes and it seems to perform VERY BADLY, as in 500Mhz P3`s test better!
I have been informed that medion copmuters are rather crap, eventhough they may have good main components, everything else renders these components into rubbish.
I would like to know if anyone else knows wether this is inherent problems with medion products or just mine.

I have run several sys info programmes and everything seems to be `normal`, the CPU and memory are good, the fan works fine and the CPU runs at around 25C - 41C.

I have removed all the usual things in windows which slows things down and run some tweaks which made it perform slightly faster but still not 2gigs worth, even for a laptop!

I am sure that i have read somewhere about people de-restricting chips by drawing on them with pencil to short pins or something, but i cant seem to find any info on it (or maybe i was dreaming)?!?

Specs: (Everest)
Intel P4 @ 2000MHz (20x100)
Northwood A80532
L1 trace 12 K
L1 data 8 kb
L2 512 kb
FSB NetBurst 64 bit, real 100MHz, Effective 400MHz, 3200 MS/s
Mem BUS DDR SDRAM, 64-bit, real 133MHz, effective 267MHz, 2133 MB/s
8 bit BUS, 67MHz, 267 MHz, 267MB/s

MEM 255MB, 48% utilised
swap 617MB, 15% utilised
virt mem 873MB, 25% utilised
seimens 256MB DDR SDRAM PC2100, 64bit, 2.5,3,3,6

Intel Brookdale i845D
rev 04

ATi Radeon M6 256MB
142 MHz

Wistron BIOS V3.5 R01-M46 EN
512 kb

Any help please??

 

[salviablue]

increasing laptop performace help

No answer, so ithought i would post again.
If this is improper please let me know but i figured once a post has been on for more than a couple of days, the chance of a reply are negligable.
Cheers

 

[tifc8lraz]

Try ending some processes in the task manager, or starting the computer without the startup programs by typing in run: msconfig

EDIT:
NEVER touch the hardware, or try to mod them with a pencil unless you know what you're doing and that you're properly grounded. One touche could end a computers life!

EDIT: (again)
Your ram count is slightly low, which could also slow down the comptuer dramatically.

 

[Rik]

Does it have norton on it? if so, get rid of it and benchmark it again.
If it is running xp then the extra 256 of ram you mentioned should make quite a good improvement as it probably shares the ram with the built in graphics card.
Run scandisk and defrag on it too, having drive errors and fragmented files can slow any computer down.
Virus and spyware scan it too if it has been used online.

 

[salviablue]

Noticing odd HDD noises

To answer previous questions, I do not have Norton or anything like that installed. I removed almost all programmes other than that which appears after a fresh install. Windows was installed only recently and only a handful of progs has been installed and only drive health v2.2 resides in the background.
Actually, now thinking about it, i have some vague memory of getting drive health to query the HDD every 30-60 secs! I`ll retry the benchmark after disabling drive health.

ANYWAY, what prompted this post was the mention of HDD problems that may slow down the computer. I have have for a small while been noticing repetetive noises from the HD, 'rrrrrick, tick, tick, tick, tick.........CLICK' over and over every now and again. These noises remind me of a non responding HD, or when there was an I/O error on a floppy on the old Amiga! I have run scandisk and other HD diagnosis progs and all say the HD is quite fine, a few bad sectors but thats all.
The HD is a replacement i got from a shop for £10 (only 4GB!) and they said it was a known good HD!?! Drive health said it it likely to fail sometime mid next year! Could it be that that it making the computer slow and seem so bad on benchmarks?
Cheers

 

[Rik]

Yup, a faulty hard drive will certainly cause that, if its having trouble reading data it will attempt is several times and will therefore use more time.

 

[BENKATO]

I need sound and video drivers

I need sound video driver for my laptop md 9783.
Thankz