[wamthesuperwam]

I posted about this thing a while back about how I couldn't get the CPU out. I never did. I ended up ******* up the socket but it was still running so I just left it. Don't fix won't ain't broke.

Anyway, originally I was planning on putting a new processor in because its speed with a fresh install of XP was terrible. Every single windowed it buffered.

Just now I remember about my first laptop, a Dell Inspiron 2500. It had a 800mhz Celeron, 256mb of ram, and an ATI integrated GPU. It was super quick, Even for having such **** specs.

This thing has a 900mhz Celeron, 512mb of ram, and a Trident Cyberblade XP. Plenty for a fresh install of Windows XP, but its awful. Not even usable. It's even slow with Puppy Linux. The temps are fine, the bios is latest, the drivers are all their, and even moving a window around shoots the CPU usage up to 100 percent.

Is this a hardware issue? Or what? I can't figure out what is causing it. I wanna use to for a music server, but it won't even play music without being choppy! Help me out here guys!

 

[dgp]

Sounds like you need to upgrade the RAM and/or reapply the thermal compound.

 

[wamthesuperwam]

Thermal compound is only 2 weeks old. AS5.

Ram is maxed out, I have a old retro board I'm planning to make into a retro gaming pc, it runs xp and has 512mb of ram and runs amazing. 512 in enough.

 

[jrbroad77]

Easy way to find out, bench it and compare to passmark score. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+M+900MHz

I'd expect power management settings to be the issue. If your battery is pretty much shot, you may as well disable all power-saving BIOS features. Otherwise, just set it to "max performance" in power manager, max perf. for cooling, etc. Everything 100%. Another option, try using RMClock ( http://cpu.rightmark.org/products/rmclock.shtml ) to force the clocks at 100%, not sure if the Celeron M 900 is supported, but it won't hurt to try. You could also undervolt if your temps look pretty high