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186
 
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 23/08/2008 19:25:24
Posts: 11,
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| Hi all, i'm having trouble trying to find out which version of windows to install on this laptop i've been given from my brother as he's upgraded to a desktop the laptop is a elitegroup 321 with a 1.3gig cpu, 256meg of ram & onbroard graphics, it did come with a xp home recovery cd, but after see'ing it run when my brother had it, it seemed to be chocking the laptop, freezing every 5 minutes, ie6/7 white screening and hard drive going nuts for about 10 minutes till the cpu levels dropped from 100% to about 4% then when he opened anything taxing it shot back up to about 100% then only way to get it stable was to to the three fingure salute (alt,ctrl+delete) then keep pressing shutdown in task manager like a prat for about 7 or 8 times, then it did shut down, but even that still caused the hd to go nuts for ages till it calmed down. i have done a av scan as it came with avg free 8 & spybot search & destory so would it be better to install windows 2k pro or a version of linux on the laptop or just upgraded the ram to a gig, the laptop is only for using while i'm out & about with my hsdpa doggle, as i've got a desktop pc at home thx
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286
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Yesterday @ 19:13:25
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Visits: 1,166
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| It sounds a bit like either a nasty root-kit trojan or the hardware is shot. In either case don't waste your money - do a thorough reformat using the original Windows install disk, or if you don't have it use a Linux Mint Live CD distro.
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186
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 23/08/2008 19:25:24
Posts: 11,
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| Thx for the reply to the post, just a update the laptop is'nt that old as he only got it 12 months ago to use at college, but now he's moved into a house he decied to get the desktop and as i wanted a laptop for work reasons, he decied to let me have the one i'm using now, before reading your post, i Thought that's it, cant put up with this mess and tried to re-install it worked for about an hour then slow down again, avg picked nothing up search & destory the same, adware 2008 the same. so thought that's it, went up stairs and got my old retail copy of windows 2000 sp4 out and installed that on the laptop. at the moment i've got avast & commodo also spybot search & destory installed, using firefox 3 and thunderbird aswell instead of IE & outlook express 6. and it's running quicker and cpu levels are on the low side around 4% shoots up to about 35% now & then and even boot's up quicker then xp was doing, xp used to take about 3 or 4 minutes for the hardrive to stop accessing and all the programs to fully load, now i'd say about 30 secs before i can start using it again, cheers thx anyway
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286
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Yesterday @ 19:13:25
Posts: 497,
Visits: 1,166
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| It sounds like the laptop picked up a root-kit trojan, the problem with these is that they live below the level of a normal AV scan. You may get some of them with a specialised root-kit scan, but you really need to boot and scan from a CD resident Windows OS like Bart to stand a chance of detecting the worst ones.
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Santa Pig
Group: Moderators
Last Login: Yesterday @ 16:45:35
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I think it's more to do with 256mb of ram.
XP just runs like a total dog with less than 512mb and a full load of AV etc.
Dave R
XP Pro + various VMs: Q6600 @ stock, Asus V3-P5G33, 2GB DDR2 800, 7600GT
XP Pro: E1200 @2.4Ghz, GA-G33M-DS2R/S2, 2GB DDR2 800, 3450 on HDMI
Mandriva S 2008: SOA Athlon 2200, 1GB DDR, 9550
Windows Home Server: S3000, ASUS V2-M2V890, 512mb DDR2 667, 1TB
4GB USB Pendrive: Mandriva 2009 - my portable PC 
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286
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Yesterday @ 19:03:41
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I'd put a vote in for trying Puppy Linux on there even if only running live from the CD.
  
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386
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Today @ 00:25:08
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| I'd up the memory to a gig and stick with xp, although w2k is fine too. It will absolutely fly with Puppy though 
Cheers Chris
Rig 1 Aerocool M40 Corsair HX520,4CORE1333FULLHD E4500,2GB Corsair DDR2,2 X 80 sata (RAID 0)1 200gb , xfx 7900gs xxx
Rig 2 Winfast 6100k8ma,AMD 64 X2 4200 S939 @2.42Ghz 1GB pc3200 (2x512mb) 500gb SATA
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186
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 28/11/2008 21:44:45
Posts: 14,
Visits: 67
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Another decent option would be PCLinuxOS.
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Is it any wonder that the monkey's confused?
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Pentium
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: Yesterday @ 21:27:06
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i'd try xp with the extra ram but if still too slow you can always go back to win2000 as you now know that it is much better with it.
e6600 o/c to 3.0ghz, samsung F1 750GB HDD, BFG 7300gt oc, p5b deluxe wi-fi,corsair 620w psu,2-2gb ocz reaper 6400 in dual channel,scythe infinity, antec 900 case.
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