Toshiba A70 Laptop not working as it used to- do I need to overclock?

[dai_katana]

Hello All,

I have a Toshiba A70 Satellite and over the years of usage, I've grown quite fond of it (it was, after all, my first computer). I sent the laptop for repair (power on button broke) and after nearly 4 months, the laptop was returned to me. However, the first thing I noticed was that it was extremely extremely slow and it was not like this before I sent it for repair. I think the repair shop may have replaced the motherboard or tweaked it on some way (my windows also gave validation errors when I started windows), so I used CPU-Z to check my processor. It CPU has a rated FSB of 533 MHz but the CPU's bus speed is 133.3 MHz...

Here are the laptop specs:
Processor

Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 532 supporting Hyper-Threading technology (3.06 GHz, 533MHz FSB, L1 Cache 12KB/8KB, L2 Cache 1MB)
Operating System
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home
Memory
Standard Memory: 512MB PC2700 DDR (512MB x 1)
Optical Drive:
DVD Super-Multi Drive
Graphics Controller
ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON™ 9000 IGP with 64MB DDR video memory shared video memory.

Do I need to overclock this CPU to bring the FSB back up? I want to be able to atleast use the basic functions of the laptop, such as open a word processor, without waiting for 2 minutes for the program menu to display and another 2 minutes for the word processor to load. (I also installed a program called speedfan as it supposedly can automatically increase fan speeds as necessary but I think my processor and/or fan is not supported, because neither my processor, nor the fans were displayed in the program).

I would appreciate your help in returning my laptop to at least usable speeds. Thanks in advance everyone.

 

[cbrunnem]

hard drives go bad if you dont use them for a while from what i hear. i wouldnt know cause ive never gone a long time without having my computer on. try defraging and use a registry cleaner. maybe its just a cluttered HD

 

[dai_katana]

Hmm. Well, I tried this, but no change really. What about the fact that the bus speed is lower than the rated FSB. Is this normal?

 

[henydiah]

Your eist and other seting bios locked by manufacturer ... It's seem normal , if your laptop under load your speed auto raise to default.
If you want get higher sodim size . And agree use cc cleaner fix registry, delete file temporary, uninstall big software not important

 

[RetiredChief]

The first thing I would do is contact the repair place and findout what they did to repair.
If they replaced the MB and it was not identical, you may have some driver issues. Registry cleaners generally do not correct incorrect drivers and you may have to re-install the operating system and install correct drivers.

Laptop generally have very limited "User" options that can be changed. Look at the Bios and see what parameters you can change.

As to Hard drives going bad from non use - HDD take storage very well. The two problems associated with storage are: Bearings seizing up and Magnetic domains losing their polarity. I've had several drives that had been unused for five years. Only problem was several did not want to start spinning (A gentle tap fixed that), and all the data was still intack.

 

[a-nano-moose]

Check your power settings in both your bios and in windows.
A friend had a dell laptop and the bios was set to run the processor at 50% to conserve the battery.

 

[cbrunnem]

The first thing I would do is contact the repair place and findout what they did to repair.
If they replaced the MB and it was not identical, you may have some driver issues. Registry cleaners generally do not correct incorrect drivers and you may have to re-install the operating system and install correct drivers.

Laptop generally have very limited "User" options that can be changed. Look at the Bios and see what parameters you can change.

As to Hard drives going bad from non use - HDD take storage very well. The two problems associated with storage are: Bearings seizing up and Magnetic domains losing their polarity. I've had several drives that had been unused for five years. Only problem was several did not want to start spinning (A gentle tap fixed that), and all the data was still intack.

i was just repeating what iomega rep told me about why my external might be bad...... not all reps know what they are talking about though...

 

[dai_katana]

The first thing I would do is contact the repair place and findout what they did to repair.
If they replaced the MB and it was not identical, you may have some driver issues. Registry cleaners generally do not correct incorrect drivers and you may have to re-install the operating system and install correct drivers.

Laptop generally have very limited "User" options that can be changed. Look at the Bios and see what parameters you can change.

As to Hard drives going bad from non use - HDD take storage very well. The two problems associated with storage are: Bearings seizing up and Magnetic domains losing their polarity. I've had several drives that had been unused for five years. Only problem was several did not want to start spinning (A gentle tap fixed that), and all the data was still intack.

Hi,

Thanks for the response. Sorry I couldn't get back sooner; work issues kept me away from my laptop (problem solved for the short term ) but now that I am back on it, I am facing the same frustration. Anyway, regarding the motherboard; I am not sure that they replaced it. I contacted them to ask but the cust. rep. just kept giving me rounded answers like: we did what we had to, parts are difficult to find, motherboards are expensive, we sometimes use parts from old computers, etc. and would not connect me to the actual technicians who did the work. Hence I have no way of knowing what actually happened in there...

I do, however, have driver issues but I did have them before I sent it for repair, namely my computer would not enter standby mode... I do not know what caused this though. My graphics card drivers may be to blame (9000 IGP) as I had updated them before the problems started occurring... updating is not always such a good thing, huh?

I couldn't change anything in the BIOS as you guessed. I did manage to change the date though (it was wrong for some reason). I can access my data so the HDD's are not bad

 

[RetiredChief]

Have you tried runing a registry cleaner ie CCleaner: http://www.piriform.com/CCLEANER
Other ones: http://www.cnet.com/topic-software/registry-cleaner.html

Also been on vacaction, just got back. was in a Blackjack tourament in Los Vages, made it to the semi-finals, won $1,000.