Weird performance problem with Dell M6600

[Russ Smith]

Has 16Gb of memory, the user is a mechanical engineer and he's running Solid Works on the machine. Worked fine for about 3 weeks but now he's having serious performance issues when running in 2D mode.

He apparently ran a diagnostic on Dell's website yesterday that said it failed the advanced pattern test and needed memory replacement one or both sticks. I ran Mem Test 4.2 on it for 2 hours this morning and found no problems. I then booted off each stick(he has 2 8's) and ran Dell's onboard diagnostic and nothing.

We had one replacement 8 MB stick so I replaced one of them and am running the diagnostic again but so far we're not seeing any memory errors.

I am suspicious there's a virus that our Panda antivirus missed but I am not really "encouraged" to use Malwarebytes or anything else at work since it's not for business purposes(the free version) and we pay for Panda so my boss prefers we use that.

This is the only machine to have this issue so it's specific to this M6600 but I can't for the life of me figure it out. The hard disk passes all the tests, the memory does except for this advanced pattern test which frankly even Dell can't really explain, it apparently should have told them which of the 2 sticks failed but couldn't, I'm actually of the opinion it's a false failure, my understanding is Mem Test is far more complete than any of Dell's diagnostics and Mem Test finds nothing wrong.

This is actually replacing an M6600 that was a lemon(we had 2 of them this is the 2nd one) and he's now also using the replacement for the lemon that Dell sent out.

Any ideas what else it could be? It doesn't appear to be the video card but it's a video performance issue it's just taking forever to load these drawings in Solid Works.

 

[Chaz]

Has 16Gb of memory, the user is a mechanical engineer and he's running Solid Works on the machine. Worked fine for about 3 weeks but now he's having serious performance issues when running in 2D mode.

He apparently ran a diagnostic on Dell's website yesterday that said it failed the advanced pattern test and needed memory replacement one or both sticks. I ran Mem Test 4.2 on it for 2 hours this morning and found no problems. I then booted off each stick(he has 2 8's) and ran Dell's onboard diagnostic and nothing.

We had one replacement 8 MB stick so I replaced one of them and am running the diagnostic again but so far we're not seeing any memory errors.

I am suspicious there's a virus that our Panda antivirus missed but I am not really "encouraged" to use Malwarebytes or anything else at work since it's not for business purposes(the free version) and we pay for Panda so my boss prefers we use that.

This is the only machine to have this issue so it's specific to this M6600 but I can't for the life of me figure it out. The hard disk passes all the tests, the memory does except for this advanced pattern test which frankly even Dell can't really explain, it apparently should have told them which of the 2 sticks failed but couldn't, I'm actually of the opinion it's a false failure, my understanding is Mem Test is far more complete than any of Dell's diagnostics and Mem Test finds nothing wrong.

This is actually replacing an M6600 that was a lemon(we had 2 of them this is the 2nd one) and he's now also using the replacement for the lemon that Dell sent out.

Any ideas what else it could be? It doesn't appear to be the video card but it's a video performance issue it's just taking forever to load these drawings in Solid Works.

Just had a similar issue last week. Same model computer, same type of user, same software. Performance issues when trying to render video. Had been using the computer fine for 6 months+.

If it has NVIDIA Optimus go into the bios and turn it off.
This will make it run full time on the add-in video card and not on the built-in Intel graphics.
Also make sure that you have enough pagefile reserved. The system managed size usually isn't big enough. The pagefile should be about 24G for 16G of RAM.

Rogue software can also cause problems even if it isn't malicious.
THe resource monitor in Windows 7 is good for tracking performance in real time.
Also if you aren't using the sysinternals tools familiarize yourself with them. I use procexp and autoruns all the time to see what is running on a machine.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb545021.aspx
http://live.sysinternals.com/

 

[Russ Smith]

Just had a similar issue last week. Same model computer, same type of user, same software. Performance issues when trying to render video. Had been using the computer fine for 6 months+.

If it has NVIDIA Optimus go into the bios and turn it off.
This will make it run full time on the add-in video card and not on the built-in Intel graphics.
Also make sure that you have enough pagefile reserved. The system managed size usually isn't big enough. The pagefile should be about 24G for 16G of RAM.

Rogue software can also cause problems even if it isn't malicious.
THe resource monitor in Windows 7 is good for tracking performance in real time.
Also if you aren't using the sysinternals tools familiarize yourself with them. I use procexp and autoruns all the time to see what is running on a machine.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb545021.aspx
http://live.sysinternals.com/

Thanks it is Nvidia but not Optimus at least my boss is pretty sure it's not. I have the user directed to check out his page file setting when he has a chance. The guy is on his 3rd M6600(all refurbished). The first one was a lemon it just constantly blue screened not his fault at all. The 2nd one was working perfectly until he got it, in a few weeks it's slow as can be.

The 3rd one is the replacement for the lemon, so I'm hoping we can get the 2nd one working before he breaks the 3rd one. He seems to be like my mom, watches constantly break on her has to be some magnetic field, with this guy it seems to be M6600's.

Thanks for the suggestions Chaz will let you know the result. weird that nobody from Dell or Solid Works suggested that they're both fixated on the memory. I even just ordered 2 replacement 8GB sticks from Dell, the user insisted Dell not New Egg even though it costs another $60. My boss said ok because he too is getting frustrated with all the issues with this users' systems.

part of me still thinks he has a virus, he has an M6600 at home his personal machine and he told me before he has had to pay multiple times to get viruses cleaned off it because he has no antivirus. I assume real viruses not just spyware. I'm suspecting he used a thumb drive or something and transferred a virus from his home machine to his work machine when he took it home, the slowdown started after he had the machine at home over the weekend a week ago.

 

[Chaz]

The Optimus is a system where the laptop can run on either the onboard or the ad in Nvidia card. Usually the main (attached) screen will run off of the Intel HD graphics instead of the Nvidia card you paid for. Mostly this is to save power at the cost of performance.

Good luck.

You definitely want to run some root kit scans. There are some good stand alone tools out there. No anti-virus is 100% fool proof.

 

[Russ Smith]

The Optimus is a system where the laptop can run on either the onboard or the ad in Nvidia card. Usually the main (attached) screen will run off of the Intel HD graphics instead of the Nvidia card you paid for. Mostly this is to save power at the cost of performance.

Good luck.

You definitely want to run some root kit scans. There are some good stand alone tools out there. No anti-virus is 100% fool proof.

Yeah I use SSD Killer on my own work machine if I get this one back from him I think I will run both Malwarebytes and that and then uninstall them so I'm not violating any terms.

His page file was set to 16000 so we bumped it up but he had to run to a meeting so we weren't able to reboot and see if that fixed anything.

I'll need to get the machine to look in BIOS and see if he does have Optimus or not, my boss is positive he doesn't but worth looking.

The machine that works fine has only 8gb of RAM in it, not sure if it has the same video card or not. I'm really of the opinion this one is user related that he did SOMETHING when he took it home over the weekend that caused this and we just haven't figured it out yet. He's one of those just curious enough to do damage type of users.

 

[Russ Smith]

The Optimus is a system where the laptop can run on either the onboard or the ad in Nvidia card. Usually the main (attached) screen will run off of the Intel HD graphics instead of the Nvidia card you paid for. Mostly this is to save power at the cost of performance.

Good luck.

You definitely want to run some root kit scans. There are some good stand alone tools out there. No anti-virus is 100% fool proof.

It did in fact have Optimus turned on so I turned that off.

I increased the paging file size too he had done it yesterday but he never hit apply so it was not actually done.

Quick scan with malwarebytes found nothing, so uninstalled it. TDSSkiller found nothing so I guess it could have been just those settings we'll see I have to get it back to him now.

 

[Russ Smith]

Color me surprised, new memory from Dell(made by samsung) and the system is now working normally. Increasing page file and turning off Optimus didn't fix it but changing the memory did despite the previous memory passing every test I could run on it.

It did fail one online advanced pattern test on Dell's site, but then it later passed the exact same test, but I guess that first failure was accurate.

Thanks for the help Chaz that was actually quite useful info Solid Works did their own research and decided we actually should have page file set to about 1.5 times the total RAM. There's some interesting debate on that on the Solidworks site in their forums section, some people are setting their page files to 0 and saying it crashes less often, but these are all people with less than 16 and most are insisting if it crashes, increase your RAM