Unsolved
1 Rookie
•
2 Posts
0
76
February 7th, 2025 18:27
Inspiron One 2330 Performance Issues
We bought our Dell Inspiron One 2330 AIO about 10 years ago (yes, I know…) It automatically upgraded us from Win 8 to Win 10 within a week. It never appeared to have any significant issues after the upgrade but, over time, it got really (painfully) slow and I decided to do a clean install recently. Since it upgraded to Win 10, there was no way to revert back to Win 8. The option was to do a “fresh install” from the cloud (no DVD was ever provided and when it updated to Win 10, it wiped the partition that held the Win 8 recovery files.
Anyway, it did the install and when all was done, it showed latest Win 10 installed. However, doing this so-called “fresh install” does not seem to have fixed the performance issues. I’ve opened the machine up and cleaned the vents, blew what little dust and stuff there was off the main board and inside the chassis, reseated all the RAM modules, reseated all electrical connectors, ran diagnostics through BIOS and Windows with no errors or warnings, and uninstalled Dell and Microsoft bloatware.
Current Specs: Windows 10, Intel Pentium G2030 3.0 GHz, 8GB DDR3 at 1600 MHz (doubled up from original 4GB), 1TB HDD (7200 RPM), Intel HD integrated graphics, Dell 1703 wireless adapter (802.11 BGN and Bluetooth 4.0+LE). Only installed programs thus far are Edge, Chrome and Firefox browsers, Office 2013, and drivers for our printer. One Drive is turned off. That’s it.
It’s no longer our primary computer, but we use it for storing all our photos and occasional on-line stuff like paying bills and email. We don’t do any streaming or gaming on it. So, there’s nothing I can figure that would cause this thing to run as poorly as it does, especially when it was OK when we first bought it – even after the Win 10 upgrade.
Any clue?
ejn63
10 Elder
•
29.2K Posts
0
February 7th, 2025 19:20
Windows 10 does not play well with a hard drive. Replace it with a 2.5" SATA solid state drive -- that alone will work wonders.
While inside the system, thoroughly clean it and replace the thermal pad/compound under the heatsinks (these are essentially notebook computers mounted behind a screen and any 10-year old system will have dried out thermal material that's preventing the heatsink from properly transferring heat away from the CPU).
Bubbagrump66
1 Rookie
•
2 Posts
0
February 9th, 2025 17:12
enj63: Thanks for replying but respectfully agree to disagree. Win 10 works fine on other systems I use with mechanical HDDs. I'm not sure that's the issue although I agree a SSD would be ideal. But this is a 1 TB HDD with thousands of photos, and a 1 TB SSD is not in my budget - especially for this machine. However, I do agree that a good clean and inspection is warranted.
I have cleaned it out but have not noticed any thermal paste or other compounds have degraded or dripping. But I suppose removing the CPU heatsink might reveal something. The system doesn't get used much, even when we first got it (phones and tablets kinda did that, LOL). But it does seem to have taken a performance hit after reloading it. In other words, it's worse now after a clean install than it was before, which prompted the reload in the first place. Just weird. But it is old and maybe it is what it is. Truthfully, I liked Win 8 and wouldn't mind putting it back just on this machine. But alas...
ejn63
10 Elder
•
29.2K Posts
0
February 9th, 2025 17:34
A 1T SSD will run well under $70 -- and if that drive you have is original to the system, it's well beyond its design lifetime, so replacing it would be a good idea. And the issue with thermal pads/paste isn't dripping - it's that the compound dries out over time, leaving air voids that prevent heat transfer to the heatsinks.