New workstation slower than old one

[erikjg63]

Hello, I’m brand new here, but have already learned quite a bit just browsing the forums. This is a great resource and I’m thankful to have stumbled across it. I’m having a curious problem and although I tried the search function, I was unable to find anything of assistance. I’m hoping no one will mind a new thread about what I hope is a common and easily fixed problem. :-)

Thanks to a very generous boss, I just got a new workstation at work. My old one is a Dell Precision 340 (Win2K Pro, SP4, P4@2G, 512MB RDRAM) and the new one is a Dell Dimension XPS (WinXP Pro, SP1, P4@3.2G, 2GB DDR SDRAM at 400MHZ). By all measures, the new unit should be faster than the old one, right? Well, that doesn’t appear to be the case. I use mainly MS Office apps, as well as Quickbooks and some obscure property management software called Edge. It seems like everything takes longer on the new machine. Saving files to our server used to happen in the blink of an eye, whereas now it takes 2 or 3 seconds to save even a 1-page Word file. Posting a transaction in Quickbooks used to be instantaneous and now, once again, it takes 2 or 3 seconds. I’ve noticed similar slow downs in Edge as well. It occurred to me that it may be a network connectivity issue. Could the new machine somehow have a slower connection to the server? Is there a simple way to check this? I still have both machines up and running via a KVM switch so it should be easy enough to bounce back and forth to compare settings. All data files (regardless of app) are stored on a server right next to my left knee, also connected to the same 4-port KVM switch. If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them. Oh, one last thing, the new machine is using the same patch cable and port as the old one – the old one is now on a different port with another patch cable.

Sorry this was so long, but I was trying to anticipate what information would be useful in diagnosing the problem.

Thanks in advance,

Erik

[Detritus]

Those kind of lags may not only be due to your puter, but the server and the amount of traffic it is handling. I would call your LAN rep and talk to them about it. Sorry I can't help more, but we have the same problem where I work and usually it is server lag.

[erikjg63]

Detritus,

Thanks for the quick reply. I’ve already spoken with the LAN rep…..he’s me. :-) This is a network of 2 (well, now it’s 3) workstations and 1 server (a 2-year old Dell Poweredge 2500). I stumble through my own duties and also serve as the network administrator, and I use that title very loosely. Nothing has changed on the network since I added the new workstation, which was last Friday. All I did was create a new computer in Active Directory. I made no other configuration changes on the server at all. If any of that makes a difference, feel free to chime in.

Regards,

Erik

[The Terk]

i noticed that my p4 2.4ghz laptop was considerably slower than my 1800+ desktop, then i saw all the unnecessary services that are running in the background w/ winxp... doing a google search for windows xp tweaks might help the speed out

[erikjg63]

Thanks Terk, I'll do that at my earliest opportunity.

Erik