Johnny wrote:
On Tue, 10 Mar 2015 15:07:25 -0700
"Ken Blake, MVP" wrote:

On Tue, 10 Mar 2015 15:58:32 -0500, Johnny wrote:


I'm not happy with this computer the way it is, and I don't think
it's Windows 8.1 that's causing it to be slow. I think it has to
do with the Dell and Intel programs installed on it.


Definitely not! What is installed has *no* effect on a computer's
speed. What is *running* does.

Now, if the Dell and Intel programs are installed *and* running,
that's a different story. But it's easy to find out whether they are
causing it to be slow. Simply shut down the programs and see how fast
the computer then is (if necessary, you can "end task" for them in
Task Manager).

They are running, but I was afraid to shut them down, after reading it
caused a blue screen for some people that did shut them down.

Before you begin your custom install, remember to burn the driver
CD that the Dell disc set can make. If you burn recovery media
with a Dell, you get maybe three DVDs for the 12GB or so of
OS contents, plus a fourth DVD with a few hundred megabytes
of drivers. The one you may want to keep, is whatever
Dell offers for the video card driver. If Device Manager
isn't clean, you may have others to grab from that disc.

There are some hardware drivers to watch out for. Intel offers
a "Management Engine" driver, something that doesn't appear to
have a use on my desktop machine. Only a couple hundred KB of files
would be needed to tidy up the MEI entry in Device Manager.
Yet, the Intel download is 50MB or so, and contains a lot
of "stuff". One item of interest, is an "Identity Protection"
package. I cannot find any documentation for it. It screwed
up my browser. I see it is still inserting itself in Firefox
(two instances of its plugin are now in Firefox). I don't
know what it's for, but I can't recommend it. It causes
downloads in Firefox to be discarded, without asking the
user. So that's an installation I'd think twice about.
I'd need documentation to see if this has any value at
all - the fact you cannot "untick" the box for it in the
Intel installer, tells you it's evil.

Paul