GOS' laptop on the fritz...

QuadraphonicQuad

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one thing I really like about Dell's are that they include a suite of programs that is very helpful to diagnosing issues and esoteric things like battery condition / life.

Their website also has a good program you download and it searches your computer for drivers and such that you would never think to update or care about but that can be nice little upgrades.

In other words, their built in support is probably the best in the business.

However, they won't be able to stop Microsoft from having it's way with your Dell computer.
 
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo....you are wasting your time Ralphie...he's reborn...3.0 is online now..he's faster...he's smarter...he's eco-friendly...he comes to a full stop at intersections now..he will pet your dog...mow your lawn....buy your groceries...no task is too great for Gos 3.0:)

LOL! Sounds like a movie trailer for a hybrid of The Six Million Dollar Man and Stepford Wives..... :mad:@:
 
OK, so some weirdness with my new laptop. My new laptop has more memory, same sized SSD, better wifi connectivity....and yet. Compared to my much older, inferior (on paper) laptop, this one pales in terms of handling my Flac files.

Foobar stutters, spits and bogs down every few minutes. My old one NEVER did that. I panicked and downloaded Jriver and it's actually worse. When I'm playing my flac files in multi-channel, my mouse has trailers and is very sluggish. Music can even stop.....almost like it's buffering.

I've never had that problem.

So - what does this all mean?
 
OK, so some weirdness with my new laptop. My new laptop has more memory, same sized SSD, better wifi connectivity....and yet. Compared to my much older, inferior (on paper) laptop, this one pales in terms of handling my Flac files.

Foobar stutters, spits and bogs down every few minutes. My old one NEVER did that. I panicked and downloaded Jriver and it's actually worse. When I'm playing my flac files in multi-channel, my mouse has trailers and is very sluggish. Music can even stop.....almost like it's buffering.

I've never had that problem.

So - what does this all mean?

In 2015 I wrote a Post here about my Dell stuttering and having all sorts of issues after an update. It was all solved by erasing the "Dell Monitoring Assistant". See if that works for you.
 
In 2015 I wrote a Post here about my Dell stuttering and having all sorts of issues after an update. It was all solved by erasing the "Dell Monitoring Assistant". See if that works for you.

I don't see anything called Dell Monitoring Assistant. Or anything similar... Unfortunately. I've been reading and just can't seem to find any solutions. I really don't understand how a new laptop, that is supposedly geared towards multi-tasking, streaming videos, etc - is so sluggish compared to my other laptop from 5 years ago. My old laptop was nothing special either.

As I type this from my wireless keyboard, even typing is sluggish if I type fast. It's as if the system simply cannot keep up with simple tasks. Makes zero sense honestly. I mean, I would understand it if I purchased a 2001 laptop, but this is 2017 model with lots of space and memory.

Foobar continues to stutter at least once or twice per album. And, manually changing songs takes a couple seconds as if it's not recognizing my keystrokes very fast.
 
I don't see anything called Dell Monitoring Assistant. Or anything similar... Unfortunately. I've been reading and just can't seem to find any solutions. I really don't understand how a new laptop, that is supposedly geared towards multi-tasking, streaming videos, etc - is so sluggish compared to my other laptop from 5 years ago. My old laptop was nothing special either.

As I type this from my wireless keyboard, even typing is sluggish if I type fast. It's as if the system simply cannot keep up with simple tasks. Makes zero sense honestly. I mean, I would understand it if I purchased a 2001 laptop, but this is 2017 model with lots of space and memory.

Foobar continues to stutter at least once or twice per album. And, manually changing songs takes a couple seconds as if it's not recognizing my keystrokes very fast.

Why don't you call the Dell customer support line tomorrow(you won't reach anybody today)...since it's new you might get some help...is there a trouble shooting section in the product guide?
 
Why don't you call the Dell customer support line tomorrow(you won't reach anybody today)...since it's new you might get some help...is there a trouble shooting section in the product guide?

I just had a 20 minute chat session with "someone". He was clueless. Ugh....
One thing I just noticed is that all my music flac files now show (instead of Foobar) icon, they have a Groove Note icon. You know, as if I would use Groove Note to play them.

How do I conveniently convert them all back to Foobar as the preferred method of opening them?
 
I just had a 20 minute chat session with "someone". He was clueless. Ugh....
One thing I just noticed is that all my music flac files now show (instead of Foobar) icon, they have a Groove Note icon. You know, as if I would use Groove Note to play them.

How do I conveniently convert them all back to Foobar as the preferred method of opening them?

I figured that out.... :)
 
I don't see anything called Dell Monitoring Assistant. Or anything similar... Unfortunately. I've been reading and just can't seem to find any solutions. I really don't understand how a new laptop, that is supposedly geared towards multi-tasking, streaming videos, etc - is so sluggish compared to my other laptop from 5 years ago. My old laptop was nothing special either.

As I type this from my wireless keyboard, even typing is sluggish if I type fast. It's as if the system simply cannot keep up with simple tasks. Makes zero sense honestly. I mean, I would understand it if I purchased a 2001 laptop, but this is 2017 model with lots of space and memory.

Foobar continues to stutter at least once or twice per album. And, manually changing songs takes a couple seconds as if it's not recognizing my keystrokes very fast.

You can check in the Windows task manager if a job/process is consuming all your ressources. If the laptop is new, maybe file indexing for your NAS is running!? Is Foobar play still stuttering if you play files w/o HDMI cable plugged in? Try this...
 
You can check in the Windows task manager if a job/process is consuming all your ressources. If the laptop is new, maybe file indexing for your NAS is running!? Is Foobar play still stuttering if you play files w/o HDMI cable plugged in? Try this...

Yes, today I'm going to methodically eliminate various components that are connected to my laptop and see how Foobar behaves. Ironically, last few days, the lag with my Bluetooth keyboard had actually gotten worse. I was bombing around in device manager looking for driver updates manually (Windows does them automatically daily supposedly) and found a driver update for a USB to Ethernet adapter I was using. After update, no more lag with keyboard.....so maybe...somehow...this will correct the lag/stutter in Foobar.

But, I have my doubts. :chill

EDIT - well, the keyboard lag returned...only seems much worse with Microsoft Edge compared to Chrome. Geez....
 
I figured that out.... :)

It's a global file property. Very easy to change using any flac file as an example. As I guess you figured out .. .?


Does your f2K playback stutter if you use a physically connected keyboard (NOT Bluetooth/wireless)?
 
It's a global file property. Very easy to change using any flac file as an example. As I guess you figured out .. .?


Does your f2K playback stutter if you use a physically connected keyboard (NOT Bluetooth/wireless)?

I haven't had time yet to test unplugging all these additional devices I have connected to my laptop yet. Work has gotten in the way. Didn't occur to me to disable my Bluetooth keyboard though. I hope it's not that because my laptop is actually sitting on my audio shelf and pretty stationary.

Either way, just for understanding the problem, I will look into that as well.
 
I haven't had time yet to test unplugging all these additional devices I have connected to my laptop yet. Work has gotten in the way. Didn't occur to me to disable my Bluetooth keyboard though. I hope it's not that because my laptop is actually sitting on my audio shelf and pretty stationary.

Either way, just for understanding the problem, I will look into that as well.

Gene, it's TIME to take a comprehensive computer course, don't ya think???????? And take me with you.
 
I can't figure the foobar thing out. It continues to stutter audio wise and also the meter simply freezes for 2-3 seconds every half minute or so. I even bought a new router hoping somehow it could improve things...only it didn't.

I also downloaded KOdi, not sure if it's just me...but I don't like that player. Seems to me that it's a bit clunky....

So, I now listen to my flac files via my oppo, which doesn't stutter....just doesn't seem much fun to use compared to foobar....

Oh well.
 
I can't figure the foobar thing out. It continues to stutter audio wise and also the meter simply freezes for 2-3 seconds every half minute or so. I even bought a new router hoping somehow it could improve things...only it didn't.

I also downloaded KOdi, not sure if it's just me...but I don't like that player. Seems to me that it's a bit clunky....

So, I now listen to my flac files via my oppo, which doesn't stutter....just doesn't seem much fun to use compared to foobar....

Oh well.

Hi there,

KODI is not just a player but a whole media center software. It's great but you will need to spend a little time in order to get yourself familiar. If you don't have the time, stick with Foobar.

Either parts of your hardware from your laptop are 'broken' or you have a serious driver/software problem. If I were you I would setup Windows 10 from the scratch. You can download Windows 10 and create the Installation DVD using the "Media Creation Tool' from Microsoft web site. There should be several detailed guides out there how to perform the installation.

Cheers,
Andreas
 
Gene, did you looked into the task manager to see which applications are using CPU and memory? And is the memory actually the size as expected from the laptop specs? For example, if the laptop specs have 4Gb as memory, is the task manager showing 4 GB?

Also, are all your windows updates done? The large fall update takes some time, and when not finished maybe starts again the next time you turn on the laptop.

I am no expert on foobar, but is the buffer size correct?
 
Gene, did you looked into the task manager to see which applications are using CPU and memory? And is the memory actually the size as expected from the laptop specs? For example, if the laptop specs have 4Gb as memory, is the task manager showing 4 GB?

Also, are all your windows updates done? The large fall update takes some time, and when not finished maybe starts again the next time you turn on the laptop.

I am no expert on foobar, but is the buffer size correct?

Yeah, I keep my new laptop up to date. I played around with buffer size in foobar, none of my changes made one bit of difference. :(

Here is some info on my laptop memory..

Memory.JPG
 
Hi there,

KODI is not just a player but a whole media center software. It's great but you will need to spend a little time in order to get yourself familiar. If you don't have the time, stick with Foobar.

Either parts of your hardware from your laptop are 'broken' or you have a serious driver/software problem. If I were you I would setup Windows 10 from the scratch. You can download Windows 10 and create the Installation DVD using the "Media Creation Tool' from Microsoft web site. There should be several detailed guides out there how to perform the installation.

Cheers,
Andreas

laptop is only a month old and all the drivers, etc are kept up to date with "best available" or whatever it tells me when I search for new drivers.
I'm pretty much a computer dope - none of this ever comes easy for me oddly...but setting up stereo equipment with lots of pieces seems easy to me. Go figure.... I would be absolutely frightened to install Windows 10 manually.... :)
 
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