I pretty much despise my Studio XPS 435MT

As far as the noise level, after reading numerous posts on the MT, I think there was a BIOS upgrade that addressed the "Leaf Blower" fan noise you are referring. Do you have the latest BIOS version installed?

Do you have the latest drivers installed for all your hardware devices?

Have you phoned Dell's tech support in regards to the waking up from Sleep Mode problems and installing the 505 printer drivers?I think Dell has a program on the discs or on a partition that came with the machine that runs a diagnostic program to check your system.

If all these questions are yes and you still have these problems it could be a hardware issue that is not being detected or maybe, just formatting the drive and reinstalling the operating system would be a suggestion. I would try to stabilize the system first and then add your programs and extra drive after this is achieved. There will be various opinions on how to troubleshoot your problems, but this is where I would start. Sorry for your troubles. :emotion-6:

Obviously you should not be having all the problems you report, but there is almost certainly something you can do to improve the situation. First of all, you haven't reported the details of your system, so we don't know how much RAM you have and what graphics card you have. For this system, you probably should have at least 6GB of RAM. I assume you have an ATI graphics card, and in my experience, one of the likeliest causes of your frequent crashes would be the graphics driver.

Here's what I would do: first, hit F12 at startup and run Dell Diagnostics - you really should try to establish if your troubles are due to hardware or software. These tests should establish if your memory functions properly and if there is a problem with the graphics card itself or other hardware components.

If the hardware is OK , type "problem" in the Start menu search and check out the Problem Reports and Solutions to see if you can track down the causes of your freezes and crashes. As I mentioned above, you may find references to problems with the graphics driver.

I would then consider uninstalling the old graphics driver completely, using the ATI Install Manager (if you have an ATI card, that is.) You might wish to use Driver Sweeper to be sure you have uninstalled all components or at least use CCleaner to clean the registry enties for the old driver. Then install the latest driver from the manufacturer website. If it is ATI, I'd recommend installing the driver only, not the Catalyst Control Center, which is often problematic.

If, despite doing the above, you still have problems, you can do a Factory Restore as follows:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=us&dl=false&l=en&s=gen&docid=3E48AE3870775D64E040A68F5B2877D4&doclang=en

By the way, as noted by another poster, you can solve the 435MT noise problem completely by updating the BIOS to version 1.1.2.

Bob N.

I got a Dell Studio XPS 435T with the i7 and 12GB of DDR3 RAM.  Top of the line Graphics card, best they offered and a bunch of other upgrades.  This was April 2009

I installed Adobe Master Collection CS4 which is what I got the computer for and everything was awesome! Supper fast, crazy smooth and just handled these huge memory hog software packages running all at the same time like Photoshop, Preimere Pro, Dreamweaver, etc...

but suddenly as of the last week (March 2010) the computer is running supper slow with Photoshop open and nothing else open.  I'm not even using a little bit of the RAM and photoshop cs4 64-bit ext is running like it's on an old very old PC.  My computer at work runs faster.  I have to even shut down Photoshop and re-start it as it stops working all together.  I click on a new layer or just to change a color and it delays and takes time to process even giving me the busy icon

I'm confused and very frustrated... All Microsoft Windows Vista 64-bit Updates are done, All Adobe CS4 updates are done... Any ideas? Any Adive?

Thanks
jason

Hey Ron, thanks for the reply.  I don't think I got a bad MS update.  Everything else seems to be working fine.  The more I read the more I'm thinking it's Photoshop itself.  Going to try some updating and tweaking of it.  I don't have a WLAN Card so that can't be it... I have an eSata card but have had that since I got the computer... might do an update as well to my graphics card.

It is just really strange... I got this computer so I wouldn't be struggling to do high-end task, waiting... now I feel like I'm on an older computer than I had before.. it's insane.  Lots of people seem to be having trouble to with Photoshop CS4 being slow but most have reported a new update to Photoshop has solved the problem so we'll see.  I thought I had all the updates installed, hoping I don't now =)

Thanks

Did you get a bum Vista update from Microsoft that week? 

Don't know if this affects your system, but there have been problems when the 1505 WLAN card is installed in the PCIe X8 slot on a 435 running Vista. The solution is to move that card to any open PCIe X1 slot.

Ron

Yeah Ron, posted several places trying to get some advice...

My memory seems fine and all other apps work fine, just Photoshop so that is why to that I'm leaning more toward Photoshop being the problem itself.  Out of 12GB of DDR3 RAM I'm not even using 3 with Photoshop open so I don't think that's it...

Plus I use Photoshop CS4 at work and on a Vista 64-bit laptop with only 4GB of DDR3 and it runs fine

Jason,

At least we ruled out the the WLAN issue...

I saw your post in the other thread about a similar problem. Do you have the same reduction in available memory shown in that thread?

Does some software (eg Photoshop)  have a memory leak causing RAM to get tied up and become unusable?

Ron

As was already suggested earlier in this thread, reinstall your video drivers...

Ron