I just had a thought. Do you have a third party firewall? If so, did you disable SP2's built-in firewall?

Interesting. Everything else I've read from people who've already updated Home to SP2 seems to indicate that SP2 has sped up their machines.

Did you get SP2 through Windows Update automatically?

I was plannning on upgrading this weekend and I'll post my results when I do.

I have exactly the same experience. Brand new 1150, XP Home. SP2 was the full version downloaded from Microsoft. After installation which went with no problems, System Properties reports the CPU as Celeron(R) CPU 2.40GHz 287MHz. From what I understand, 287MHz is a measured speed. It certainly behaves as if it's a 287MHz machine! With it idling with no applications running, Task Manager shows CPU Usage between 18% and 20% and taskmgr.exe consumes a steady 14%. I have AVG virus checker and no external firewall. Turning these on or off makes no real difference. The fact that System Properties reports 287MHz indicates to me that this is very low level problem rather than application related. Uninstalling gets the machine back to full speed, a measred 2.4GHz. I can back out for now but I'm worried by the impending roll-out through automatic update.

No printer, scanners or anything else. I didn't mention that the machine is connected through my home network which is just a workgroup network, nothing fancy - no DHCP, manually assigned IP's. I also flashed the BIOS to 04 (it came with 03) which made no difference. The key thing for me is the speed of 287MHz reported by System Properties because that's exactly what it behaves like. EVERYTHING is slow.

I'm currently waiting for Dell support to call me back so that I can report the issue.

Ron

I neglected to mention that it seems that SP2 moves or removes some of the required dll files for these periferals.  Reinstalling them replaces the missing dlls and everything seems to run fine.

 

Blayne

Do you have a Lexmark or Dell printer installed?  On my work network we have had slowdowns on machines that attached to Dell printers.  Deleting and reinstalling the printer seemed to speed up the whole computer.  I tested SP2 for a week or two before it came out and before I deployed it on my network.  I was prepared for most anything except this issue.  Also, any scanners you have attached should be removed and reinstalled as well.

Blayne

Another option would be to try updating any other drivers you have or just reinstalling drivers (i.e. network, modem, etc.)

Blayne

Ron,

The intel mobile chipset drivers could in fact cause a problem or the bios file could as well.  Check out http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/devices.aspx?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz&SystemID=INS_PNT_P4_1150&category=0&os=WW1&osl=EN and try the intel mobile chipset drivers dated 8/13/2004, I believe.  If that doesn't work, the bios flash might take care of it.  I am just trying to give you some options whilst you wait on your return support call from Dell.

Blayne

Possibly it's drivers but I don't see how that would cause System Properties to report such a slow CPU. This is an extremely slow machine, it's severely crippled. So slow, it's not useable. That's not just the wrong drivers.

Ron

It seems to me that the drivers for the system board are not working correctly with SP2.  I will leave this up to Dell to resolve, as I am out of "normal" fixes.....  If you have the time you could format, do a clean xp install then apply SP2 to see if it has the same behavior.  I would suspect that it is one of the OEM dell drivers that is in conflict though, and most likely one that communicates directly with the motherboard.  Please post if Dell resolves this issue for you.

Blayne