Your batterywon't have any impact on how your laptop runs since you are plugging it in. I'd more suspect you may have a virus, spyware, etc. or some PC maintenance is needed like bajafun said. Maybe have a knowledgable friendrun some scans on it or take it in to get it checked by a PC tech.

 

alt cntrl delete should bring up Windows Task Manager. Look at applications first and see what is running. Then click on the Processes tab and see if some application is reading high on the "CPU" column. There will be some cryptic names and such but if you are not running any programs the cpu should be reading 0-2 in an idle state, if something is virusing etc the cpu will be running while it should not be. Run a virus check if you have it and you may consider "pushing" your operating system.

 

By "pushing" I mean reinstalling your Operating system.

 

Sorry if i sound lik,e the ***... but did'tn the latter of you guys read the post where he said "i don't know anything!" Give him sum help instead of tellin what he should do... ya know... detailed instuctions?geeezzzz

 

NO. doesn't hurt anything and doesn't slow you down.
do check the dell web site and see if you qualify for a free replacement.
if you do decide to replace the battery, shop ebay or internet for generic replacement. $25-35 vs $100 from dell.
do ask a friend to clean your computer of Spyware, Adware, etc to speed it up.

 

How old is your laptop? Laptop bateries are only supposed to work for 12 - 16 months (depending on what type of batery it is).

As for it effecting your performance. It is more than likely heat doing it. When the battery goes dead it will continually try to charge; not turn off the charge when it is full. This will cause the computer to get hot. This causes the fan to run constantly. Heat is the #1 enemy of computer hardware. The hotter your box gets the slower it gets.

Pull the battery trying to charge a dead battery will cause a failure of some kind.

As for the speed issues. If you are not running a firewall make sure you are running good anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-add ware. Everyone says that theres is better than everyone elses. (I'm not going to start a geek war here even trying to recomend one.) When your looking for something don't get a free one; if they are cheap for you to get then they are cheap and easy for the creaps who write this crap to get which means that it will be less effecient; and look for something with at least weekly updates.

As for defrag - - unless you are running less than windows XP you really don't need to run it. With NTFS (the way the computer rights to the hard drive in XP and better) it does less good than it used to .

 

Try removing the battery while you operate the laptop
to see if the Dell battery monitoring process running in the background
is using processor time (it should not)

As far as a slow computer
going to one of the more effective
free online malware scanners,
like:

http://www.ewido.net/en/onlinescan/

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

and spending the 30-70 minutes to let them do a scan is worth it,
even as a 'Second Opinion' to the anti-virus and anti-spyware
programs you may already have installed.

The freeware IObit Smartdefrag program's
"comprehensive" defrag option is slower than Microsoft's defrag
but does seem to provide a slight performance boost
by moving directories to the fastest part of the disk
and your most used programs close behind.

http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html

 

WOW thanks for all of your help gang !!!

I looked on the bad battery list, and mine doesn't look like a recalled batery.

As for how old or what model my laptop is, I got it a little over a year ago. It's a Dell Inspiriron model B120. I defrag my computer about once a month and the "report" shows something like 53% of free space. Something like that.

I had Nortons installed when I bought my laptop, and I just installed the new version about 2 or 3 months ago. I first un-installed the old version, and then I installed the new version, so i feel pretty comfortable being virus free. ( I hope )

I just took my battery out .... we'll see

 

Well ... I had the battery out all day , and I defragged it last night with no difference.

Any new ideas ??