how slow can a PC get?

[rans6andrew]

if ones PC has virtually ground to a halt, so that when you change which window is at the front you can see the window refresh going line of pixels by line of pixels, why does the task manager (and procexp.exe) continue to show only 70% commit charge and 50% cpu usage?

What is going on? Is there something that slows the system but doesn't show up in the task manager?

I have done all of the usual stuff, virus scans, disk defrag, anti-malware, spybot etc and nothing untoward shows up.

If it is a disk access bottleneck, then presumably upgrading to a faster motherboard will do little for the speed of the system?

Anything you might suggest to speed things up will be gratefully received.

Rans6...

[Simonta]

Hi Rans6

50% CPU is a lot! Is that an average sort of number? For example, just checked perfmon on this laptop I'm typing on and CPU has averaged 2.7% over the last couple of hours. What spec is the machine?

When you are seeing the painful refresh, what's the hard disk doing?

Always difficult to judge experience levels from afar...but, and apologies if you can hear the gnashing of octagenerian gums on avian seed cases, do you know how to use Hijackthis?

Cheers

[frostbite]

Is your hard drive nearly full?

[Saab Dastard]

Check that the IDE controller is running a DMA level and hasn't fallen back to PIO mode.

Is there an update going on in the background? I find on a single-core PC that Sophos autoupdate renders the PC unusable for a couple of minutes.

SD

[cdtaylor_nats]

This sort of symptom on a computer used to be indicative of a condition known as thrashing - where the system is spending more time swapping pages in and out of virtual memory than doing work.

[RPness]

Hi,

this can be nearly everything

- a non-detectable virus
- a full partition
- a problem with your ram (physically as in "defect")
- a cpu fan problem throttling your cpu to near zero

If your windows installation is older than 2 years (if you love to install strange things 1 year), backup your data and do a fresh install of your windows cd.

Kind regards,
Peter

[Tarq57]

What's the OS, the CPU and RAM?

Replies above cover most of the bases, I would think.
Computers that have been in use for a while can end up with a lot of programs starting with Windows. 90% of them don't need to. (53% of all statistics are made up on the spot.)

Another candidate is a software confliction. Does it do this all the time, or just when some programs are open?

What AV, Firewall and antispyware is installed?

[jimtherev]

In my case, it was Avast! Somehow I ended up with Avast! 4.something and Avast! 5 both installed and both trying to work. (prob my fault: I maybe toggled something the wrong way when installing?) Whatever, deleting both, CC-ing and reinstalling and I'm back up to speed.

W7 has also stopped telling me that I have no AV prog installed. :)

[rans6andrew]

Thanks to all responders, plenty to get stuck into.

From the top down, ish.

The machine is a 2.5Gig Celeron desktop with 512Meg of RAM. The disc is an IDE, showing 73Gigs total and 33Gigs used. It is using DMA Being a Dell machine the "rescue disc" is a hidden area on the C drive, I don't know if that is in addition to the volumes given or included.

I am beginning to understand the info given in task manager, it sets 100% commit at about 1200Megs or a bit more than twice the physical memory size so whenever commit goes above about 40% there will be a lot of swapping going on. Is there a "rule of thumb" for setting swap file size?

WinXP, AVG, windose firewall is on, Spybot is lurking. The whole lot seems to have slowed considerably since upgrading to IE 8? (it is not my machine!).

The disc access light seems to blink most of the time and is often on more than off. Some evenings the AVG scan runs from 7pm and is not completed when we go to bed at 11pm plus so we leave it running through the night.

I am not familiar with hijackthis, but I am keen to learn. I understand that it produces a report of what is going on but makes no attempt to identify or fix issues. How does one learn to interpret what it spews out?

Does anyone know how to re-install WinXP from the hidden partition on the C (or is it D?) drive on a Dell machine? It has not been cleaned up for 4 years.

Simonta quote "Always difficult to judge experience levels from afar...but, and apologies if you can hear the gnashing of octagenerian gums on avian seed cases,". Well I am not a complete beginner at this although I don't do it enough to keep current. I first built a computer when Physiform and bad sectors were needed to get a disc drive up and running and Win98 was still over the horizon. Since I have been "sysop" around here we have not lost any data to viruses or machine faults. Just this week I threw together a Phenom 955 machine and got it up with a dos boot floppy, I will be putting linux on it. If it can do everything my other half needs then it will be bye bye WinXP......... It ought to be quick enough for a while.

I know that there are many processes launched when windoze launches, is there an easy way to identify the ones that are key to everyday computer use and which can be dispensed with? I have tried gooooogling all of the tasks in the task manager to try to figure out which to kill, there must be an easier way.

Thanks, again, for your interest. Must do some work now, fun though this is.

Till later,

Rans6.....

[Tarq57]

The easiest way to see what is starting with Windows is to look in msconfig.
(Start>Run>msconfig>enter) then look in the startup tab.
Stuff that doesn't absolutely need to run is basically everything except security apps that you don't need.
It is not always a good idea to disable all such entries; they are best configured from the apps' own settings if possible, and some that run as a service are best configured via services, under administrative tools in the control panel. Here's why. (http://www.blackviper.com/AskBV/XP25.htm) At the same site are some seriously interesting instructions (http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm) for tweaking XP.

However, that all may be somewhat irrelevant. It started after upgrading IE8, and was OK before. Does the problem manifest when IE8 is not open?
If not, time to start selectively disabling possible conflicts. I'd start with the linkscanner in AVG, then S&D's teatimer (if active.) If you have the full AVG suite, the windows firewall (or AVG's) should be turned off.

It could be that the extra load required by the new and improved IE has just put the strain required on the camel's back. In which case more RAM is the answer. 512 is getting a bit marginal with todays RAM hungrier apps.
But I suspect something isn't playing well.

[mad_jock]

Well personally.....

If no other solution is apparent.....


Blame Java and try and kill it. Turn scripts off, uninstall it kill it in processes and see if that helps.

[P.Pilcher]

Run MSCONFIG and look at the list of start-up items. Now, Google each of these individually and from the Google report, you can decide whether it is necessary to run this programme on startup or not, if not then untick it. Unfortunately, some startup software bypasses this system and uses a registry entry alone to initiaate its loading and running on startup. Getting rid of these is a little more tricky.
I have had trouble with AVG interfering with Superantispyware in the past so I replaced it with Avast - this stopped the conflict, but I suppose I could just as easily removed Superantispyware and relied on Malwarebytes alone. After all, AVG is supposed to stop spyware as well.
If you want to get into the rescue partition of your hard disc, first make sure that you have at least copied the contents of your documents and settings folders onto a separate folder on your hard drive. (backing them up elswhere is preferable). Then, during boot-up, try repeatedly pushing the function keys - it is often F10 or F12. Your computer instruction manual (if you can remember where you put it) may help, or the manufacturers website might help as well. Once you have got into the partition, re-installing XP is laborious but fairly straightforward. After it has finished updating itself, you then have to re-install all your software -starting with your virus protection.

P.P.

[frostbite]

I have a fairly similar setup to yourself - including the Dell badge on the front.

Last year I decided the 512mb RAM simply wasn't enough, and got 2x1gb sticks from 7dayshop.com for around £35. Proved to be a good investment in terms of speed.

[RPness]

Hi,

It has not been cleaned up for 4 years

This alone is a very good reason for a re-install :-)

Honestly, re-install Windows, dump IE for Firefox (also quite crappy, but the least pain of all browsers imho) and get another 512 MB of Ram (5-10 Euro on Ebay for this machine).

Btw: Celerons are a p*** i* t** a*** - crippled, half defect Intel CPUs sold for profit instead of salvaging...

Kind regards,
Peter

[rans6andrew]

I have been suggesting that she dumps IE but, unfortunately, some of the stuff she does is on a website that only works in IE. The original author is no longer in the scheme of things and nobody has sorted the site operators (er indoors and a couple of others) side out, yet. FF and IE are being used. The customer side of the site is now running with all of the known browsers. In addition to running both browsers, at the same time, she also runs Skype for phone calls and messages and MSN messenger. The joys of being on a website helpdesk and sharing the task with 2 or 3 other people all in geographically dispersed locations. While entering stuff on the website she can be holding messenger conversations with her co-workers and answering Skype calls from customers. it is the equivalent of shouting across the office. The workload is being shared between the XP desktop and an XP laptop which is also beginning to slow down.


Time for a backup and re-install, if only all of "her documents" were in "my documents".

Rans6...

ps the black viper site is very helpful. Going to play with hijackthis as well.

[BOAC]

Have you checked the settings for the page file? With all that drive 'activity' it sounds as if a lot is going to and fro the disk which could go to memeory, although 512mb is a bit skinny.

There are websites that will 'decode' Hijack this for you - it does need care. Certainly in my AVG days I found the linkscanner really did treacle the machine.

[mad_jock]

I wouldn't bother installing 512mb. Find out what the max it can take and put that in if she is running that lot.

And a tickle in the back of my head from a LR tinkering session. Check what size the PSU is.

[BOAC]

rans - your partner could try 'User agent switcher' for FF?

[Keef]

Crawling THAT slowly indicates that something is seriously adrift.

All the above advice looks sound, although to me "wipe and reinstall" is the copout solution: it doesn't identify the cause of the problem, so when it happens again you're back where you started. I'd rather fix it and not reinstall.

Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc all at once. That will start the Task Manager.

If it's not already on the "Processes" tab, click Processes and then click on "CPU" so that the biggest number is at the top (click it again if it isn't).

Look to see what's using lots of CPU. If "System idle" is 70% or more, then click "Memory" and see what are the top users. Anything using more than 150MB is a hog.

[Simonta]

Hi Rans6

The advice on MSCONFIG is good. The reason I use Hijackthis is that it shows some important stuff that starts automatically that MSCONFIG doesn't.

To interpret the log generated is down to experience. Run HJT, view the log and google for anything you don't recognise. You soon learn what's "normal" and what warrants further examination. Feel free to post the result here for a health check but please do read it first as some entries can be embarassing and/or a security risk.

I would also concur with the RAM boost advice. Topping up the RAM is usually the best speed boost you can give a machine if you're not doing heavyweight graphics stuff.

A good(ish) rule of thumb for a pagefile size is 1.5 times RAM so in your case, around 760 Mb. Another speed helper is to set a custom size for it and set minimum and maximum to the same size. This stops Windows from resizing it which can help performance by reducing some fairly intensive disk operations and also reducing disk deframentation. If you have 2 hard disks, set a page file on each one. If you have multiple partitions on a single disk, put the pagefile in the same partition as Windows - swapping partitions is a relatively expensive exercise and with a minimum amount of RAM, as you have, will certainly slow things down.

In your shoes, I would try (in ascending order of ease/cost/payback)

1. Set the page file as above.
2. Defrag the disk(s)
3. Run ccleaner to clear out the rubbish. Caution, if you choose to delete cookies, make sure you know your passwords etc
4. Try a system restore back to a point where you know it ran OK
5. Try the One Off Browser. Firefox can be a resource hog similar to IE and both are fairly crappy. TOOB has a lot of shortcomings but is extremely resource friendly. This would help to eliminate IE8 from the mix
6. Add RAM. Mad_jock is right, if the mobo will take it, put 2gb in, not much point going to 1 gb altough it will make a big difference either way

Hope this helps...

Cheers

[The Flying Pram]

Definitely go for more RAM - 512 is really borderline. I dread to think how much rubbish has built up after 4 years - CCleaner will probably spend several minutes just listing it all! Spybot's "Tea Timer" really slows things down, I've stopped using it as a result. Firefox will soon be using 200-300 k of memory, particularly if you have multiple tabs open. I close and re-open it fairly regularly, and the difference is immediately noticeable. You can run IE through Firefox with the "IE Tab" Add On, if some sites need it.

For what it's worth the laptop I'm currently using was taking a yawning 5 minutes to fully boot up from cold, after 2½ years use - I finally did a clean install with a genuine Windows disc and it now takes little over a minute....In fact it was never this quick even when new, so I'm not keen on using "built in" recovery partitions.

[mad_jock]

I still think that Java might have something to do with it.

I bet its a load of thick clients using java on the web applications.