Windows Vista Ultimate x64 slower then syrup on a cold day-Help pl

[David Manvell]

OK was running Windows XP x64 and installed Windows Vista Ultimate x64 and
this thing is so slow I can barely use it.

I have 2 high speed scsi drives, 6 gigs of ram, a 64 bit computer and the 64
bit os installed. Two dual core Xeon processors each running at 3.2Ghz (So 4
processors). My video card cost me $1800 and is a NVIDIA Quadro FX 3400.

This thing should be flying yep I can barely drag windows around and this is
with the bare OS installed with no software yet.

Could use some help. Any suggestions or FAQs to figure out why it is in slow
motion?

 

[Kerry Brown]

It is likely a driver causing the problem. Fortunately Vista keeps very
detailed logs and has some good troubleshooting tools to help find where the
performance bottleneck may be.

The first thing to do is open the Task Manager and make sure it's not caused
by some program hogging the CPU. System Idle Process should be in the 90's.
If it's not what are the next highest processes?

Next open Performance Information and Tools. Just start typing performance
in the Start search box then click on Performance Information and Tools when
you see it in the list. It should be there after you type four or five
letters. In the Windows Experience Rating with that system I'd expect
everything to be 5 or above. If it's not you may need to look at the driver
for the item that is low. On the left click on Advanced Tools. Sometimes
Windows will list performance problems at the top of this screen under
Performance Issues. If nothing is listed there you have to work through the
tools looking for clues as to what is causing the poor performance. It can
usually be found in the first tool, View performance details in Event log,
but it can sometimes be hard to decipher. Usually going through all the
tools will give you enough clues to figure out where the problem is.

 

[David Manvell]

One of the processes is sort of high. It's called csrss.exe. There are
actually two of them listed, the second one is around 20%. 18.4K used Client
Server Runtime. Any idea what that belongs to?

David

 

[Dustin Harper]

It is a required Windows service:
http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/csrss/

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

One of the processes is sort of high. It's called csrss.exe. There are
actually two of them listed, the second one is around 20%. 18.4K used
Client
Server Runtime. Any idea what that belongs to?

David

Take a look at the page.. not all instances of csrss are benign..

http://www.auditmypc.com/process/csrss.asp

 

[Kerry Brown]

That is a legitimate windows process most of the time. It can be malware in
some cases. Make sure it is the legitimate Microsoft file in the
\windows\system32 folder. In the task manager click on the View menu then
View Columns then scroll down to Command line and put a check mark in the
box. On my system csrss.exe has nothing in the Command line column. There
are two instances running most of the time. If it has nothing or
C:\windows\system32 it's likely legit. If it's legit I'm not sure why it
would be using so much CPU time. It could be driver related as I think
csrss.exe processes graphics commands among other things.

 

[mkek]

High CPU utilization in csrss.exe could be caused be running simple programs
doing console output.
This situation could be true, if MS ProcessExplorer, Properties of
csrss.exe, Threads will show a high usage of the
csrss.exe!CsrValidateMessageString function.

////
if somebody wants to reproduce this on Windows 2K/XP/vista/2008:
Download Visual Studio 2005 Express (or use an existing C compiler on the
system). Write hello2.c with the following content. Compile (cl.exe /O2
hello2.c) and run. The CPU utilization will grow between 25 und 80 % in
csrss.exe.

// start of hello2.c
#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
while (0 == 0)
printf("Hello World - this causes high CPU util. in
CsrValidateMessagString of csrss.exe\n");
return 0; // never reached, program must be stopped with ctrl-C or close
window
}
// end of hello2.c

////
Programs with console output could be used in CGI scripting, for exaple to
generate large tables. In this case it is wise to migrate to LINUX+apache.