Yet another strange phenom - after using PC a while HD transfers deteriorate drastically

[John]

I wonder if this is related to my hangs I had.

I said I "fixed" the problem with my VIA 333 chipset on an ABIT - had
big problems with various VIAs from KT133a to KT333s on 4 different
MBs. Anyway the random hangs went away with hard use.

But I started testing it with HD tach after I noticed after using the
second PC for awhile the one with the KT333 - things started to bog
down.

My cursor would lag noticeably and performance seemed sluggish.

I tried HDtach and it showed a shocking deterioration in perfomance.
PArt of it was fragmented drive. The graph in HD tach showed bizarre
incredibly numerous spikes in transfer rates downward from the 36-40k
rates down towards zero so often the graph was filled up with these
monsterous jaggies downward and CPU utilization that approached 30-40%
!

After defragging and rebooting it approaches normal with around 10%
CPU util and big spikes here and there but generally smaller spikes
centered around 36-40k with a normal downward trend.

The thing is when I run the PC for a while it seems to bog down and
get worse and worse. Strange. I doubt its temperature related because
if you reboot performance gets back to normal.

Is it some memory leak? Seems something related to Win XP / Highpoint
drivers - some software thing.

You can see it in HD tach as performance bogs down after an hour or
two and the cursor starts lagging. You see huge spikes downward in the
graph down to zero and CPU utilization get really high.

Clearing out the PC by rebooting seems to restore performance.

 

[John]

Forget it .

I just found 5 viruses and a worm infection. ITs amazing that a seldom
used PC I just put together is that infected already.

 

[FuzionMan]

What are you using? If Norton, it's known the miss viruses also...

 

[John]

What are you using? If Norton, it's known the miss viruses also...

Im using the online Trend Micro thing. Its free and up to date.
Yeah Ive got Norton and several others but havent used them lately.


I cleaned my other main PC out and didnt think this one was also
infected.

Trend seems to find most of them as far as I can tell, My PC is
running fine now after I cleaned them out.

IF anyone doesnt have a virus scanner do a search for Trend Micro
online . If you register - theres a free virus scanner.

 

[changed]

IF anyone doesnt have a virus scanner do a search for Trend Micro
online . If you register - theres a free virus scanner.

http://housecall.antivirus.com I believe, and you don't even have to
register.

On a related note, with today's worms that infect unpatched MS systems, it
would be wise to use a hardware firewall (like a cheap Linksys/Netgear
router), at least while you are building/patching the system. I forget the
actual stats, but an unpatched system would be infected within a few minutes
of being exposed to the Internet. Since it takes much longer than that to
patch the system, you are almost guaranteed to be infected before you finish
building.

 

[Phrederik]

Im using the online Trend Micro thing. Its free and up to date.
Yeah Ive got Norton and several others but havent used them lately.

You do realize that by not running a realtime AV program you are doing
yourself and others no favour... Even if you use Trends website every five
minutes, you could still get a virus and slam dozens of PC's between scans.