Agonizingly Slow File Access

[Bruce]

Hi,

My machine is a Dell Dimension 4550 (4/03) running WinXPHome (SP2, kept
updated, etc), 2.4gHz, 1024MB RAM, 60GB master with 28% free space, 80GB
slave with 55% free space, DVD-ROM, DVD +/- RW. I run a real-time virus
scanner, and check for malware with AdAware, Spybot S&D, and HijackThis.
Occassionally, I run online scanners such as Trend and Panda. I've never
had problems with viruses or malware. I check my task manager and
msconfig start up tab for suspicious processes. I do general
housekeeping, such as defrag and disk cleanup fairly often.

My CPU usage is generall low, and is currently 2 to 5%. Nonetheless,
I've got this problem:

I don't know when this began, or if it's been creeping up on me slowly
and it finally reached the threshhold where I notice it, but access to
many, if not all, file types now takes a long time on my machine.

I first noticed it when doing a right click to get the properties of a
file on my desktop. It takes up to eight seconds for the right-click
menu to drop down. Right clicks on other desktop items, such as program
shortcuts, file folders, or system folder icons (My Computer, Recycle
Bin, My Network Places) immediately produce the right-click menu.

If I open a desktop folder and do a right click on a file, it's again
slow. The same thing happens with Windows Explorer. Right clicks on
individual files takes a long time to produce the right-click menu, but
right clicks on folders, etc, immediately produces results.

If I double left click on an mp3 file to launch and play it with WMP, it
takes eight seconds. This is true even if WMP is already running. If I
launch WMP by openning WMP itself, WMP opens instantly.

The same thing happens when I double left click on a jpg to launch
Microsoft Picture It!. It's slow to open, but if I just lauch the
application, it also opens instantly.

All of this tells me that it's the system taking a long time to recognize
the file's attributes, not programs that are slow to launch.

I've got a new 160GB Seagate that's been sitting around for a while,
unopened. Maybe it's time to clean install that as the new master, move
the current master to the slave position to transfer data from. I'm
tempted to do this due to this slowdown that I can't diagnose, but I'd
rather not at this time if I don't have to. Everything else is fine, and
I like the way I'm set up.

Anyone have any ideas why file access is so slow?

Sincerely,
Bruce

 

[kurttrail]

Hi,

My machine is a Dell Dimension 4550 (4/03) running WinXPHome (SP2,
kept updated, etc), 2.4gHz, 1024MB RAM, 60GB master with 28% free
space, 80GB slave with 55% free space, DVD-ROM, DVD +/- RW. I run a
real-time virus scanner, and check for malware with AdAware, Spybot
S&D, and HijackThis. Occassionally, I run online scanners such as
Trend and Panda. I've never had problems with viruses or malware. I
check my task manager and msconfig start up tab for suspicious
processes. I do general housekeeping, such as defrag and disk
cleanup fairly often.

My CPU usage is generall low, and is currently 2 to 5%. Nonetheless,
I've got this problem:

I don't know when this began, or if it's been creeping up on me slowly
and it finally reached the threshhold where I notice it, but access to
many, if not all, file types now takes a long time on my machine.

I first noticed it when doing a right click to get the properties of a
file on my desktop. It takes up to eight seconds for the right-click
menu to drop down. Right clicks on other desktop items, such as
program shortcuts, file folders, or system folder icons (My Computer,
Recycle Bin, My Network Places) immediately produce the right-click
menu.

If I open a desktop folder and do a right click on a file, it's again
slow. The same thing happens with Windows Explorer. Right clicks on
individual files takes a long time to produce the right-click menu,
but right clicks on folders, etc, immediately produces results.

If I double left click on an mp3 file to launch and play it with WMP,
it takes eight seconds. This is true even if WMP is already running.
If I launch WMP by openning WMP itself, WMP opens instantly.

The same thing happens when I double left click on a jpg to launch
Microsoft Picture It!. It's slow to open, but if I just lauch the
application, it also opens instantly.

All of this tells me that it's the system taking a long time to
recognize the file's attributes, not programs that are slow to launch.

I've got a new 160GB Seagate that's been sitting around for a while,
unopened. Maybe it's time to clean install that as the new master,
move the current master to the slave position to transfer data from.
I'm tempted to do this due to this slowdown that I can't diagnose,
but I'd rather not at this time if I don't have to. Everything else
is fine, and I like the way I'm set up.

Anyone have any ideas why file access is so slow?

When was the last time you defrag, and are you running Norton products?

--
Peace!
Kurt
Self-anointed Moderator
microscum.pubic.windowsexp.gonorrhea
http://microscum.com/mscommunity
"Trustworthy Computing" is only another example of an Oxymoron!
"Produkt-Aktivierung macht frei"

 

[Bruce]

big snip

When was the last time you defrag, and are you running Norton products?

Hi, Kurt,

Last defrag was a few days ago, and not much activity since. This
phenomenon occurs even immediately after a defrag.

Nope, absolutely no Norton products for me. Ever. I've run McAfee Virus
Scan Online (just the scanner, no other 'suite' products) for four years
and have been happy with it. I just tried with the scanner disabled, and
it makes no difference.

Sincerely,
Bruce

 

[Kerry Brown]

Hi,

My machine is a Dell Dimension 4550 (4/03) running WinXPHome (SP2, kept
updated, etc), 2.4gHz, 1024MB RAM, 60GB master with 28% free space, 80GB
slave with 55% free space, DVD-ROM, DVD +/- RW. I run a real-time virus
scanner, and check for malware with AdAware, Spybot S&D, and HijackThis.
Occassionally, I run online scanners such as Trend and Panda. I've never
had problems with viruses or malware. I check my task manager and
msconfig start up tab for suspicious processes. I do general
housekeeping, such as defrag and disk cleanup fairly often.

My CPU usage is generall low, and is currently 2 to 5%. Nonetheless,
I've got this problem:

I don't know when this began, or if it's been creeping up on me slowly
and it finally reached the threshhold where I notice it, but access to
many, if not all, file types now takes a long time on my machine.

I first noticed it when doing a right click to get the properties of a
file on my desktop. It takes up to eight seconds for the right-click
menu to drop down. Right clicks on other desktop items, such as program
shortcuts, file folders, or system folder icons (My Computer, Recycle
Bin, My Network Places) immediately produce the right-click menu.

If I open a desktop folder and do a right click on a file, it's again
slow. The same thing happens with Windows Explorer. Right clicks on
individual files takes a long time to produce the right-click menu, but
right clicks on folders, etc, immediately produces results.

If I double left click on an mp3 file to launch and play it with WMP, it
takes eight seconds. This is true even if WMP is already running. If I
launch WMP by openning WMP itself, WMP opens instantly.

The same thing happens when I double left click on a jpg to launch
Microsoft Picture It!. It's slow to open, but if I just lauch the
application, it also opens instantly.

All of this tells me that it's the system taking a long time to recognize
the file's attributes, not programs that are slow to launch.

I've got a new 160GB Seagate that's been sitting around for a while,
unopened. Maybe it's time to clean install that as the new master, move
the current master to the slave position to transfer data from. I'm
tempted to do this due to this slowdown that I can't diagnose, but I'd
rather not at this time if I don't have to. Everything else is fine, and
I like the way I'm set up.

Anyone have any ideas why file access is so slow?

Sincerely,
Bruce

What shows up in the context menu when right click on the slow files? It
could be something that's installed there. I ran into a similar problem. The
customer had just purchased a Kodak camera and the software for it was
causing a problem when right clicking on some types of graphics files.

Kerry

 

[kurttrail]

big snip


Hi, Kurt,

Last defrag was a few days ago, and not much activity since. This
phenomenon occurs even immediately after a defrag.

Nope, absolutely no Norton products for me. Ever. I've run McAfee
Virus Scan Online (just the scanner, no other 'suite' products) for
four years and have been happy with it. I just tried with the
scanner disabled, and it makes no difference.

Yeah. Sounds like you know what your doing, I would just make doublely
sure that the indexing service is turn off, before dealing with moving
to the new harddrive.

I'd also try to disable all non-OS related startup software and
services, one by one, to see it any thing like that may be causing the
slowdown.

--
Peace!
Kurt
Self-anointed Moderator
microscum.pubic.windowsexp.gonorrhea
http://microscum.com/mscommunity
"Trustworthy Computing" is only another example of an Oxymoron!
"Produkt-Aktivierung macht frei"

 

[Alpha]

Have you run a thorough surface scan and disc analysis program? Sometimes
this symptom indicates hard errors on the disc.

 

[R. McCarty]

Check -
System Event Log for Red Icons (Errors)
IDE Channel (Advanced) - Make sure drive is running at
UDMA 4 or higher
From Command Prompt Chkdsk C: - Check results to see
a more comprehensive /F is recommended (Errors).
Run a disk benchmark program to verify it's overall operation
is at expected levels. (Try DiskSpeed32, for a quick analysis).

 

[Bruce]

Yeah. Sounds like you know what your doing, I would just make doublely
sure that the indexing service is turn off, before dealing with moving
to the new harddrive.

I'd also try to disable all non-OS related startup software and
services, one by one, to see it any thing like that may be causing the
slowdown.

Yep, I tried turning off indexing, but no joy. Hmmm, perhaps time to try
what you suggest.

Bruce

 

[Rock]

Hi,

My machine is a Dell Dimension 4550 (4/03) running WinXPHome (SP2, kept
updated, etc), 2.4gHz, 1024MB RAM, 60GB master with 28% free space, 80GB
slave with 55% free space, DVD-ROM, DVD +/- RW. I run a real-time virus
scanner, and check for malware with AdAware, Spybot S&D, and HijackThis.
Occassionally, I run online scanners such as Trend and Panda. I've never
had problems with viruses or malware. I check my task manager and
msconfig start up tab for suspicious processes. I do general
housekeeping, such as defrag and disk cleanup fairly often.

My CPU usage is generall low, and is currently 2 to 5%. Nonetheless,
I've got this problem:

I don't know when this began, or if it's been creeping up on me slowly
and it finally reached the threshhold where I notice it, but access to
many, if not all, file types now takes a long time on my machine.

I first noticed it when doing a right click to get the properties of a
file on my desktop. It takes up to eight seconds for the right-click
menu to drop down. Right clicks on other desktop items, such as program
shortcuts, file folders, or system folder icons (My Computer, Recycle
Bin, My Network Places) immediately produce the right-click menu.

If I open a desktop folder and do a right click on a file, it's again
slow. The same thing happens with Windows Explorer. Right clicks on
individual files takes a long time to produce the right-click menu, but
right clicks on folders, etc, immediately produces results.

If I double left click on an mp3 file to launch and play it with WMP, it
takes eight seconds. This is true even if WMP is already running. If I
launch WMP by openning WMP itself, WMP opens instantly.

The same thing happens when I double left click on a jpg to launch
Microsoft Picture It!. It's slow to open, but if I just lauch the
application, it also opens instantly.

All of this tells me that it's the system taking a long time to recognize
the file's attributes, not programs that are slow to launch.

I've got a new 160GB Seagate that's been sitting around for a while,
unopened. Maybe it's time to clean install that as the new master, move
the current master to the slave position to transfer data from. I'm
tempted to do this due to this slowdown that I can't diagnose, but I'd
rather not at this time if I don't have to. Everything else is fine, and
I like the way I'm set up.

Anyone have any ideas why file access is so slow?

Sincerely,
Bruce

Slow Right Click
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/slowrightclick.htm

 

[Bruce]

What shows up in the context menu when right click on the slow files?
It could be something that's installed there. I ran into a similar
problem. The customer had just purchased a Kodak camera and the
software for it was causing a problem when right clicking on some
types of graphics files.

Kerry

Hi, Kerry,

Nothing unusual appears in the context menu. Depending on what the file
(or folder is), just the normal OS commands appear. For instance, a jpg
gives Preview, Edit, Print, Open With, Scan for Viruses, Send To, Cut,
Copy, Create Short Cut, Delete, Rename, Properties. No applications
appear (except the Scan for Viruses).

Bruce

 

[Bruce]

Check -
System Event Log for Red Icons (Errors)
IDE Channel (Advanced) - Make sure drive is running at
UDMA 4 or higher
From Command Prompt Chkdsk C: - Check results to see
a more comprehensive /F is recommended (Errors).
Run a disk benchmark program to verify it's overall operation
is at expected levels. (Try DiskSpeed32, for a quick analysis).

Here's my DMA settings:

Primary Channel:
Device 0 (Master HD)
Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Current Transfer Mode: UDMA Mode 5
Device 1 (Slave HD)
Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Current Transfer Mode: UDMA Mode 5

Secondary Channel:
Device 0 (DVD-ROM)
Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Current Transfer Mode: UDMA Mode 2
Device 1 (DVD/-+RW)
Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Current Transfer Mode: UDMA Mode 2

The DVD-ROM did revert to PIO once, but I reset it via the registry.

Thanks for the other advice about a possible hard drive problems. I'll look
into that.

Bruce

 

[NotMe]

I have seen this behavior when an antivirus program is set to scan every
file 'on access'.
It seemed like the machine had been fed molasses in February!

 

[Bruce]

Slow Right Click
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/slowrightclick.htm

Rock,

The article in the link above mentioned that the cause could be a context
menu that points to an application that's located on a networked machine.

I decided to disable my NIC, and my right click now functioned normally on
all files. I could even open jpgs, which were previously slow to open, and
mpgs, which were slow to load up even if WMP was already running. If I
enabled the NIC, the problem came back.

I donwloaded RegScanner, and looked in HKCR for anything pointing to "\\".
I found plenty that pointed to two machines that were wipped clean a while
ago. I will delete these lines in the registry, and see if this helps.

I'm not sure why this happened, as I couldn't log on to these machines,
since they no longer existed. In addition, I've done clean installs on
remote machines before, renaming them, and this had not happened.

But...let's see what happens when I delete these lines this time.

Thanks,
Bruce

 

[Rock]

Rock,

The article in the link above mentioned that the cause could be a context
menu that points to an application that's located on a networked machine.

I decided to disable my NIC, and my right click now functioned normally on
all files. I could even open jpgs, which were previously slow to open, and
mpgs, which were slow to load up even if WMP was already running. If I
enabled the NIC, the problem came back.

I donwloaded RegScanner, and looked in HKCR for anything pointing to "\\".
I found plenty that pointed to two machines that were wipped clean a while
ago. I will delete these lines in the registry, and see if this helps.

I'm not sure why this happened, as I couldn't log on to these machines,
since they no longer existed. In addition, I've done clean installs on
remote machines before, renaming them, and this had not happened.

But...let's see what happens when I delete these lines this time.

Thanks,
Bruce

Great Bruce, good troubleshooting and thanks for posting back - it will
help others.

 

[Bruce]

Rock,

The article in the link above mentioned that the cause could be a
context menu that points to an application that's located on a
networked machine.

I decided to disable my NIC, and my right click now functioned
normally on all files. I could even open jpgs, which were previously
slow to open, and mpgs, which were slow to load up even if WMP was
already running. If I enabled the NIC, the problem came back.

I donwloaded RegScanner, and looked in HKCR for anything pointing to
"\\". I found plenty that pointed to two machines that were wipped
clean a while ago. I will delete these lines in the registry, and see
if this helps.

I'm not sure why this happened, as I couldn't log on to these
machines, since they no longer existed. In addition, I've done clean
installs on remote machines before, renaming them, and this had not
happened.

But...let's see what happens when I delete these lines this time.

Thanks,
Bruce

There was a total of three machines no longer on my network (they had been
reparted, clean installed, and renamed a while ago), and I deleted all of
the registry values on this machine that pointed to them. The right click
is now in perfect working order, even when my NIC is enabled.

Thanks to all that responded.

Sincerely,
Bruce

 

[Kerry Brown]

There was a total of three machines no longer on my network (they had been
reparted, clean installed, and renamed a while ago), and I deleted all of
the registry values on this machine that pointed to them. The right click
is now in perfect working order, even when my NIC is enabled.

Thanks to all that responded.

Sincerely,
Bruce

Glad you got things working again. Thanks for updating us.

Kerry

 

[Guest]

Can anyone suggest what to do if a left click is agonizingly slow to open a
file (4 minutes), but opening the application first, then the file, opens the
file instantaneously?