Benchmarking speed

[billurie]

My XP/SP2 has slowed down and I'd like to actually benchmark
its speed.....anybody refer me to some tools? I've done most
of the obvious things....defrag, remove all old clutter,
chkdsk, but when it takes two hours for a simple Norton Utilities
virus scan of one operating system, and an hour for step 4
of the chkdsk run before the OS actually loads and desktop
appears, I think something is broke and needs fixing.

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Bill

Have you run any anti-spyware?.. SpyBot, Adaware, SpywareBlaster?.. if you
haven't, do it now.. you might also want to run Ewido's online scan..

http://www.ewido.net/en/ .. it is abeta scan, and there is a warning with
it, but I have had no problems running it on mine or any of my client
computers..

Do yourself another favour and dump Norton Utilities.. regardless of claims
made by Symantec, NU is a scourge..

Benchmarking will serve no useful purpose..

 

[billurie]

Thanks, Mike. FYI, I run SPYBOT frequently, and it almost always finds
just the same three nuisances that I wish I could find a way to
block. I also have Microsoft's Anti-Spyware Beta running....

I have been using Norton NSW and its predecessors for as long
as NU was available, and they are truly a royal pain, not to
use but to install and keep working without maddening error
messages. But they've kept me virus and worm-free for so many
years, I hate to dump them. And getting instructions from them
always leads to pages and pages of print-outs and in many cases
incorrect as well as inadequate instructions. But the inertia
of scrubbing them off and replacing them is mighty hard to
look forward to.

I'll try the rest of your advice.....and thanks again.

Bill L.

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Bill

Dump MS Anti-spyware..download and run Adaware and SpywareBlaster.. SpyBot
is not enough on it's own

Adaware SE - http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

SpywareBlaster - http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html..

Norton Utilities is invasive and will help slow your system down.. it is
best removed and forgotten.. the Symantec site should have removal
instructions if Add/Remove does not eliminate it..

Get a free anti-virus program..

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5 or
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

 

[Gerry Cornell]

How much RAM memory? Try Ctrl+Alt+Delete to select Task Manager and
click the Performance Tab. What is the Total, the Commit Charge and the
Peak?

You may check on pagefile (virtual memory) usage with Page File Monitor for
XP:
http://www.dougknox.com/

If you get anything much more than 20 / 30 mb virtual memory usage you
need to add RAM memory. The system uses virtual memory for a
limited number of tasks rather than RAM memory.

Make sure you study the readme.txt file carefully to ensure you get the
utility to work as it should.

Have you installed any "memory boosters" ?

How large is your hard drive? Is it partitioned? How much free space on each
drive / partition? How is the drive / partition formatted -FAT32 or NTFS? To
get this information, whilst in Windows Explorer, place the cursor on each
drive in turn, right click and select Properties.

I have recently dumped Norton Anti-Virus in favour of AVG 7 ( freeware ) and
Norton Personal Firewall for the Windows Firewall. If your system is
struggling
then a similar change would definitely help with your performance. I do not
agree with Mike Hall regarding Microsoft Anti-Spyware.

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[billurie]

Here's what Task Mgr reports:

Totals: Handles 9701 Threads 626 Processes 46
Commit Charge(K): Total 255936 Limit 2398164 Peak 301016

Phys Mem: Total 1015280 Available 662344 SysCache 513764

Kernel Mem: Total 54816 Paged 30452 Non-paged 24364

It looks like there's enough of everything to spare,
but how do I know? One would think that a Meg of RAM ought to
suffice, and it always did until this recent noticeable
slowdown, with no changes in anything that I'm aware of.

I would have thought that since chkdsk/r runs only during boot-up,
before any of my own applications are loaded, that it would
perforce have all the resources it needs. Correct me if I'm
wrong in that line of thinking. Of course, while it's running
chkdsk, there's nothing, but nothing, I can do except time it.

Thanks for sticking with me on this.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

William

Try PageFile Monitor. This is a better indicator but memory is
most likely not the problem. It just needs to be eliminated.

What about these questions?

How large is your hard drive? Is it partitioned? How much free space on each
drive / partition? How is the drive / partition formatted -FAT32 or NTFS? To
get this information, whilst in Windows Explorer, place the cursor on each
drive in turn, right click and select Properties.

What is your CPU speed?

Please look in the System and Application logs in Event Viewer for Warning
and Error Reports over the last 2 days use and post copies here.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Administrative Tools, and
Event Viewer. When researching the meaning of the error, information
regarding Event ID, Source and Description are important.

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308427&sd=tech

Part of the Description of the error will include a link, which you should
double click for further information. You can copy using copy and paste.
Often the link will, however, say there is no further information.
http://go.microsoft.com/fw.link/events.asp
(Please note the hyperlink above is for illustration purposes only)

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Double click the button and close Event
Viewer. Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body
of the message. This will paste the info from the Event Viewer Error
Report complete with links into the message. Make sure this is the first
paste after exiting from Event Viewer.


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FCA

Stourport, Worcs, England
Enquire, plan and execute.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please tell the newsgroup how any
suggested solution worked for you.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[billurie]

William

Try PageFile Monitor. This is a better indicator but memory is
most likely not the problem. It just needs to be eliminated.

What about these questions?

How large is your hard drive?

HD is 80GB, there are 6 partitions, all NTFS, but only one
Active Primary. The others are Logical, drive images taken
at various times in the past year.

Is it partitioned?
Yes
How much free space on each

drive / partition?

Master partition, containing this OS, is 12 GB in size, with
9 GB in this OS and 3 GB to spare.
How is the drive / partition formatted -FAT32 or NTFS? To

get this information, whilst in Windows Explorer, place the cursor on each
drive in turn, right click and select Properties.

What is your CPU speed?

CPU is about 2 GHz...Nice stable AMD Athlon.

Please look in the System and Application logs in Event Viewer for Warning
and Error Reports over the last 2 days use and post copies here.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Administrative Tools, and
Event Viewer. When researching the meaning of the error, information
regarding Event ID, Source and Description are important.

I went there, Gerry, for the first time. There is an awful lot in
3 categories, a few pages, but all the 'events' are dated 2003.
That is, except a few that seem to be dated in year 2021. I can do
Copy and Paste but do you really want to see them, and which ones?
Surely not from 2 to 4 years ago, and the 2021 I don't dig at all.

What next???

WBL

 

[Gerry Cornell]

William

Well that's quite unexpected.

To clear an event log
1.. Open Event Viewer.
2.. In the console tree, click the log you want to clear.
3.. On the Action menu, click Clear all Events.
4.. Click Yes to save the log before clearing it.
Click No to permanently discard the current event records and start
recording new events.

Notes

a.. To open Event Viewer, click Start, click Control Panel, click
Performance and Maintenance, click Administrative Tools, and then
double-click Event Viewer.
b.. You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the
Administrators group to clear an event log.
c.. After you clear a log, only new events will appear in the log.
d.. If you select Do not overwrite events (clear log manually) in the
Properties dialog box of an active log, you must periodically clear the log
either when the log reaches a certain size or when a message notifies you
that the log is full.
e.. You cannot clear archived logs; instead, delete the archived log file.
Let's see if we can get a log with todays date.


--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[billurie]

Gerry, I gather that it is your intent that I clear out all
the ancient history from my Event Viewer and then accumulate
some new Events over the next few days. I shall attempt to
do that.

I saved your attached .GIFs and shall print them out
to see what they tell me. I presume they will augment thinstrutions. It
is now 2300 here and time to break off for the night.

By the way, I juggled partition size so that I now have
6 GB of unused space in the Active partition......and
chkdsk still took an hour to go through Step 4...

Bill L.

 

[billurie]

Gerry, I have proceeded to find and clear out all
three folders showing in Event Viewer, did a defrag,
and chkdsk/r ....... which took the usual full hour
in its fourth step. The it rebooted, and I checked
my e-mail, and went again to Event Viewer. Two of the
three folders have a page or so of new events recorded.
Would you like me to highlight, copy and paste them
into a message for you to examine? Thanks for your
continued support across the pond.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Bill

Yes but only those from a single reboot and no more than a dozen please.

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[billurie]

Bill

Yes but only those from a single reboot and no more than a dozen please.

I've sent them to you "off list", Gerry, but will await your
acknowledgement of receipt and further advice here.

 

[billurie]

Bill

Yes but only those from a single reboot and no more than a dozen please.

Gerry, I see that my "off group" transmission to you
failed, wrong address. I don't think that I can attach them
here, so please view them at

http://bellsouthpwp.net/b/i/billurie/evapp1.evt

http://bellsouthpwp.net/b/i/billurie/evsys1.evt

 

[billurie]

Gerry, I see that my "off group" transmission to you
failed, wrong address. I don't think that I can attach them
here, so please view them at

http://bellsouthpwp.net/b/i/billurie/evapp1.evt

http://bellsouthpwp.net/b/i/billurie/evsys1.evt

Gerry.....while waiting I did some more research.
I powered down and replaced the hard drive with
an identical drive, on which the OS is another
clone from the same Master, perhaps 10 days older.
Some of the applications were out of date, but it really
should perform exactly like the other clone.

I powered up and immediately asked for chkdsk/r which
made it restart. During the restart, it ran chkdsk
and this time it ran in one fourth of the time of the
drive which you and I have been discussing. Same
motherboard, same BIOS, essentially identical 80 GB
Western Digital drive, partitioned the same.

This was my own form of a benchmark, to compare a suspect
drive with another. Again, now, I await your advice.

Bill Lurie

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Bill

The logs reveal no problems save one.

For Event ID: 1517 download and install the User Profile
Hive Cleanup Service
Download details: User Profile Hive Cleanup Service
http://snipurl.com/5b61

UPHClean v1.5e readme.txt
http://snipurl.com/ko8m

It can speed up Shutdown.

When you run chkdsk do you run Disk CleanUp to remove
temporary internet files and to empty the Recycle Bin first.
That helps.

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[billurie]

Thank you, Gerry. Yes, I regularly do Defrag and
Disk Cleanup before chkdsk. I'll take my files off
my website now (space limitation), and this
evening I shall follow further advice. Yes, I
had noticed shutdown being a bit slow.....but
a 4:1 difference in speed of chkdsk is a more
serious difference to try to negotiate.
Bill L.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Bill

But I never need to run chkdsk , except once every six months if that.

Have you looked at HD Tune?
Try HD Tune (freeware). Download and run it and see what it turns up.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Select the Info tabs and place the cursor on C:\ under Drive letter
and then double click the two page icon ( copy to
Clipboard ) and copy into a further message.

Select the Health tab and then double click the two page icon ( copy to
Clipboard ) and copy into a further message.

Also do a full surface scan with HD Tune.

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[billurie]

Bill

But I never need to run chkdsk , except once every six months if that.

Have you looked at HD Tune?
Try HD Tune (freeware). Download and run it and see what it turns up.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Select the Info tabs and place the cursor on C:\ under Drive letter
and then double click the two page icon ( copy to
Clipboard ) and copy into a further message.

Select the Health tab and then double click the two page icon ( copy to
Clipboard ) and copy into a further message.

Also do a full surface scan with HD Tune.

Gerry:
I thank you for all your referrals. HD Tune downloaded
and ran and I got Max. Transfer Rate of 3.1 MB/second.
Intuition tells me this is slow, but I'll have to study
their readme(s) to find out what to do.

I see Copy to Clipboard but I haven't figured out
how to actually do it. Perhaps I'll be less foggy
in the morning.

The Hive Cleanup, I fear, led me where no man (at least
nbot I) can go beyond. I clicked, I downloaded, I tried to
validate, and as so often happens, I couldn't proceed. I
keep getting in deepper and deeper and all I see is trees,
I can't find the forest.

Bill L.

 

[billurie]

Gerry:
I thank you for all your referrals. HD Tune downloaded
and ran and I got Max. Transfer Rate of 3.1 MB/second.
Intuition tells me this is slow, but I'll have to study
their readme(s) to find out what to do.

I see Copy to Clipboard but I haven't figured out
how to actually do it. Perhaps I'll be less foggy
in the morning.

The Hive Cleanup, I fear, led me where no man (at least
nbot I) can go beyond. I clicked, I downloaded, I tried to
validate, and as so often happens, I couldn't proceed. I
keep getting in deepper and deeper and all I see is trees,
I can't find the forest.

Bill L.

It is now morning and further reflection, Gerry, is
telling me that I am getting deeper and deeper into
areas which do not seem to be specific enough to be
directly pertinent to the problem. There are times
when the cure is worse than the problem. In this case I
believe that my insistence on recent clones as backup
offers the best workaround. It won't tell me why this
OS/HD are slow, but it will get me up to speed.

What I do is copy several important folders to CD (mail,
scans, snail mail correspondence, FAXes), and
then switch to a clone and update it. The ex-master
gets deleted and a new clone created.......

Normally, as a scientist, I prefer to know why the
malfunction occurred, and to actually fix it. But
being more practical, and thoughtful of your time
also, Gerry.....I think I'll 'chicken out' on the
actual repair. Thanks for your earnest efforts.

Bill Lurie