grinding help

[Guest]

Hi
i have a gateway gt5242e this is what i have on it

amd athion tm 64 4000+ processor
operates at 2.4 ghz
64-bit processor with amd64 technology
2000 mhz fsb 1mb l2 cache
nvidia r geforce tm 6100 chispet c51 dual channel capable
1 gb ddr 533 mhz memory tow 512 mb dimms 160 gb 7200 rpm ide hard drive
16x multi-format double layer dvd+/rw drive
9-in1 digital media reader integrated 10/100 mbps ethenet lan
integrated nvidia geforce 6100 graphics integrated 8 channel 7.1 high
definition audio 56k itu v.92ready fax/modem stero speakers premium keyboard
and usb optical mouse

there is a sticker on it telling me windows vista premium ready pc sometime
it grinds like mad. firedog had it for 2day everthing pass on it. my question
is is vista known to do this?

thank you

 

[pvdg42]

Hi
i have a gateway gt5242e this is what i have on it

amd athion tm 64 4000+ processor
operates at 2.4 ghz
64-bit processor with amd64 technology
2000 mhz fsb 1mb l2 cache
nvidia r geforce tm 6100 chispet c51 dual channel capable
1 gb ddr 533 mhz memory tow 512 mb dimms 160 gb 7200 rpm ide hard drive
16x multi-format double layer dvd+/rw drive
9-in1 digital media reader integrated 10/100 mbps ethenet lan
integrated nvidia geforce 6100 graphics integrated 8 channel 7.1 high
definition audio 56k itu v.92ready fax/modem stero speakers premium
keyboard
and usb optical mouse

there is a sticker on it telling me windows vista premium ready pc
sometime
it grinds like mad. firedog had it for 2day everthing pass on it. my
question
is is vista known to do this?

thank you

If you mean by "grinding" that your PC is constantly accessing the hard
drive, I suspect that one factor is memory. How much of your 1 gig of memory
is your integrated graphics using? How much more is used by startup programs
and/or services that start every time your PC boots up? Are you running
multiple applications concurrently? The combination is using "virtual
memory" (swap space on your hadr disk), ergo the frequent access.
Potential solutions:
1. Get a video card that has it's own dedicated memory. You get back the
memory the 5100 is stealing, and better video performance.
2. Get a second gig of main memory.
3. Do both.

 

[Rod Davies]

Well, as I have previously mentioned, I have a video card with 256mb onboard
memory, and 2.75gb RAM which in "only" ever rated at 33%usage max, yet my
processor is always NOW at 100%, and it wasnt for the first 4 weeks of Vista
use, it WAS at, oh, around 30-50%.... but NOW HARDON at 100% all the time.

So, yes, video card memory AND RAM SHOULD be a measuring stick of sorts, but
it sure doesnt appear to be the be-all-end-all....

All I am rumming is Windows Mail and, presently, Outlook 2007 and the
sidebar....100% usage??

Rgds
Rod
Perth

 

[Adam Albright]

Hi
i have a gateway gt5242e this is what i have on it

amd athion tm 64 4000+ processor
operates at 2.4 ghz
64-bit processor with amd64 technology
2000 mhz fsb 1mb l2 cache
nvidia r geforce tm 6100 chispet c51 dual channel capable
1 gb ddr 533 mhz memory tow 512 mb dimms 160 gb 7200 rpm ide hard drive
16x multi-format double layer dvd+/rw drive
9-in1 digital media reader integrated 10/100 mbps ethenet lan
integrated nvidia geforce 6100 graphics integrated 8 channel 7.1 high
definition audio 56k itu v.92ready fax/modem stero speakers premium keyboard
and usb optical mouse

there is a sticker on it telling me windows vista premium ready pc sometime
it grinds like mad. firedog had it for 2day everthing pass on it. my question
is is vista known to do this?

thank you

Three things to consider...

1. Indexing. I have in excess of 1 million files on my system. When
I first installed Vista the various hard drives were "grinding"
maybe for about 10 minutes. Now at best a few seconds in spurts now
and then. BTW, I have all of my hard drives, nearly 4 TB worth set
to index.

2. Defraging. Vista will do this automatically left to it's own
devices. How long it takes depends on the size of your drives and
how badly they need to be defraged. I use a third party application
and set it and forget it. Then it grinds away when I'm away from
the computer and it don't bug me.

3. Housecleaning. All versions of Windows will "do stuff" in the
background when the system isn't busy. This can cause your hard
drives to grid away then also.

None of the above are serious or any indication anything is wrong. IF
it is limited to short periods. Any drive grinding away hours on end
indicates something is probably wrong. One common reason is a lot of
stuff is getting paged out between your memory and hard drive in
virtual memory. If you system is really taxed this can cause your hard
drives to grind away almost non stop anytime you push your computer to
do anything. This generally indicate either you don't have enough
memory for what you typically do, some setting is wrong somewhere or
your hard drives are REALLY badly fragemented. The usual symptom on
top of the hard drives griding away is your system is very sluggish.

 

[Adam Albright]

Yep, Vista is a resouce hog. You really need at least 2 Gig Ram for ok
performance. More the better since you have DDR instead of DDR2 memory.
Only other thing you can do to help is cut as much overhead as possible
by not running so much at startup.

Shawn

I can't agree. I probably push my system as hard or harder than
anybody always doing high intensity tasks, always multitaksing and I
only have 1 GB of RAM and my system flys along, rarely uses more than
60% of memory.

 

[Adam Albright]

Well, as I have previously mentioned, I have a video card with 256mb onboard
memory, and 2.75gb RAM which in "only" ever rated at 33%usage max, yet my
processor is always NOW at 100%, and it wasnt for the first 4 weeks of Vista
use, it WAS at, oh, around 30-50%.... but NOW HARDON at 100% all the time.

So, yes, video card memory AND RAM SHOULD be a measuring stick of sorts, but
it sure doesnt appear to be the be-all-end-all....

All I am rumming is Windows Mail and, presently, Outlook 2007 and the
sidebar....100% usage??

Spend some time with Event Viewer (in Control Panel under
administrative) and see what is bugging Vista. Sometimes it could be
one of the informational notes that Vista logs that points to what's
wrong even though it doesn't crash the application or system. This can
cause huge amounts of resources to be dribbled away.

A common missconception is to only worry about applications you know
are running. To see ALL that's really running, go to Task Manager,
Performance Tab, then click on Resource Monitor then finally click on
the arrow to expand each of the primary categories, to see ALL of what
Windows is up to. Eye opening if you've never done it before.

You can also type in 'system' under the Start button search, then
under Software Env. expand to see running tasks. Another eye opening
experience and a far better indicator of what's really running.

Even when your system isn't doing much in the way of running
applications, there could be 40 or more processes running, each taking
up resources.

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Rod

Have you taken a look in Task Manager to see which process is pegging the
CPU usage?

Have you checked the event viewer for any errors?

 

[Rod Davies]

As I wrote my last post Adam, my CPU mter dropped to between 4 and 27% usage
and has since stayed there. I'll check out the areas you mention below.

Tks for response

Rgds
Rod
Perth