High latency for user

[Guest]

New computer, bought about 4 months ago. Dell Dimension 3000, 1GB RAM, 80GB
Hard Drive, Windows XP Home SP2.

Worked great for a couple weeks, but then started the following symptom.

Performance started becoming REALLY slow. Nothing to do with hard drive
space or RAM. Instead of booting up in about 30 seconds, started taking 2
minutes. Even after a fresh restart, just clicking on the Start Menu takes a
couple seconds for the menu to appear.

Anything the user does experiences a few seconds delay before anything
changes on the screen. Clicking and dragging objects is almost unworkable.

The weirdest part is that it's not like RAM is used (after a reboot only
about 250MB of the 1GB is used), most of the 80GB hard drive is free space,
and processor or disk intensive tasks like editing a picture in photoshop or
making a copy of a large file seem to work ok, after the initial pause. I
didn't notice a huge difference in the amount of time it took to copy a large
file or do a edit on a large picture. It might have been a little slower.

I have tried doing system restore's, back to a time when I know the computer
was working fine. This usually helps for a few days, and then the
performance returns to being slow, in varying degrees. Sometimes reboots
help a little, but it's a pain in the butt to reboot constantly.

A couple of times a system restore didn't help much, but a checkdisk seemed
to improve the situation. I have run checkdisk and defrag countless times.

The problem seems to be getting worse, not better. After the last system
restore I tried, it ran faster for about a day, and then reverted. I've got
to figure out what the root cause is.

I'm employed as a computer system administrator. I have 50 computers at
work and 3 others at home with no such trouble, so it's not like I'm an
inexperienced user. But this is supposed to be my family's main computer.

I've tried googling, browsing google groups, microsoft newsgroups, and
microsoft KB, with no luck. My biggest problem is that I'm not sure exactly
what to call the issue. Googling for "slow performance" is not very
specific. "High latency" seems to be a better description, but doesn't
google any better.

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[Galen]

In aloregon <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

New computer, bought about 4 months ago. Dell Dimension 3000, 1GB
RAM, 80GB Hard Drive, Windows XP Home SP2.

Worked great for a couple weeks, but then started the following
symptom.

Performance started becoming REALLY slow. Nothing to do with hard
drive space or RAM. Instead of booting up in about 30 seconds,
started taking 2 minutes. Even after a fresh restart, just clicking
on the Start Menu takes a couple seconds for the menu to appear.

Anything the user does experiences a few seconds delay before anything
changes on the screen. Clicking and dragging objects is almost
unworkable.

The weirdest part is that it's not like RAM is used (after a reboot
only about 250MB of the 1GB is used), most of the 80GB hard drive is
free space, and processor or disk intensive tasks like editing a
picture in photoshop or making a copy of a large file seem to work
ok, after the initial pause. I didn't notice a huge difference in
the amount of time it took to copy a large file or do a edit on a
large picture. It might have been a little slower.

I have tried doing system restore's, back to a time when I know the
computer was working fine. This usually helps for a few days, and
then the performance returns to being slow, in varying degrees.
Sometimes reboots help a little, but it's a pain in the butt to
reboot constantly.

A couple of times a system restore didn't help much, but a checkdisk
seemed to improve the situation. I have run checkdisk and defrag
countless times.

The problem seems to be getting worse, not better. After the last
system restore I tried, it ran faster for about a day, and then
reverted. I've got to figure out what the root cause is.

I'm employed as a computer system administrator. I have 50
computers at work and 3 others at home with no such trouble, so it's
not like I'm an inexperienced user. But this is supposed to be my
family's main computer.

I've tried googling, browsing google groups, microsoft newsgroups, and
microsoft KB, with no luck. My biggest problem is that I'm not sure
exactly what to call the issue. Googling for "slow performance" is
not very specific. "High latency" seems to be a better description,
but doesn't google any better.

Any ideas?

Thanks

In all of that you didn't mention malware scanning. If it's a Dell did it
come with some bloated security suite type of product? If so then I don't
recommend them.

Malware Cleaners and Repair:
http://www.kgiii.info/windows/all/general/malwarefix.html

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind,
which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply
there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations." -
Sherlock Holmes

 

[Guest]

You're right. I neglected to mention malware scanning. It came with a
Norton security suite which I went ahead and bought the antivirus
subscription for and which is supposed to have some antispyware
functionality. I am also behind a firewall and have checked for spyware with
Hijack This. I have not found any, so I do not believe it is malware related.

I just got off the phone with Dell and the first thing the lady had me try
was to do a hard drive diagnostic test from the Dell bios. I doubt it had
anything to do with it, but after doing that (the test passed fine) and
letting it reboot, at the moment the system is working great for the first
time in weeks.

It doesn't make sense to me. I'll post back if/when I have additional
trouble.

Thanks for your reply,
Al