Long delay opening files, My Documents

[Guest]

After starting up XP (SP2), it takes a long time (30-60 seconds) to open
files for windows applications or My Documents. This delay generally happens
on the first time only, but it sometimes happens an hour or two later. After
that, the delay is less than one second. I have a 1.2 GHz processor and 512K
RAM and run Symantec AV. I have tried stopping the indexing service and
defragmenting, and even moving many of my files to a CD to cut down on the
number of files, but this doesn't help. I have also tried the diagnostic
startup with minimal services and devices loaded. I have had this problem
for several months. I would appreciate any suggestions!

 

[Jim Lewandowski]

Start Task Manager (right-click taskbar at bottom) and select it. FULLY maximize Task
Manager. Double click on the IMAGE NAME column so it is sorted in alphabetic order. You
will likely be looking at EXPLORER.EXE for this analysis.

Select the PROCESSES tab. Then select VIEW --> SELECT COLUMNS and make sure 'I/O read'
and 'I/O writes' and 'CPU usage' are checked. Now minimize Task Manager (to task bar).

Do your MY DOCUMENTS thing and then quickly click on the TASK MANAGER tile on your task
bar and watch explorer.exe and other processes for EITHER the CPU column or the 2 I/O
columns you just specified. Since it's taking 30-60 seconds, something should catch your
eye.

Report back with your findings.

JL

 

[Guest]

Jim,

Here's what I found when I ran Excel and did file->open. CPU time for
excel.exe was nearly 100% for more than 30 seconds (until the list of files
appeared), but few I/O reads or writes took place. However, I noticed that,
even when the CPU was idle, process lsass.exe was continually doing both
reads and writes, and csrss.exe was continually doing reads, with more than
637,000 in a period of about 8 hours. Don't know if that's normal or not -
I'll check on another computer. Again, the CPU was idle when the reads were
occurring. No other processes were active that I could see. I hope that's
the information you were looking for. I was unable to repeat the behavior
for My Documents, but I'll try again tomorrow and let you know what I find.

Thanks,
John

 

[Jim Lewandowski]

I've also had EXCEL take FOREVER to open the file-selection window (equivalent to My
COMPUTER or My DOCUMENTS). It's strange in that going directly to my computer or my
documents or clicking on any hard drive does NOT have the huge delay I see in EXCEL. Are
you saying FEW I/Os for the EXCEL.EXE process itself when you clicked OPEN (i.e. not
opening a SPECIFIC file but asking for the whole PC)?

Regarding I/Os for lsass and csrss, they always seem to be doing stuff in the background
(I/Os) but they're not going to interfere with your "real" PC work since they don't use
much CPU and it's only a few I/Os every second.

JL

 

[Guest]

I get the same file->open behavior with other Windows applications like Word.
CPU time is >97% for 30 seconds or more, but no I/O's at all. Yes, I am
asking for the whole PC, not a specific file.

I did notice that, on my home computer, there was little I/O activity for
csrss, but my work computer (which has the long delays) is on a Novell
network - that might explain the difference.

John