Need Help With Major Computer Slowdown!

[Guest]

For the past couple of weeks my computer (AMD Athlon 1.3 Ghz, 1 GB RAM) has
slowed down dramatically for some unknown reason. I know a 1.3 Ghz CPU isn't
that fast these days but until just recently it's worked just fine for all of
my needs, including playing video files, streaming video, etc. For example,
I click on an appli-
cation and it takes maybe two minutes before the application opens, if at
all. To get to this web site, it took two minutes for my browser (IE or
Firefox) to come up.

I've checked for the usual things such as viruses, adware fragmented hard
drive, insufficient virtual memory. Prior to this happening I didn't install
any new software or hardware. Sometimes, but not always, it seems that the
problem gets worse the longer the computer is on. Earlier this evening I was
able to author two DVDs but then things just slowed down so much I couldn't
even open the video files needed to do the DVD authoring.

I've observed that most of the time when the slowdown occurs the CPU % is
quite low, say 2% to 5%. This evening, however, with all applications
closed, I noticed that at one point the CPU usage was consistently between
90% to 100% and the hard drive light was on steadily. Not sure what was
going on. I also noticed that at times explorer was using huge amounts of
the system memory, in excess of 800 MB (out of a total of 1 GB). At the
moment it's using only 27.6K which is about normal. One final thing that
I've noticed is that in the column "CPU" (not CPU%) the numbers for System
Idle Process and explorer usually add up 100 or very close to that. Not sure
what that column is measuring but thought I'd include that info.

Didn't mean to have such a long post but wanted to include as much
information about the problem as I could. I'm at a loss as to what's going
on. Would appreciate any help anyone can give.

 

[Gerry]

Is the computer left on 24/7?

I would monitor pagefile usage to see how reliant the system is on
virtual usage.

Use page file monitor to observe what is the peak usage. Start it to run
immediately after start-up and look at the log. Pagefilemon takes
snapshots. You need to run it at the beginning of the session at then
run it again at intervals throughout the sessions. The log is Pagefile
log.txt. If you right click on the file in Windows Explorer and select
Send to, Desktop (Create Shortcut). The same applies to
XP_PageFileMon.exe.

A small utility to monitor pagefile usage:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

Note programs using undo features, particularly those associated with
graphics and photo editing, require large amounts of memory so if you
use this type of programme check these first observing how the page
usage increases when they start and whether the usage decreases when you
close the programme.


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Guest]

Hi Gerry,

And thanks for giving me a clue where to look for the problem. I think you
hit the nail on the head as far as the page file usage being the problem.
When I open some of my video programs, the page file usage jumps from around
230 MB to as high as 1.8 GB! And that doesn't change when I close the
program. When I had Nero Vision Express open earlier PF usage was as
indicated. At that point the available physical memory was less than 5000K!
No wonder everything slows to a crawl. The question is why would this
suddenly happen a couple of weeks ago and what can I do about it. I have a
ton of video work to do but I can't do it with the computer in its present
state.

 

[Gerry]

If you could close a programme and the pagefile usage does not fall back
to what it was before you opened the programme you potentially have a
memory leak. This could be your problem judging by the contents of this
link:
http://www.google.com/search?tab=gw&hl=en&lr=&q="Nero Vision Express" memory leak

You need to research further based on the actual versions of the
software you are using. In particular see if there are driver updates
available.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~