Recent CRITICAL UPDATE causes disk thrashing

S

Stephan Golux

Hi.

I am still on SP1, for various reasons having used the Microsoft
Sanctioned method of using the registry to put off the need to upgrade
to SP2 for several months.

Using Windows XP.

Yesterday, there were a set of three XP critical updates and one IE 6
critical updates. They were called "security updates". I applied them
like a good doobie.

Since their application, even after subsequent reboots, my computer (on
which I have not changed the configuration in any other way) seems to be
thrashing on both CPU and disk usage. After reboot, but when no
applications are running, the disk hits at least once every couple of
seconds, and the cooling fan, which used to turn on only when the
computer was working really hard on disk or CPU is just running
continuously. The power consumption is higher too, it is a laptop and
used to run for 90 minutes or so on battery and that has been cut in half.

Looking at task manager, I can't see an obvious culprit. System Idle
Process is getting 98% of the CPU, with the other two percent mostly
swapping back and forth between the task manager itself and "explorer".
Explorer, just sitting there, does seem to be generating two or three
page faults every couple of seconds though, which seems weird. I don't
think it used to do that before this critical update.

It just doesn't seem right. Any ideas on how to tweak/fix this?

-stephan
 
H

Hans-Georg Michna

I am still on SP1, for various reasons having used the Microsoft
Sanctioned method of using the registry to put off the need to upgrade
to SP2 for several months.

Using Windows XP.

Yesterday, there were a set of three XP critical updates and one IE 6
critical updates. They were called "security updates". I applied them
like a good doobie.

Since their application, even after subsequent reboots, my computer (on
which I have not changed the configuration in any other way) seems to be
thrashing on both CPU and disk usage. After reboot, but when no
applications are running, the disk hits at least once every couple of
seconds, and the cooling fan, which used to turn on only when the
computer was working really hard on disk or CPU is just running
continuously. The power consumption is higher too, it is a laptop and
used to run for 90 minutes or so on battery and that has been cut in half.

Looking at task manager, I can't see an obvious culprit. System Idle
Process is getting 98% of the CPU, ...

Stephan,

check the computer thoroughly for spyware, adware, and viruses.

Hans-Georg
 

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