Sporadic long pause on application launch

[Jason]

Hi all-

I'm helping to administer a small network of XP machines and could use a few
ideas about diagnosing a sporadic annoyance: from time to time, launching an
application can take 30 seconds or more before showing the slightest sign of
progress. As in:

1 Double-click Firefox 3
2 The arrow+hourglass mouse pointer appears immediately, but no apparent
progress is underway. A quick check of the process list shows that
firefox.exe is not yet running.
<30+ seconds go by>
3 Firefox.exe appears in the process list and loads in the normal few seconds.

The process list shows no significant CPU or network activity during step 2,
and I haven't been able to learn anything interesting using Process Explorer.
The odd delay arises sporadically and is not constrained to FF - it
definitely appears when launching Word XP as well and may appear with other
software. (FF and Word tend to be most frequently used, it's hard make any
strong claims about other software.) Generally, it appears to happen when an
app hasn't been used in a while almost suggesting that it's more frequent
when an app is completely paged out of memory. Very speculative though.

The issue appears on only 2 of the machines on the network, but the 2
machines are very similarly configured and quite old Dell Pentium 4
somethingorothers. XP SP2 is up-to-date, Office XP is up-to-date. They used
to be running some Norton 2008 package and are now running Norton Internet
Security 2009; the issue is the same before and after. Ran all the normal
spyware removal stuff without results.

Finally, I should note these machines also exhibit some other odd behavior -
occasionally the whole UI will fail to register mouse clicks anywhere
(appearing to freeze) although it tracks the mouse pointer properly and
keyboard input works, again for a good maybe 30 seconds - but it's not clear
whether its symptoms of the same problem or soemthing else entirely.

At this point, I could use any and all ideas about how to diagnose what's
going on. Any other tools or techniques you would recommend? It seems clear
the problem won't resolve itself, so we're considering more drastic measure
such as reinstalling XP or just tossing the boxes and getting new ones. (It
seems minor, but a minute delay launching your browser a few times a day adds
up...)

TIA!
Jason

 

[Gerry]

Jason

For one of the computers showing the more extreme symptoms.

What is the CPU and how much RAM does your computer have? Right click on
the My Computer icon on your Desktop and select Properties to get this
information.

Try Ctrl+Alt+Delete to select Task Manager and click the Performance
Tab. Under Commit Charge what is the Total, the Limit and the Peak?

You should be able to gather more information from Task Manager. With
the Processes tab open select View, Select, Columns and check the boxes
before Peak Memory Usage and Virtual Memory size. What are the figures
for the 6 processes using the largest amounts?

Have a look in the System and Application logs in Event Viewer for
Errors and Warnings and post copies here. Don't post any more than 48
hours ago.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer. When researching the meaning
of the error, information regarding Event ID, Source and Description
are important.

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427/en-us

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.


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Hope this helps.

Gerry
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FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
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