Superfetch causing performance issues at boot

[Adam]

Hello,

I've got a real problem with a PC running Vista Ultimate. It's a Duo Core 2
with 3Gb DDR2, so should be fine running Vista.

After much playing with the system, I've discovered that the problem appears
to be the Superfetch service. Basically it keeps my hard drive at 100% for
several (5 or 10) minutes after boot, resulting the the PC being very, very
slow. This also happens if the PC comes out of stand-by, which is very
annoying.

Temporarilly I've simply disabled Superfetch, which has cured my problem,
but this is obviously not ideal. Does anyone have any ideas what's going
on, or has anyone seen the same problem?

FYI, I'm also running Vista on a simalar spec PC, and that one runs fine.
The only difference is that the PC running slowly was upgraded from XP,
where-as the other one was bought with Vista pre-installed (and yes, I know
that a clean install is always perferable, but I didn't have time at the
time - I may well wipe and reinstall the slow PC, but I'd rather not do that
if at all possible).

TIA,
A.

 

[LaRoux]

This is probably more a function of your disk I/O than CPU or RAM. What
type(s) of disk drives are in the slow system?

 

[Adam]

This is probably more a function of your disk I/O than CPU or RAM. What
type(s) of disk drives are in the slow system?

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure. I know that it's SATA though. The machine
itself is a Dell XPS 210, which is only about 6 months old.

Disk speed was also my first thought, and if I was running an old IDE I
could understand it, but it's not a slow system generally.

A.

 

[Steve Thackery]

That's strange, isn't it? Superfetch is obviously supposed to speed up your
application launches by preloading a lot of the commonly used files into
RAM.

If it's flattening your processor for 5 or 10 minutes after boot there must
be a bug in there, somewhere, I would think.

I realise this is of no help, but my system is of similar spec to yours and
doesn't have this problem. There is quite some disk activity after boot,
but it doesn't adversely affect responsiveness at all. It must be a bug in
the Superfetch code which your particular set up is exposing.

Thack

 

[Adam]

That's strange, isn't it? Superfetch is obviously supposed to speed up
your application launches by preloading a lot of the commonly used files
into RAM.

If it's flattening your processor for 5 or 10 minutes after boot there
must be a bug in there, somewhere, I would think.

I realise this is of no help, but my system is of similar spec to yours
and doesn't have this problem. There is quite some disk activity after
boot, but it doesn't adversely affect responsiveness at all. It must be a
bug in the Superfetch code which your particular set up is exposing.

Yes, it is odd. CPU usage is fine which Superfetch is running, it's disk
activity which is killing my system. My hard disk "Vista performance
rating" is 5.4, so it's resonably quick.

My machine which Superfetch runs fine on is a laptop (XPS M1210), and the
disk is actually slower, so although it 'feels' like a disk access problem,
I don't think it is.

I may well just wipe the machine and reinstall when I get a spare moment.

It's annoying because as you say, Superfetch should speed things up, not
slow things down!

A.

 

[LaRoux]

The only other thing that comes to mind is if there is a problem with the
drive. It may be doing a lot of retries and remaps which can kill your disk
performance but since it's all handled by the drive's electronics, there
aren't any indications that there is a problem within the OS, just a huge
slowdown.

I don't know if Dell includes anything that will let you look at disk drive
level hard and soft errors, but if you have such a thing, see if the numbers
are climbing.

 

[Adds]

The only other thing that comes to mind is if there is a problem with the
drive. It may be doing a lot of retries and remaps which can kill your
disk performance but since it's all handled by the drive's electronics,
there aren't any indications that there is a problem within the OS, just a
huge slowdown.

I'm pretty sure the drive is okay. It certainly sounds okay, and I don't
notice any performace issues elsewhere. In fact, since stopping the
Superfetch service, it's been running nice and quick.

I think I'll just reinstall Vista at some point - I haven't found anyone
else with the same problem.

A.