On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 05:00:02 -0700, pcampo
I am running windows xp media center edition, I have 1024mb - 200gigs and the
computer is not even a year old. Problem? it runs so slow online and offline.
It freezes up alot too. The only way to get thru it is to restart.
Most significant (and also quite likely) causes are:
- failing HD
- overheating system
A failing HD slows down a PC as follows...
<selfpaste>
Hard drives can fail progressively (bad sectors) or abruptly (e.g.
burned-out logic chip, motor failure, catastrophic failure of heads
and/or actuator, etc.). When hard drives fail progressively, it
typically starts with multiple attempts required to access disk.
At first, the number of such retries may be below the threshold at
which attempts are abandoned and/or the HD's firmware steps in to
"fix" the sector. At this stage, SMART may show no anomalies (even in
the detail), but the extra retries increase time spent by the HD and
thus slow things down.
When the retries become excessive, SMART starts flagging them as
errors, and may attempt to "fix" the bad sectors by copying info to a
good spare sector, and then altering the hard drive's private sector
addressing to use the new sector. All of this is still below the OS
file system's "bad cluster" management, or "disk fail" alerts, but the
extra head travel involved can make the slowdown palpable.
At some point, Windows XP may detect "too many" failures and start to
reduce the UDMA level, all the way down to PIO. Once you hit PIO, you
will notice a more significant slowdown because now the processor is
intimately involved with all HD data transfers. Couple that with
increased retries, and you really feel the pain!
As the number of errors recorded in SMART's detail increases, the
counters may drop below the acceptability threshold, tilting the SMART
summary from "OK" to "Fail". BIOS can monitor this SMART summary
status during POST, although the default is usually to disable this;
if enabled, then at this stage POST may start reporting the HD to be
"bad" according to SMART, "fast" HD diags (that simply read SMART
summary) will flag the HD as bad, and the HD vendor will generally
accept the HD as defective and issue an RMA if under warranty.
Something else may happen before or after this stage; attempts to
access HD may fail to the point that the HD's internal defect
management can no longer hide the problem. This sets a flag in the
file system that will cause all volumes on that physical HD to be
surface-scanned for errors when XP next boots; in addition, NTFS will
try to do what the HD's internal defect management has already failed
to do, i.e. copy the bad sector's contents elsewhere. The difference
is that once the OS "sees" the defect, it is flagged as such within
the affected file system - it's no longer hidden under the OS.
You may also get a patchy pattern of slowdown, if a single area of
disk is significantly damaged (e.g. after a head strike). This may
map to particular files, causing major slowdown only when those files
are invoked, but not otherwise. "Just re-installing Windows" may
appear to fix this if the process happens to locate affected files
elsewhere, e.g. further "up" the volume, but etc.
</selfpaste>
Sorry if the above is a bit technical; the short version is that if
your mouse pointer "sticks" while the HD activity LED is full on, and
keystrokes are delayed during this time, then you should suspect the
above cause of your slowdown and chase accordingly.
An overheating PC can cause the processor to slow down or stop in
order to protect itself, and can cause lockups and resets as well.
In contrast, bad RAM crashes at full speed
Bad HD can be lethal to your data and software installation, which is
why you should manage that possibility first. Overheating can cause
crashes that can corrupt the file system and lose data etc. too.
Few other things cause a massive slowdown; CMOS set to disable CPU L1
and/or L2 cache is one, and no pagefile at all may present as another
(more likely to crash or error, though). The above wouldn't cause
lockups with no error messages, however.
Other things can cause mild to moderate slowdown along with errors,
crashes and lockups include bad software (e.g. malware, or multiple
resident av scanners, etc.) and nags for attention from LAN or other
peripheral attachments (try without those).
If Safe Mode is faster, then the cause is very likely to be software,
or if not software, then extra processing instigated from off the PC
by things that "wake up" software suppressed in Safe Mode.
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