Windows seems slow recently, sound stutters etc.

[Baron]

There don't seem to be anything unusual, I am quite familiar with
what it usually looks like. I even killed off a few things.
I will try uninstlling ubuntu now.

Incidently Ubuntu is on drive f: not c:

Ubunto won't make any difference ! Its not running inside windows !

 

[Lord Turkey Cough]

I don't know what has happened but it is running like a dog.
It takes longer to boot up seemingly.
It seems to other performance probs too, the mouse pointer is 'sticky'
and it stutters playing music, or maybe video but it is very noticable on
sound.
Even when the cpu is 'idle' supposedly. There seems to be a mismatch
between
the cpu usage bar in the system tray and the cpu in task manager, but that
my be
due to delays betwen the two perhaps.

I have been mesing about with it recently, I installed ubuntu to my second
drive.
I aslo took the page file off that drive, but I have put it back now - not
difference,
does it need a reboot to take effect?

I also opened the multi channel sound manager, I have never used that
before
but was curious, I don't recall making any changes.

I also installed the latest AVG free, I have the link scanner diabled now.
I killed off most/all of the avg stuff and that seemed to make no
difference.

I had also been transfering data off another drive by putting it on as
slave,
I got the jumper setting wrong a few times resulting in error, and no
boot,
but when I got the setting right it was OK.

One of the drives I tried was dead previously in another machine, I tried
in this this one to see it it was justthe other machine it would not work
in.
(it seems a gonna).

I also put in a network card (ethernet 10/100) which I thought was
dead, it didn't seem to show up in device manager so I took it out.

Another thing I did was to change my conection from the computer to
cable modem from USB to ethernet port.

Some of this involved using the network set up wizard.

This always seems to finish with an error (unspecified)

Any ideas chaps?

Could be a lot of red herrings there, I will try and undo a lot of the
'stuff'
I have done.

It's not too bad really but music sounds bad with stuttering, so
noticable.

Any ideas diognostics?

Windows XP SP2 on sempron 3000 1.2 gig ram, 80 and 250 gig drives
25 and 85 gig free respectively.

Ah Ha I might be getting somewhere, I was running SiSoft Sandra to bench
mark my drivers, the second drive tested in about 5 mins, reasonable
results.
HOwever the first driver, the one with XP on was running for 15mins and then
came up with a mesage the driver is too fragmented or something like that,
and
to defrag.
I will have to do that. When I have time.
I am also worried about the drives 'health' I am not sure if I can hear it
'ticking'.
Anyway I need the computer now so I can't defrag yet.

 

[Paul]

My system came with winidows pre-installed, so I have
no windows disk as such. However it does have a recovery
partition on the disk, and at start up there is some sort of
option to enter 'recovery or roll back' or something like that,
I can't remember the exact wording.

I am not sure what this does.
I also burnt a recover disk a while back, over a year.

I am not sure what is involved in this, I guess it just restores windows
and its drivers back to an older state?
What state is that? Last boot up? I would need to go back several
days or more, would that be possible?

I guess I will have to try that at some stage anyway.

I am also woondering if the disk is 'getting faulty'?
I will have a go at running benchmarks on that, but last time
I tried it just kind of hung for over 10 minutes and did not appear to
be doing anything, I killed it offf as I needed he comp,
Will try again later.

The recovery partition will "blow away" the C: drive. It
doesn't do something like a repair install, and instead
just replaces the whole thing. You'd lose your data files
if you did that (so back them up, if you're going to try it).

You can download a disk diagnostic, from the web site of the
manufacturer who made the disk. If the disk is screwed, you'll
get a diagnostic code which basically tells you the drive is
bad.

Another thing to check, is the SMART statistics. But I don't
know how to read them, so even if you posted the SMART
values from the drive, I couldn't make sense of them.

If you buy a new disk, again, the web site of the disk manufacturer,
will have a tool for moving the data from the old drive, to the
new hard drive. I don't know if the recovery partition is
handled properly by such utilities or not.

If the HDTune benchmark won't run, it probably means there is a
bad spot in the drive somewhere. A surface scan looking for errors,
could well run into the same kind of trouble.

One way or another, you need to backup your data, just in case.
A new drive is a good place to try it.

Paul

 

[Onsokumaru]

Ah Ha I might be getting somewhere, I was running SiSoft Sandra to bench
mark my drivers, the second drive tested in about 5 mins, reasonable
results.
HOwever the first driver, the one with XP on was running for 15mins and
then
came up with a mesage the driver is too fragmented or something like
that, and
to defrag.
I will have to do that. When I have time.
I am also worried about the drives 'health' I am not sure if I can hear it
'ticking'.
Anyway I need the computer now so I can't defrag yet.

You can defrag and still use the computer.

You might try running chkdsk to see if there are any bad sectors.

Get HD Tune, look at health tab and run a scan, or get SpeedFan and click
SMART, select drive and click perform in depth analysis. This will give you
some info on what the data means and what is important.

You could have a drive developing bad sectors, or you have picked up some
malware, though usually malware can be spotted under running processes in
task mamager.

If you suspect the drive is sick, back up you data. Better would be to make
a disk image so you can just replace the HDD and restore the image and get
back to where you were quickly.

 

[Paul]

Ah Ha I might be getting somewhere, I was running SiSoft Sandra to bench
mark my drivers, the second drive tested in about 5 mins, reasonable
results.
HOwever the first driver, the one with XP on was running for 15mins and then
came up with a mesage the driver is too fragmented or something like that,
and
to defrag.
I will have to do that. When I have time.
I am also worried about the drives 'health' I am not sure if I can hear it
'ticking'.
Anyway I need the computer now so I can't defrag yet.

Defragmentation should only be done on a healthy disk. It involves
moving a lot of data around, which increases the odds of damaging
something or losing files. You'd want to surface scan the disk
first, and see if it is clean. Based on what you've indicated
so far, I would not defrag it.

The next time you try the test, write down exactly what the error
message was. It might be complaining about errors, or the length
of time it is taking the disk to respond.

I'm thinking backups are the way to go right now, before you lose
something.

Paul

 

[Lord Turkey Cough]

Ah Ha I might be getting somewhere, I was running SiSoft Sandra to bench
mark my drivers, the second drive tested in about 5 mins, reasonable
results.
HOwever the first driver, the one with XP on was running for 15mins and
then
came up with a mesage the driver is too fragmented or something like
that, and
to defrag.
I will have to do that. When I have time.
I am also worried about the drives 'health' I am not sure if I can hear it
'ticking'.
Anyway I need the computer now so I can't defrag yet.

Hmm... I just noticed my page file is on the C: drive.
I used to have it on a seperate drive F: but before I installed ubuntu to
it. I put it back on C: which needs defragging.
Anyway it's back on F: now (seems quiter, maybe cos there is no fragnmented
swap file).

I set C: to no swopfile, and put one on F: however I am not sure if c:
will use the one on f: or manage without. I have 1.25 gig of ram, thats a
lot
for my usage, it should not need the swopfile anyway.

 

[Lord Turkey Cough]

You can defrag and still use the computer.

On win98 it would say data changed restarting.....

You might try running chkdsk to see if there are any bad sectors.

Yes where wiould that be error checking in disk management properties tools?

Get HD Tune, look at health tab and run a scan, or get SpeedFan and click
SMART, select drive and click perform in depth analysis. This will give
you some info on what the data means and what is important.

Will have a look.

You could have a drive developing bad sectors, or you have picked up some
malware, though usually malware can be spotted under running processes in
task mamager.

If you suspect the drive is sick, back up you data. Better would be to
make a disk image so you can just replace the HDD and restore the image
and get back to where you were quickly.

Yes I was worried myself.
I have 109gig free in F: the drive is only 80gig so I can fit the lot on.
Will take a while though. It took an age to copy accross 700meg, a CD worth.

There is definately something wrong.Should I defrag or back up first?
I think I will defrag over night I don't think my PC will be usable with any
major
operations going on. Eeven copying that 700 meg screwed up my online poker
game
somewhat, made me miss my turn sometimes!!

 

[Lord Turkey Cough]

Defragmentation should only be done on a healthy disk. It involves
moving a lot of data around, which increases the odds of damaging
something or losing files. You'd want to surface scan the disk
first, and see if it is clean. Based on what you've indicated
so far, I would not defrag it.

The next time you try the test, write down exactly what the error
message was. It might be complaining about errors, or the length
of time it is taking the disk to respond.

I'm thinking backups are the way to go right now, before you lose
something.

I was thinking similar, but I think that means too over night runs
unless I can schedule one after the other.
My comp wil lbe pretty unusable with them going on in the back ground.
(In it's current condition).

 

[Lord Turkey Cough]

The recovery partition will "blow away" the C: drive. It
doesn't do something like a repair install, and instead
just replaces the whole thing. You'd lose your data files
if you did that (so back them up, if you're going to try it).

You can download a disk diagnostic, from the web site of the
manufacturer who made the disk. If the disk is screwed, you'll
get a diagnostic code which basically tells you the drive is
bad.

Another thing to check, is the SMART statistics. But I don't
know how to read them, so even if you posted the SMART
values from the drive, I couldn't make sense of them.

If you buy a new disk, again, the web site of the disk manufacturer,
will have a tool for moving the data from the old drive, to the
new hard drive. I don't know if the recovery partition is
handled properly by such utilities or not.

If the HDTune benchmark won't run, it probably means there is a
bad spot in the drive somewhere. A surface scan looking for errors,
could well run into the same kind of trouble.

One way or another, you need to backup your data, just in case.
A new drive is a good place to try it.

OK I have a good drive F: it is 250 gig. So the (c 80 gig drive will
easilly fit on it.
What I would like to do is copy C: onto F: so that I can boot from F:
That kills two birds with one stone as F: was recently defragged.

The C: drive is actually partitioned into C: and D: (the recovery
partition).

C: and F: are both NTFS formatted. D: is FAT32.

Can I copy C: to F: so that F: is bootable?
Note ther is some other data I wish to keep which is already on F:
so I don't want to overwrite that.

 

[Lord Turkey Cough]

Some of my boot time, is all the screwing around the AV does.
My system would boot a bit faster, if it didn't have an antivirus
program scanning stuff at startup.

It is going to be tough to figure out what is upsetting the audio.
Start by looking at the Task Manager, because there may be an
obvious thing you added recently, and seeing the software
names listed, might remind you of what was added.

Another thing that can mess up the audio, is if the hard drive
is operating in polled mode, instead of in "DMA if available"
mode. In polled mode, the processor moves the data from the
disk to system memory, and that can be quite a bit slower.
And add enough latency, to make audio skip. A disk can
switch to polled mode, if Windows detects too many errors
coming from the disk.

Thanks!!!

That sorted it out (eventually), should havel ooked at it earlier but I had
so many ideas going through my mind, I though that probably won't
work at the time.

It was whilst I was backing up my data I realised it was going to take
forever at the pace it was doing it, so I though I would give it a shot.
I kind of realised that the kind of thrashing the disk was taking whilst
backing up meant it must be in pretty good shape, so it was probably
something
else.
The disk I/O thing made sense, I don't understand it all but it was clear
that
disk access was part of the problem somehow.
I had to install SP3 wich took forever, then that didn't work, but there was
a work around
thing which required loads of rebbots.

Anyway it seems to be sorted now so many many thanks for your help.

I wish I could say the same thing to microsoft however.

I blame them 100% for the trouble they have given me.

What I think of them is not printable here.

Anyway I guess I backed up some of my data, ableit at a painfully slow pace.

 

[Lord Turkey Cough]

I don't know what has happened but it is running like a dog.
It takes longer to boot up seemingly.
It seems to other performance probs too, the mouse pointer is 'sticky'
and it stutters playing music, or maybe video but it is very noticable on
sound.
Even when the cpu is 'idle' supposedly. There seems to be a mismatch
between
the cpu usage bar in the system tray and the cpu in task manager, but that
my be
due to delays betwen the two perhaps.

I have been mesing about with it recently, I installed ubuntu to my second
drive.
I aslo took the page file off that drive, but I have put it back now - not
difference,
does it need a reboot to take effect?

I also opened the multi channel sound manager, I have never used that
before
but was curious, I don't recall making any changes.

I also installed the latest AVG free, I have the link scanner diabled now.
I killed off most/all of the avg stuff and that seemed to make no
difference.

I had also been transfering data off another drive by putting it on as
slave,
I got the jumper setting wrong a few times resulting in error, and no
boot,
but when I got the setting right it was OK.

One of the drives I tried was dead previously in another machine, I tried
in this this one to see it it was justthe other machine it would not work
in.
(it seems a gonna).

I also put in a network card (ethernet 10/100) which I thought was
dead, it didn't seem to show up in device manager so I took it out.

Another thing I did was to change my conection from the computer to
cable modem from USB to ethernet port.

Some of this involved using the network set up wizard.

This always seems to finish with an error (unspecified)

Any ideas chaps?

Could be a lot of red herrings there, I will try and undo a lot of the
'stuff'
I have done.

It's not too bad really but music sounds bad with stuttering, so
noticable.

Any ideas diognostics?

Windows XP SP2 on sempron 3000 1.2 gig ram, 80 and 250 gig drives
25 and 85 gig free respectively.

Tia

Many thanks to Paul for sorting this out for me. (see my previouly dated
post in thread).

No thanks to Microsoft for causing the mess in the first place.

 

[Baron]

Lord Turkey Cough Inscribed thus:

Even copying that 700 meg screwed up my online
poker game somewhat, made me miss my turn sometimes!!

If you are using CC data or Internet banking, I would back any data I
didn't want to loose and then Nuke & Pave !

You have no idea what may be hiding in the dark nooks an crannies of you
machine.