XP slow...

[Daniel Royer]

Computer is a 3 year old Dell, 1gb ram, XP sp2.
It's been going slower and slower for the past three months (rough
estimation!)
When launching any program it takes ages before it starts running.
HD is defragmented, Avast antivirus on, XP firewall.
I tried stopping Avast (after disconnecting the Internet connection!)
to see if it was the culprit, but to no avail.
Is there anything I could do except reinstalling XP, or worse format
before reinstalling?

Daniel
--
________________________________

Daniel Royer
University of Geneva

________________________________

 

[Thee Chicago Wolf]

Computer is a 3 year old Dell, 1gb ram, XP sp2.

It's been going slower and slower for the past three months (rough
estimation!)
When launching any program it takes ages before it starts running.
HD is defragmented, Avast antivirus on, XP firewall.
I tried stopping Avast (after disconnecting the Internet connection!)
to see if it was the culprit, but to no avail.
Is there anything I could do except reinstalling XP, or worse format
before reinstalling?

Daniel

You could try a defrag or just wait until next week (29th) when SP3 is
released. Should give XP you a good boost.

- Thee Chicago Wolf

 

[Daniel Royer]

You could try a defrag or just wait until next week (29th) when SP3 is
released. Should give XP you a good boost.

- Thee Chicago Wolf

I did several defrags.

Daniel

--
________________________________

Daniel Royer
University of Geneva

________________________________

 

[Harlan]

Is this a laptop?
I had a similar problem awhile ago with a DELL laptop. Ended up being dust
in the fan and heatsink. The CPU was getting too warm and slowing itself
down to keep from self destruction. I ended up having to take the heatsink
off the CPU and cleaning it all up good..... works great after that.

Harlan

 

[Gerry]

Daniel

More information is needed!

Open Disk Defragmenter and click on Analyse. Select View Report and
click on Save As and Save. Now find VolumeC.txt in your My Documents
Folder and post a copy. Do this before running Disk Defragmenter as it
is more informative.

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?

What are your anti-virus and anti-spyware arrangements?

Please post copies of all Error and Warning Reports appearing in
the System and Application logs in Event Viewer for the last boot. No
Information Reports or Duplicates please. Indicate which also appear in
a previous boot.

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.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Big Al]

You could try a defrag or just wait until next week (29th) when SP3 is
released. Should give XP you a good boost.

- Thee Chicago Wolf

This is the 2nd time I've seen you say SP3 will speed things up. Do you
really think so, (obviously you do), but is there any facts behind this.
I thought SP3 was just a wrap up of SP2 and all the updates, which I
have now? Granted there are a few new ones in the SP3, I've read the
spec sheet from MS. But speed?

 

[Thee Chicago Wolf]

This is the 2nd time I've seen you say SP3 will speed things up. Do you

really think so, (obviously you do), but is there any facts behind this.
I thought SP3 was just a wrap up of SP2 and all the updates, which I
have now? Granted there are a few new ones in the SP3, I've read the
spec sheet from MS. But speed?

I've been benchmarking it at my site since build 3244 (and earlier)
and have seen performance improvements. Not huge performance
improvements, but performance improvements nonetheless. Speed has
improved overall. It was consistent with what was reported on
blogspot.com way back in November. Build 3311 seemed to have plateaued
in performance increases but I have no reason to believe build 5512
(RTM) has depreciated since the difference between 3311 and 5508 was
the inclusion addition of HD Audio drivers. What's happened between
5508 and 5511 was likely cosmetic and / or typo fixes.

- Thee Chicago Wolf

 

[Bob I]

It may be your hard drive is being accessed in PIO mode instead of DMA.
(cause is read errors). Look in Device manager at the Primary IDE
channel properties on the Advanced Settings tab. If it has reverted to
PIO from DMA, simply uninstall the channel and then find new hardware to
restore it to DMA.

 

[Thee Chicago Wolf]

I did several defrags.

Daniel

Daniel,

Jumped the gun a bit as after I pressed send I saw that you already
did a defrag. Try giving JKDefrag a shot as it is a lot better than
the default defrag built into XP. JKDefrag is free. And again, XP SP3
is right around the corner.

What is task manager showing as far as system resources go
(Performance tab, Physical Memory, total versus available)? BIOS up to
date? Driver up to date? HD might be getting long in the tooth and the
degradation in performance could be attributed to that.

- Thee Chicago Wolf

 

[Daniel Royer]

* Harlan wrote, On 22/04/2008 15:55:

Is this a laptop?
I had a similar problem awhile ago with a DELL laptop. Ended up being dust
in the fan and heatsink. The CPU was getting too warm and slowing itself
down to keep from self destruction. I ended up having to take the heatsink
off the CPU and cleaning it all up good..... works great after that.

Harlan

desktop!

 

[Daniel Royer]

* Gerry wrote, On 22/04/2008 15:57:

Daniel

More information is needed!

Open Disk Defragmenter and click on Analyse. Select View Report and
click on Save As and Save. Now find VolumeC.txt in your My Documents
Folder and post a copy. Do this before running Disk Defragmenter as it
is more informative.

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?

What are your anti-virus and anti-spyware arrangements?

Please post copies of all Error and Warning Reports appearing in
the System and Application logs in Event Viewer for the last boot. No
Information Reports or Duplicates please. Indicate which also appear in
a previous boot.

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.

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wow!

I'll try to do all this tomorrow. Thanks

Daniel

 

[Daniel Royer]

* Bob I wrote, On 22/04/2008 16:34:

It may be your hard drive is being accessed in PIO mode instead of DMA.
(cause is read errors). Look in Device manager at the Primary IDE
channel properties on the Advanced Settings tab. If it has reverted to
PIO from DMA, simply uninstall the channel and then find new hardware to
restore it to DMA.

I can't find an "Advanced settings " tab in device manager.

Daniel

 

[Bob I]

* Bob I wrote, On 22/04/2008 16:34:

I can't find an "Advanced settings " tab in device manager.

Daniel

Are you looking at the Properties of the "Primary IDE channel"? Unless
of course you have a SATA drive there,

 

[Big Al]

I've been benchmarking it at my site since build 3244 (and earlier)
and have seen performance improvements. Not huge performance
improvements, but performance improvements nonetheless. Speed has
improved overall. It was consistent with what was reported on
blogspot.com way back in November. Build 3311 seemed to have plateaued
in performance increases but I have no reason to believe build 5512
(RTM) has depreciated since the difference between 3311 and 5508 was
the inclusion addition of HD Audio drivers. What's happened between
5508 and 5511 was likely cosmetic and / or typo fixes.

- Thee Chicago Wolf

Thanks. I think I'll take a minute to benchmark my pc's and save the
results before and after. Might be fun to see first hand. It won't
stop me from installation, just a good FYI.

 

[Thee Chicago Wolf]

Thanks. I think I'll take a minute to benchmark my pc's and save the

results before and after. Might be fun to see first hand. It won't
stop me from installation, just a good FYI.

Mind you I did my testing on a clean install of SP2 versus a
slipstreamed SP3 clean install. Your results may vary if you try it
another way.

- Thee Chicago Wolf

 

[Daniel Royer]

* Bob I wrote, On 22/04/2008 16:34:

It may be your hard drive is being accessed in PIO mode instead of DMA.
(cause is read errors). Look in Device manager at the Primary IDE
channel properties on the Advanced Settings tab. If it has reverted to
PIO from DMA, simply uninstall the channel and then find new hardware to
restore it to DMA.

Found it!
I have two entries under Primary IDE channel. One of them lists DMA for
device 0 and device 1, while the second one lists
PIO for device 0 and DMA for device 1. I changed to DMA if available but
it still lists PIO.
BTW I only have one HD.

What do you mean by "hen find new hardware to restore it to DMA."?

Daniel

 

[Phisherman]

Computer is a 3 year old Dell, 1gb ram, XP sp2.
It's been going slower and slower for the past three months (rough
estimation!)
When launching any program it takes ages before it starts running.
HD is defragmented, Avast antivirus on, XP firewall.
I tried stopping Avast (after disconnecting the Internet connection!)
to see if it was the culprit, but to no avail.
Is there anything I could do except reinstalling XP, or worse format
before reinstalling?

Daniel

Run, msconfig. Remove everything in the Startup tab except for Avast.

 

[Daniel Royer]

* Phisherman wrote, On 23/04/2008 13:24:

Run, msconfig. Remove everything in the Startup tab except for Avast.

Done. Didn't help!

Daniel

 

[Bob I]

* Bob I wrote, On 22/04/2008 16:34:

Found it!
I have two entries under Primary IDE channel. One of them lists DMA for
device 0 and device 1, while the second one lists
PIO for device 0 and DMA for device 1. I changed to DMA if available but
it still lists PIO.
BTW I only have one HD.

What do you mean by "hen find new hardware to restore it to DMA."?

Daniel

If it has reverted to PIO from DMA, simply uninstall the channel and
then find new hardware to restore it to DMA.

 

[Daniel Royer]

* Bob I wrote, On 23/04/2008 19:09:

If it has reverted to PIO from DMA, simply uninstall the channel and
then find new hardware to restore it to DMA.

Sorry, but I still don't understand what you mean by "find new hardware
to restore it to DMA".

Daniel