Menu Delay Question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ric Kaysen
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Ric Kaysen

I have an HP M490M system with a 3.2 gHz P4 and 1.5 gB of pc3200 DDR ram.
The vid card is an nVidia GeForce FX5600. I notice an inconsistent delay
when trying to access menus from the start button ie: Start>All
Programs>Microsoft>Word. Each time there is an annoying lag with a blank
grey box that eventually gets populated with the apps. It's only 2 or 3
seconds but, as I said, annoying. I thought when I recently upgraded from
512 of ram to 1.5 gB, it would fix this, but it persists. I don't have a top
of the line system, but I figured it would be fast enough that I shouldn't
see this. Also, when opening Internet Explorer, there is a long...long wait
for the program to initialize, but it might just be IE. Any suggestions
would be greatly appreciated...TIA.
 
Ric Kaysen said:
I have an HP M490M system with a 3.2 gHz P4 and 1.5 gB of pc3200 DDR
ram.
The vid card is an nVidia GeForce FX5600. I notice an inconsistent
delay
when trying to access menus from the start button ie: Start>All
Programs>Microsoft>Word. Each time there is an annoying lag with a
blank
grey box that eventually gets populated with the apps. It's only 2 or
3
seconds but, as I said, annoying. I thought when I recently upgraded
from
512 of ram to 1.5 gB, it would fix this, but it persists. I don't have
a top
of the line system, but I figured it would be fast enough that I
shouldn't
see this. Also, when opening Internet Explorer, there is a long...long
wait
for the program to initialize, but it might just be IE. Any
suggestions
would be greatly appreciated...TIA.
Click to expand...

Get TweakUI from Microsoft's downloads. It has a setting to configure
the menu popup delay. This is a fixed setting and irrelevant to how
much memory you have installed.
 
Ric Kaysen said:
I have an HP M490M system with a 3.2 gHz P4 and 1.5 gB of pc3200 DDR
ram.
The vid card is an nVidia GeForce FX5600. I notice an inconsistent
delay
when trying to access menus from the start button ie: Start>All
Programs>Microsoft>Word. Each time there is an annoying lag with a
blank
grey box that eventually gets populated with the apps. It's only 2 or
3
seconds but, as I said, annoying. I thought when I recently upgraded
from
512 of ram to 1.5 gB, it would fix this, but it persists. I don't have
a top
of the line system, but I figured it would be fast enough that I
shouldn't
see this. Also, when opening Internet Explorer, there is a long...long
wait
for the program to initialize, but it might just be IE. Any
suggestions
would be greatly appreciated...TIA.
Click to expand...

Check to see if any processes running are using the cpu, open task
manager and click on processes, click on the cpu heading, this will sort
the running processes into highest first. Investigate any that are
using a high percentage of the cpu.

Check for Ad/Spyware using AdAware, SpybotSD etc., IE taking a long time
to initialise could point to some form of malware being present.

Update your drivers especially video drivers.

Maybe run a benchmark like Sandra to help identify any slow or
misconfigured areas in your system.
 
_Vanguard_ said:
Get TweakUI from Microsoft's downloads. It has a setting to configure
the menu popup delay. This is a fixed setting and irrelevant to how
much memory you have installed.
Click to expand...

I too would have suggested this, but the OP describes a grey box in
place of the start menu, this together with IE taking a while to load
indicates a problem rather than it requiring a menu timing tweak.
 
Thanks for the reply. Trying to keep my post from being long winded, I
omitted some useful info. I try to run an efficient system...no silly
screensavers or themes. I use Spybot and Adaware to regularly clean out
spyware even though I never download junk. I routinely defrag and have
nothing in the startup folder. There are no apps draining processor
resources. The biggest user is Norton AntiVirus, but I can't imagine being
online without it.
 
Ric Kaysen said:
Thanks for the reply. Trying to keep my post from being long winded, I
omitted some useful info. I try to run an efficient system...no silly
screensavers or themes. I use Spybot and Adaware to regularly clean
out
spyware even though I never download junk. I routinely defrag and have
nothing in the startup folder. There are no apps draining processor
resources. The biggest user is Norton AntiVirus, but I can't imagine
being
online without it.
Click to expand...

Your choice of AV is your decision, but I never recommend Norton, it is
a resource hog and can be a bitch to remove completely.

Check for any conflicts in device manager, including the hidden ones
(device manager - view - show hidden devices). Update drivers, (poss
directx too), if you're already using the very latest display drivers
try going back to the previous version. Check the application and
system event logs, check for unnecessary services running and set them
to manual.

Good info here on what services you actually need (XP and 2000), as
apposed to what M$ thinks you need;
http://www.blackviper.com/
 
I appreciate the input. I have heard about NAV being a system hog, but have
always relied on it and NIS. Do you have another recommendation?
 
Ric Kaysen said:
I appreciate the input. I have heard about NAV being a system hog, but
have always relied on it and NIS. Do you have another recommendation?
Click to expand...

I would try everything else I outlined first, that's the cheapest way to
go ;-)
Then remove Norton and try a trial version of something else, as I
mentioned it can be a pain to remove all traces of it.

AV
I recommend (and use) Kaspersky, either Personal Pro, or Personal, it's
not really a cheap solution, Pro ~£50 with annual licence renewal of
~£39, but it has one of the best detection rates if not the best.

I also recommend AVG free, which IMHO offers equal or better protection
to Norton.

Firewall
Probably Zonealarm free will do an equally good job to NIS, there are
better ones (Google for reviews).

How old is the install? I find things slowing after around 6 months and
re-install, but then again I do try lots of software.
 
Control Panel|System|Advanced|Performance

Turn down some of the special effects and see if that speeds things up. If
you determine what is causing the lag then you can crank it back up.
 
I have an HP M490M system with a 3.2 gHz P4 and 1.5 gB of pc3200 DDR ram.
The vid card is an nVidia GeForce FX5600. I notice an inconsistent delay
when trying to access menus from the start button ie: Start>All
Programs>Microsoft>Word. Each time there is an annoying lag with a blank
grey box that eventually gets populated with the apps. It's only 2 or 3
seconds but, as I said, annoying. I thought when I recently upgraded from
512 of ram to 1.5 gB, it would fix this, but it persists. I don't have a top
of the line system, but I figured it would be fast enough that I shouldn't
see this. Also, when opening Internet Explorer, there is a long...long wait
for the program to initialize, but it might just be IE. Any suggestions
would be greatly appreciated...TIA.
Click to expand...


If you have shortcuts that refer to network or file
locations that aren't currently available, that can account
for such a delay. A hard drive and/or cabling problem can
also account for it.

Other potential problems include spyware, viri, trojan, etc,
infestation on the system.
 
Have you looked at how the virtual cache is setup in the performance
properties?

If you can work the virtual cache on a different hard drive than the main
one, this can speed things up a bit. Also, setting it up so that the min and
max size are the same also helps to make it faster. With XP, and alike, it
is best to have the virtual cache set to 1.5 X of the available physical
RAM. When looking in the virtual cache setup, the operating system should
display a recommendation for the best size to use in your system. This is
one thing I found common to cause the system to run a bit slow.

I also found that if there are corrupted files, and or too many files in the
Windows temp areas, and in the temp file areas for Explorer and Outlook,
this will cause a lot of system slowdowns. This is one of the most common
problems to create the fault you are describing.

From your description of your way of system management, I would rule out any
rouge software's lurking around in your system.

--

Jerry G.
======


Thanks for the reply. Trying to keep my post from being long winded, I
omitted some useful info. I try to run an efficient system...no silly
screensavers or themes. I use Spybot and Adaware to regularly clean out
spyware even though I never download junk. I routinely defrag and have
nothing in the startup folder. There are no apps draining processor
resources. The biggest user is Norton AntiVirus, but I can't imagine being
online without it.
 
I have an HP M490M system with a 3.2 gHz P4 and 1.5 gB of pc3200 DDR
ram. The vid card is an nVidia GeForce FX5600. I notice an inconsistent
delay when trying to access menus from the start button ie: Start>All
Programs>Microsoft>Word. Each time there is an annoying lag with a blank
grey box that eventually gets populated with the apps. It's only 2 or 3
seconds but, as I said, annoying. I thought when I recently upgraded
from 512 of ram to 1.5 gB, it would fix this, but it persists. I don't
have a top of the line system, but I figured it would be fast enough
that I shouldn't see this. Also, when opening Internet Explorer, there
is a long...long wait for the program to initialize, but it might just
be IE. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated...TIA.
Click to expand...

Some resonably relevant shots in the dark: (My instructions are based on
Win98SE.)

1. Icon cache too small? Does the hard drive start seeking while your
waiting? Do the icons appear one at a time? This is the registry entry for
Win98SE. Yours may be similar.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"Max Cached Icons"="2000"

Also see X-Setup and TweakManager comment below. X-Setup recommends max of
2000, take this with a grain of salt.

2. Are hard drive DMA accesses enabled?

a. Right click 'My Computer'-> to get the 'System Properties' dialogue
b. Select 'Device Manager'
c. Select each drive individually and right clock to get to 'properties'
d. Select 'settings' and make sure 'DNA' is checked.

3. Are 32 bit accesses enabled in system.ini?

Write "32BitDiskAccess=ON" in Section "386Enh" to file "SYSTEM.INI"

3. Microsoft Office is another enormous resource hog. Makes NIS look well
behaved. Is office loading at startup? Are you using the menu bar? Office
configures itself to load a lot of stuff at boot time. You should be able
to trim this down to nothing. Disable the menu bar and turn pre-loading. I
think there is also a control panel applet that lets you configure MS Ofice
behavior.

4. Virtual memory too small? Try setting it to 'auto' and see what
happens.

a. Right click 'My Computer'-> to get the 'System Properties' dialogue
b. Select 'Performance'
c. Select 'Virtual Memory'
d. Select 'Let Windows manage...'

5. Turn off 'findfast' in TweakUI.

a. Open TweakUI
b. Select 'control Panel'
c. Uncheck 'findfast'
d. There may be more but I can't rememnber it right now. Check at
BlackViper.com or google for more.

5. (Ignore this for OS's newer than 98.) Disk cache (vcache) too small?
Add these lines if they are not there currently. This limits the vcache to
a maximum of 512MBytes of memory and deals with the issue very
effectively. Without the max limit set, 98 can sometimes allocate too much
system virtual memory address space to the vcache and cause problems. Some
people recommand that the MaxFileCache setting be no more than 70% of
physical memory up to a maximum of 512 MBytes. Others may recommend 80% or
so but you get the idea. You must set some maximum so that the vcache
cannot consume all your system virtual memory address space. I
experimented with the MinFileCache value and found 40MBytes to be a good
number. Smaller numbers seemed to slow my computer down, based on boot
times. Larger numbers did not seem to produce improvement, again based on
boot times. I left chunksize the way it was. You may want to 'tune' your
MinFileCache size as well. For more information try posting to:

microsoft.public.win98.setup
microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion

In Win98 this is set in the system.ini. Look for something like:

[vcache]
MaxFileCache=524288
MinFileCache=40960
chunksize=4096

6. Turn off list box, menu, and other animations

a. Open TweakUI
b. Select 'General'

7. Repair the icon cache

a. Opern TweakUI
b. Select 'Repair'
c. select 'Rebuild Icons'

Try X-Setup, There is a free version and it has many tweaks/optimizations
for windows.

http://www.x-setup.net/

Or try Tweak Manager, also has a free version:

https://www.winguides.com/

To check for background processes and processes that load at boot time try:

process explorer
autoruns

from:

http://www.sysinternals.com/

Many other good util's there.

Another site:

http://www.sysinfo.org/

lists processes that windows may load at boot time. Be careful here. Many
'bad' processes have names similar to 'needed' processes. Look here to
see what you might trim from your 'autoruns' list. Also listed are CSLID's.

Good Luck
 
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