PLEASE HELP: PERFOMANCE

[Guest]

My Leaned Friends,

My machine is having performance issues. For the past three-four days my PC
has been running very slow. Not only that, but also when it comes to the
sign-in screen and I select my user area the PC will not enter my area
although it will isolate my selection as usual. Then I have to do an improper
shut-down, get into windows through safe mode and run chkdsk. This however,
only solves the problem temporarily.

Also when I enter “My Computer†It will take about 10 minutes to search and
list the drives (before, this action was instant). Moreover, when I am, for
example, doing a search on C drive and try to narrow the search using the
“Look in†option only about 8 folders are listed and not the full selection.

I have a Desktop with 1 GB RAM and 120GB Hard drive. I do not think the
problem rests with the RAM (as I run Norton cleansweep regularly) but I am
unsure. Could it be that space in my Hard drive needs to be “Freed-up†a
little because of the 111GB of space I currently only have 1.5GB of free
space (1%)?

Please advise


Joe

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

My Leaned Friends,

My machine is having performance issues. For the past three-four days my PC
has been running very slow. Not only that, but also when it comes to the
sign-in screen and I select my user area the PC will not enter my area
although it will isolate my selection as usual. Then I have to do an improper
shut-down, get into windows through safe mode and run chkdsk. This however,
only solves the problem temporarily.

Also when I enter "My Computer" It will take about 10 minutes to search and
list the drives (before, this action was instant). Moreover, when I am, for
example, doing a search on C drive and try to narrow the search using the
"Look in" option only about 8 folders are listed and not the full selection.

I have a Desktop with 1 GB RAM and 120GB Hard drive. I do not think the
problem rests with the RAM (as I run Norton cleansweep regularly) but I am
unsure. Could it be that space in my Hard drive needs to be "Freed-up" a
little because of the 111GB of space I currently only have 1.5GB of free
space (1%)?

Please advise


Joe

Your hard disk is grossly overfilled. Do this for starters:
- Clean out your temp folder.
- Reduce the amount of space taken by your temporary Internet files.
- Empty your Recycle Bin.
- Reduce the amount of space taken by System Restore

You should also check your event viewer (eventvwr.exe) to see if
there are any error messages.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi Joe,

It's most likely a combination of problems. Yes, only having 1% of your
drive space free is a probably an issue. You should copy data files to
CD/DVD or other media and free up some drive space and defrag (something you
will not be able to do until you free up at least 15% of the drive space).

As to the delay in opening Windows Explorer, it's usually caused by an
interaction between scanner/camera drivers and Windows Image Acquistion
(WIA). Start/run mscconfig and disable it on the services tab. After
rebooting, see if the problem still occurs.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Your objective should be to achieve15% to 20% free space!The more the
better. However, remember
that further Windows Updates will bring that down again.

To investigate how you are using hard disk space you need to
make sure that you can see all files. Go to Start, Control Panel, Folder
Options, View, Advanced Settings and verify that the box before "Show
hidden files and folders" is checked and "Hide protected operating
system files " is unchecked. You may need to scroll down to see the
second item. You should also make certain that the box before "Hide
extensions for known file types" is not checked. Next in Windows
Explorer make sure View, Details is selected and then select View,
Choose Details and check before Name, Type, Total Size, and Free Space.

Download Dirsize.dll plug-in and place the file in Windows\System32
folder. Select Start, Run and type "regsvr32 dirsize.dll" without the
quotes and hit ENTER. Next in Windows Explorer open a folder and set it
to Detail view. From the View menu, click Choose Details. Put a
checkmark near Folder Size, and click OK. Use CTRL and + key (Numeric
Keypad) combination to resize the column width, so that the Folder Size
column is displayed correctly. To apply this setting for all the
folders, click Tools, Folder Options. In the View tab and click Apply to
all folders. You can download Dirsize from:
http://markd.mvps.org/

You can most likely create extra free space by a number of measures.

You can limit the disk space used by System Restore. Right click on the
My Computer icon on your Desktop and select, Properties, System Restore,
Settings. This will give you the amount of Disk Space allocated to
System Restore in terms of % of size of Drive and megabytes or
gigabytes. The default maximum is 12%, which is often excessive. You can
move the slider to the left to reduce the size of the allocation to 2%.
Once
the allocated space is fully taken the oldest restore point is removed
when a new restore point is created ( or it should be ).

Try Start, All Programmes, Accessories, System Tools, Disk CleanUp to
Empty your Recycle Bin and Remove Temporary Internet Files. Delete all
but the most recent Restore Point ( Start, Programs, Accessories, System
Tools, Disk Cleanup, More options). Run Disk Defragmenter by selecting
Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter.

How is the drive formatted -FAT32 or NTFS? To get this information
whilst in Windows Explorer place the cursor on the C drive, right click
and select Properties? More opportunities here depending on the answer.

Select Start, Control Panel, Internet Options, Temporary Internet
Options, Settings. What is the Disk Space Allocation?


--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
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[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Joe

At your earliest convenience, go buy another hard drive, set it up as a
slave to the drive presently installed, and copy some of your stuff over to
it.. NOT PROGRAMS though.. programs do not just copy anywhere generally..

To save some space immediately, you could uninstall Norton CleanSweep,
remembering not to re-install it on your computer or anybody else's unless
you particularly don't like the person.. to defrag with Windows
Defragmenter, you need at least 15% free space, so you have some copying
ahead of you for sure..

As Rick suggested, transferring to CD-R/DVD would be a good thing, but your
system is a little too full maybe to easily handle much more than 'drag and
drop' to another hard drive..

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Mike

To save some space immediately you could uninstall Norton CleanSweep!

To save some space or improve system performance?

Changing the System Restore disk space allocation may well achieve 10%
of the 15% given the size of the disk! Looking at other system default
allocations could also be very productive.

--


Regards.

Gerry

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FCA

Stourport, Worcs, England
Enquire, plan and execute.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Gerry

Symantec/Norton products take up resources, memory and disk space that would
be better used by something else or left as free space such that Defrag will
work..

Clean Sweep was a piece of @#@# when first released, and I can't believe
that it has gotten any better in it's present owners hands.. nothing else
has, so why Clean Sweep?

Yes, of course other procedures need to be executed, but it would worry me
that a drive of that size with only 1.5gb free would stand up to a whole
bunch of messing..

 

[Guest]

Friends

I have deleted some temp files and all cookies as suggested. That has
increased the speed of my system somewhat. I have cleared 2.5GB of space so I
know have 3GB of space. However, I still have the problem that when I try to
enter windows, when I select my user area the PC will not enter my desktop.
It will isolate my name and that will be it. However, If I press alt ctl del
I am able to get entry that way.

How can I solve this problem?

Thank you for your help I really appreciate it


-Joe

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Are you talking about getting logged on automatically? If so then
click Start / Run and type

control userpasswords2 {OK}

Now select your name, then untick the box that says
"Users must enter a password when logging on".

 

[Guest]

Friends,

I am not getting logged in automatically. Far from it, the problem is that I
am not being logged in at all. When the PC loads and comes to the sign-in
screen and I select my area, my area choice is isolated from the others as
usual but the screen does not change to my desktop, it simply stay as the
sign in screen and I have to press alt Ctrl del and that gives me entry to my
desktop.

Any ideas?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Did you try what I suggested? What did you see?

Friends,

I am not getting logged in automatically. Far from it, the problem is that I
am not being logged in at all. When the PC loads and comes to the sign-in
screen and I select my area, my area choice is isolated from the others as
usual but the screen does not change to my desktop, it simply stay as the
sign in screen and I have to press alt Ctrl del and that gives me entry to my
desktop.

Any ideas?

 

[jim.mantle]

This may be hardware related, not software. I've seen somewhat similar
symptoms (extremely slow operation) when the computer had a failing
hard drive in it... the drive was readable after many retries, and so
the disk access didn't fail, but everything took a long time.

I suggest you download a disk checkup utility from the hardware vendor,
and run the standalone utilities (often you'll need to boot your
machine from floppy or CD to do so, some don't run under windows).

For example, if your disk drive is a Seagate, the utility is Seatools
http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/

From Maxtor, the utility is called PowerMax (the URL is mother-of-ugly,

so I didn't paste it here).

When fixing a very old computer (it happened to be a Compaq), the
computer's slow startup was due to a failing CD-ROM drive. It was in
the boot sequence ahead of the hard disk drive.

And for memory testing, you want to use memtest86, which will exercise
the bejeebies out of anything you may have installed. Look for it via
Google or any of the other search engines.

Jim

 

[Guest]

Friends,

I tried Pegasus’ suggestion…no change.

 

[Gerry Cornell]

Joe

Have you tested the hard drive?

HD Tune.(freeware). Download and run it and see what it turns up.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Select the Info tabs and place the cursor on C:\ under Drive letter and
then double click the two page icon ( copy to Clipboard ) and copy into
a further message.

Select the Health tab and then double click the two page icon ( copy to
Clipboard ) and copy into a further message.

Run Error Scan.

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
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