Slow new system--how do I check for mechanical performance problem?

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ken

I built a system about 4-5 months ago based on an Intel DP35DP mb with 4
GB RAM and a Core2Duo cpu running Win XP Pro. All seemed to be running
quite well until about 3 weeks ago, when I suddenly developed all kinds
of weird errors, such as trying to launch a program and having an error
message that the file was not a win32 file. The system would reboot at
strange times. Explorer would suddenly stop working and my desktop
would disappear. I went back to a backup from 3 weeks before that and
it solved the problems, but the system, which used to be very fast,
seems much slower. I reinstalled the Intel chipset drivers, checked to
be sure that no programs were running in the background, have done
umteen different scans for viruses, malware, adware, none of which
appear to be present.

Is there a program I could use to test the speed of the system and
compare it to other systems that are similar to see if the speed problem
is real or just a figment of my imagination? Is there another approach
to the problem I should consider?

Thanks
Ken K
 
I have seen HD file corruption caused by bad RAM. Try MemTest86 and
IntelBurn to test your system's stability.
 
Kent_Diego said:
I have seen HD file corruption caused by bad RAM. Try MemTest86 and
IntelBurn to test your system's stability.
Click to expand...

I ran IntelBurn at your suggestion: I set it for 10 cycles and it ran
fine with no errors. The cpu temp rose from a thermal margin of
60-65C to 20-35C; the mb and memory controller temps rose minimally.
The time taken to run the tests was about 1289 seconds. As I am running
Win XP Pro 32-bit, it would only allow me to run 1.87GB of RAM.

Does that seem OK to you?

I meant to add that I had run chkdsk on my hdds and all are OK with no
errors.

Thanks
Ken K
 
ken said:
I built a system about 4-5 months ago based on an Intel DP35DP mb with 4 GB
RAM and a Core2Duo cpu running Win XP Pro. All seemed to be running quite
well until about 3 weeks ago, when I suddenly developed all kinds of weird
errors, such as trying to launch a program and having an error message that
the file was not a win32 file. The system would reboot at strange times.
Explorer would suddenly stop working and my desktop would disappear. I
went back to a backup from 3 weeks before that and it solved the problems,
but the system, which used to be very fast, seems much slower. I
reinstalled the Intel chipset drivers, checked to be sure that no programs
were running in the background, have done umteen different scans for
viruses, malware, adware, none of which appear to be present.

Is there a program I could use to test the speed of the system and compare
it to other systems that are similar to see if the speed problem is real
or just a figment of my imagination? Is there another approach to the
problem I should consider?
Click to expand...
Have you done the usual OS diagnostics - run antivirus and spyware, checked
running processes and services, startup progs? Have you installed any new
progs just prior to the behavior? Which ones? OS updates?
 
TVeblen said:
Have you done the usual OS diagnostics - run antivirus and spyware, checked
running processes and services, startup progs? Have you installed any new
progs just prior to the behavior? Which ones? OS updates?
Click to expand...
NOD32 antivirus runs in the background and there is no problem detected
when I have run a deep scan, except for two corrupt files that have not
been able to be salvaged by running chkdsk, but I cannot delete them.
One is a .gif file and the other is a file from thunderbird,
msgFilterRules.dat.

I have run ad-aware, spybot, and my XP Pro is up to date with security
releases. I run ZoneAlarm in the background. No new programs preceded
the problem. I have limited my startup programs. Since running
ccleaner, my problem has improved somewhat, although I am not back to
the speed I was at.

I have a complete image backup which has most of my programs and it was
from a few months before the problem began, so I will write that to a
disk that I will swap out with my system hard drive, add the additional
programs, and that will probably solve the problem. I just wanted to
figure out what was causing the problem in the first place. At least I
have all of my data on a separate drive, which makes it a bit easier to
rebuild the OS and programs.

At the moment, all seems stable. The only problem which has developed
even more recently is that after I defrag my disks, chkdsk sets itself
to run, sometimes with just three stages (verifying files, indexes, and
security descriptors) but not infrequently it runs 5 stages, adding file
data and free space. That whole process takes about 2 hours, which is a
PITA. I am not sure how to get around it other than to shut off the
machine, restart, F8 and start with most recent successful profile... I
am not sure why it does that...
 
I built a system about 4-5 months ago based on an Intel DP35DP mb with 4
GB RAM and a Core2Duo cpu running Win XP Pro. All seemed to be running
quite well until about 3 weeks ago, when I suddenly developed all kinds
of weird errors, such as trying to launch a program and having an error
message that the file was not a win32 file. The system would reboot at
strange times. Explorer would suddenly stop working and my desktop
would disappear. I went back to a backup from 3 weeks before that and
it solved the problems, but the system, which used to be very fast,
seems much slower. I reinstalled the Intel chipset drivers, checked to
be sure that no programs were running in the background, have done
umteen different scans for viruses, malware, adware, none of which
appear to be present.

Is there a program I could use to test the speed of the system and
compare it to other systems that are similar to see if the speed problem
is real or just a figment of my imagination? Is there another approach
to the problem I should consider?

Thanks
Ken K
Click to expand...

One quick way of testing if something running in the background is
slowing things down is to disable all startup programs, using msconfig,
and then restarting your system to see if it runs better. Also re-check
msconfig's startup to see if anything has re-enabled itself and, if it
has, check to make sure it's something you want running on your system
and not something dodgy.

This may not guarantee a result as there are also services that run that
may be slowing things down too, but it's a quick check. If nothing
changes then just re-enable them and you're back to where you were, but
at least you'll know startup programs are not the problem.
 
ken said:
NOD32 antivirus runs in the background and there is no problem detected
when I have run a deep scan, except for two corrupt files that have not
been able to be salvaged by running chkdsk, but I cannot delete them. One
is a .gif file and the other is a file from thunderbird,
msgFilterRules.dat.

I have run ad-aware, spybot, and my XP Pro is up to date with security
releases. I run ZoneAlarm in the background. No new programs preceded
the problem. I have limited my startup programs. Since running ccleaner,
my problem has improved somewhat, although I am not back to the speed I
was at.

I have a complete image backup which has most of my programs and it was
from a few months before the problem began, so I will write that to a disk
that I will swap out with my system hard drive, add the additional
programs, and that will probably solve the problem. I just wanted to
figure out what was causing the problem in the first place. At least I
have all of my data on a separate drive, which makes it a bit easier to
rebuild the OS and programs.

At the moment, all seems stable. The only problem which has developed
even more recently is that after I defrag my disks, chkdsk sets itself to
run, sometimes with just three stages (verifying files, indexes, and
security descriptors) but not infrequently it runs 5 stages, adding file
data and free space. That whole process takes about 2 hours, which is a
PITA. I am not sure how to get around it other than to shut off the
machine, restart, F8 and start with most recent successful profile... I am
not sure why it does that...
Click to expand...

I have experienced system slowdowns from two general culprits: file indexing
and trojans. I disable most of XP's indexing "features". I had Acronis True
Image on my computers and it's file indexing had a noticeable slowing effect
on one puter but much less so on the other. I uninstalled it from the
problem box and now just run the prog off the CD and saw immediate
improvement. Nero Scout was another culprit, fortunately Nero 7 and up makes
disabling Scout very simple. My family computer was recently infected by the
Vundo trojan. This is a particularly nasty little piece of evilness that
really slows down the system even after cleanup with AVs. At first I took it
as a personal challenge to remove the offending files and registry keys
manually, as Spybot, AVG, and Defender were ineffective in removing all the
files. The offending files are memory resident, self-replicating, and
redundant so it quickly (If 6 hours is quick) became apparent that a
restored disk image was my only viable option. Works great.
That is my experience with OS causes of slowdowns. My only hardware
experience was a dying hard drive. The only other note would be that an OS
install gets old and slows down naturally. Sometimes a clean install is in
order.
 
Peter said:
One quick way of testing if something running in the background is
slowing things down is to disable all startup programs, using msconfig,
and then restarting your system to see if it runs better. Also re-check
msconfig's startup to see if anything has re-enabled itself and, if it
has, check to make sure it's something you want running on your system
and not something dodgy.

This may not guarantee a result as there are also services that run that
may be slowing things down too, but it's a quick check. If nothing
changes then just re-enable them and you're back to where you were, but
at least you'll know startup programs are not the problem.
Click to expand...
Good suggestion. I will do that and report back. What is most of
concern is not so much that the system is a bit slower when starting up;
it is that once it is up and running, the programs don't initially
launch as quickly as they did a few months ago, and I am not clear why...
 
TVeblen said:
I have experienced system slowdowns from two general culprits: file indexing
and trojans. I disable most of XP's indexing "features". I had Acronis True
Image on my computers and it's file indexing had a noticeable slowing effect
on one puter but much less so on the other. I uninstalled it from the
problem box and now just run the prog off the CD and saw immediate
improvement. Nero Scout was another culprit, fortunately Nero 7 and up makes
disabling Scout very simple. My family computer was recently infected by the
Vundo trojan. This is a particularly nasty little piece of evilness that
really slows down the system even after cleanup with AVs. At first I took it
as a personal challenge to remove the offending files and registry keys
manually, as Spybot, AVG, and Defender were ineffective in removing all the
files. The offending files are memory resident, self-replicating, and
redundant so it quickly (If 6 hours is quick) became apparent that a
restored disk image was my only viable option. Works great.
That is my experience with OS causes of slowdowns. My only hardware
experience was a dying hard drive. The only other note would be that an OS
install gets old and slows down naturally. Sometimes a clean install is in
order.
Click to expand...
I am presently installing an image from 9/08 and will see the speed
difference between that hdd and the one which seems to be the problem.
If my perception is correct, then I will use the 9/08 image and then
install the programs which I had installed since then. My data is
pretty much on a different drive, as well as on recent True Image
archives, so that should take care of the problem...

Thanks
Ken K
 
.....> At the moment, all seems stable. The only problem which has developed
even more recently is that after I defrag my disks, chkdsk sets itself to
run, sometimes with just three stages (verifying files, indexes, and
security descriptors) but not infrequently it runs 5 stages, adding file
data and free space. That whole process takes about 2 hours, which is a
PITA. I am not sure how to get around it other than to shut off the
machine, restart, F8 and start with most recent successful profile... I am
not sure why it does that...
Click to expand...

There has to be something going on with your hard drive since your RAM, CPU
and mother board checked out OK with IntelBurn. I still suggest you let
MemTest86 run over night to really check the RAM right. Maybe a bad HD
cable, controller or hard drive? There is HD data corruption. Do you have a
PATA or SATA drive? Maybe plug HD into different controller slot and try new
cable. Get the hard drive diagnostic program from manufacturer or on Hiren's
Boot CD from a bit torrent site.
 
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