Sluggish machine

  • Thread starter Thread starter Alan C
  • Start date Start date
A

Alan C

Hello all,

I built this machine I have almost a year ago Aden I never was
satisfied at its performance. I hope someone can help me diagnose
this. Here are some of the symptoms:

1- Clicking the turn off Computer on start menu can take up to 1
minute to bring up the shut down menu.

2- Deleting simple folders can take too long when it should be almost
instantaneous on this machine.

3- When I play world of warcraft(WOW) I get 30fps max at lowest
settings when people with older machines get 70 at max graphics.

4- When I run something like WOW I can not d much else. I can not
play music on my media player for example.

5- Starting some programs such as firefox takes too long fro a machine
this "powerful".

6- I noticed that the CD light comes on at times and never turns off.

7- USB seems to fail sometimes. Have to unplug and replug items such
as keyboard headset etc.


Here are my specs:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI
Dual SLI: Leadtek Winfast PX 7800 GTX TDH
HDs: Dual Raptors 74GB 10K RPM
Soundcard: SB XIFI Elite Pro




Please advise

Alan
 
Alan C said:
Hello all,

I built this machine I have almost a year ago Aden I never was
satisfied at its performance. I hope someone can help me diagnose
this. Here are some of the symptoms:

1- Clicking the turn off Computer on start menu can take up to 1
minute to bring up the shut down menu.

2- Deleting simple folders can take too long when it should be almost
instantaneous on this machine.

3- When I play world of warcraft(WOW) I get 30fps max at lowest
settings when people with older machines get 70 at max graphics.

4- When I run something like WOW I can not d much else. I can not
play music on my media player for example.

5- Starting some programs such as firefox takes too long fro a machine
this "powerful".

6- I noticed that the CD light comes on at times and never turns off.

7- USB seems to fail sometimes. Have to unplug and replug items such
as keyboard headset etc.


Here are my specs:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI
Dual SLI: Leadtek Winfast PX 7800 GTX TDH
HDs: Dual Raptors 74GB 10K RPM
Soundcard: SB XIFI Elite Pro




Please advise

Alan
Click to expand...

#1 make sure the SB drivers are latest and greatest

Check what's running in the background, kill all those crazy app managers
(e.g. quick time, Norton anything(should be purged from your system IMO),
scanner/printer managers)

look at the Task Manager--CPU usage///memory performance?

messed with the virtual memory? Don't.
 
Alan C said:
Hello all,

I built this machine I have almost a year ago Aden I never was
satisfied at its performance. I hope someone can help me diagnose
this. Here are some of the symptoms:

1- Clicking the turn off Computer on start menu can take up to 1
minute to bring up the shut down menu.

2- Deleting simple folders can take too long when it should be almost
instantaneous on this machine.

3- When I play world of warcraft(WOW) I get 30fps max at lowest
settings when people with older machines get 70 at max graphics.

4- When I run something like WOW I can not d much else. I can not
play music on my media player for example.

5- Starting some programs such as firefox takes too long fro a machine
this "powerful".

6- I noticed that the CD light comes on at times and never turns off.

7- USB seems to fail sometimes. Have to unplug and replug items such
as keyboard headset etc.


Here are my specs:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI
Dual SLI: Leadtek Winfast PX 7800 GTX TDH
HDs: Dual Raptors 74GB 10K RPM
Soundcard: SB XIFI Elite Pro




Please advise

Alan
Click to expand...

It sounds suspiciously like the machine is starved for RAM, such as a
windows XP box running on 768MB or less. If you've got 1GB or more that
windows recognizes, what is starting when you start windows? Do a start,
run msconfig, go to startup tab. Then use www.sysinfo.org to check all your
startup items and (uncheck) everything that's not needed. Then check your
swap (page) file settings. Start, control panel, system, advanced,
performance settings, advanced, virtual memory, change. Set a permanent
page file of 1GB (minimum and maximum) for 1GB or more of physical RAM. If
you don't have that much physical RAM yet, never mind. :) -Dave
 
Hello dave,


I have checked my startup list and nothing out of the ordinary is
there. My system has 2GB memory and my page file is set to 3070 min
and 4092 max.

Alan
 
It sounds suspiciously like the machine is starved for RAM, such as a windows XP box running on
768MB or less.
Click to expand...

Mine doesnt do that with 256M.
If you've got 1GB or more that windows recognizes, what is starting when you start windows? Do a
start, run msconfig, go to startup tab. Then use www.sysinfo.org to check all your startup items
and (uncheck) everything that's not needed.
Click to expand...
Then check your swap (page) file settings. Start, control
panel, system, advanced, performance settings, advanced, virtual memory, change. Set a permanent
page file of 1GB (minimum and maximum) for 1GB or more of physical RAM. If you don't have that
much physical RAM yet, never mind. :)
Click to expand...

It wont be that either.
 
Alan C said:
Hello dave,


I have checked my startup list and nothing out of the ordinary is
there. My system has 2GB memory and my page file is set to 3070 min
and 4092 max.

Alan
Click to expand...

It's WHAT?!? Holy crap. That could be most of your problem right there.
Most users wouldn't need a 4GB swap file! That is unless you are running
some really heavy industrial apps that use gobs of RAM. If you are the
average home user, you could almost disable the swap file completely,
running with 2GB of physical RAM. For an experiment, try setting minimum
and maximum both to 500MB. (less than an 8th of the current maximum
setting)

What most people don't realize is that the virtual ram uses physical RAM,
also. If you have too much virtual ram (oversized page file), it can eat up
your available physical ram. That might be exactly what is crippling your
PC. Try setting minimum and maximum to 500MB. If for some reason that
doesn't work, temporarily set your page file to allow windows to manage it.

Then post EXACTLY every process that is starting when windows starts. Oh,
and if there is anything Norton on the list, uninstall it before you post
the rest of what's on the list. Lots of problems like this can be magically
fixed just by uninstalling Norton crap. :) -Dave
 
It's WHAT?!? Holy crap. That could be most of your problem right there.
Nope.

Most users wouldn't need a 4GB swap file! That is unless you are running some really heavy
industrial apps that use gobs of RAM.
Click to expand...
If you are the average home user, you could almost disable the swap file completely, running with
2GB of physical RAM.
Click to expand...

Not a good idea.
For an experiment, try setting minimum and maximum both to 500MB. (less than an 8th of the
current maximum setting)
Click to expand...

Wont fix his problem.
What most people don't realize is that the virtual ram uses physical
RAM, also. If you have too much virtual ram (oversized page file),
it can eat up your available physical ram.
Click to expand...

Mindlessly silly.
That might be exactly what is crippling your PC.
Click to expand...

Nope, not a chance.
Try setting minimum and maximum to 500MB.
Click to expand...

Wont fix his problem.
If for some reason that doesn't work, temporarily set your page file to allow windows to manage
it.
Click to expand...

No reason not to do that permanently, but it wont fix his problem.
 
Most machines don't run smoothly as possible
under Windows XP with only 256 MB of RAM.
Click to expand...

Irrelevant to whether its what is the OP's problem.

And plenty of machines run fine with less than 768MB too.
 
Rod Speed said:
Not a good idea.


Wont fix his problem.


Mindlessly silly.
Click to expand...

How much RAM does a 3 GB page file use in Windows XP?
Nope, not a chance.


Wont fix his problem.


No reason not to do that permanently, but it wont fix his problem.
Click to expand...

Why keep it a secret, Rod, what is his problem?
 
Hello all,

I built this machine I have almost a year ago Aden I never was
satisfied at its performance. I hope someone can help me diagnose
this. Here are some of the symptoms:

1- Clicking the turn off Computer on start menu can take up to 1
minute to bring up the shut down menu.

2- Deleting simple folders can take too long when it should be almost
instantaneous on this machine.

3- When I play world of warcraft(WOW) I get 30fps max at lowest
settings when people with older machines get 70 at max graphics.

4- When I run something like WOW I can not d much else. I can not
play music on my media player for example.

5- Starting some programs such as firefox takes too long fro a machine
this "powerful".

6- I noticed that the CD light comes on at times and never turns off.

7- USB seems to fail sometimes. Have to unplug and replug items such
as keyboard headset etc.


Here are my specs:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI
Dual SLI: Leadtek Winfast PX 7800 GTX TDH
HDs: Dual Raptors 74GB 10K RPM
Soundcard: SB XIFI Elite Pro




Please advise

Alan
Click to expand...

Check that your Hard drives and CD/DVD drives are in DMA mode.
The free small Neroinfo tool will do this,
http://www.cdspeed2000.com/go.php3?link=download.html

Can be run from inside the .zip file and check the Configuration tab.
You need at least SP1 on most XP systems installed to get full DMA
mode but better to install SP2 as it has all of SP1 in it.

Also if you save files to the My Documents folder make your own folder
and move them out.

HTH :)
 
Shep© said:
Also if you save files to the My Documents folder make your own folder
and move them out.
Click to expand...

Shep, I know that that's an issue in 98. Same problem with XP? Ya think
they would have worked it out!
 
D> It sounds suspiciously like the machine is starved for RAM,
D> such as a windows XP box running on 768MB or less.

That's what I would have thought, but in later posts it's clear he has
enough. But the symptoms the OP describes sound like a basic boogered
XP configuration--sorry I can't state it more precisely. I've had
such behavior after several months of installing and uninstalling lots
of freeware/shareware programs, basically doing a lot of experimenting
with odd programs and junk. Seems that XP just gradually gets more
and more out of sync with itself with all the changes.

I never got virus or spyware but the OP might want to check that too.
Gotta agree about Norton crap, get rid of that, and I'd add McAfee to
the uninstall list too. I use AVG--paid version--seems to work pretty
efficiently. For spyware I use the well-known Lavasoft (again, paid
version) and the free Spybot S&D.
 
Not neccessarily.... I've seen it happen.

A year ago, one of the servers at work (the PDC on a NT network) became
EXTREMELY slow, application wise. You could still access the shares via the
network just fine, but everything you tried (and I mean TRIED) to do from
the keyboard on the monitor was extremely!!!! slow.

Had I not seen it first hand I would never have believed it.

For example, a simple pop-up message on the screen from Symantec that would
normally appear in the lower right-hand-corner and quickly dissapear, now
took an honest 20 minutes to pop- up and dissapear.

From the initial POST display, to the login screen for NT routinely took 4
hours.

ran all the diagnostics on the box (A HP Netserver ) with no errors.

Drove me crazy trying to figure ot what was wrong, and the fact that it was
the PDC on the network with our main shares on it complicated matters so
much, that ultimatly I had to give up, promote one of the BDS, transfer all
the shares to another server so I could remove this server from the network.

Only after all that was done, and I was experimenting with it one day,
during the POST, all of a sudden it claimed that one of the memory modules
was not a valid HP module. (yes it was....).

Swapped the two existing memory modules, and the error moved to the other
slot. removed the offending module, and the server was as good as new.......
everything was back to normal

go figure......
 
Alan said:
I have checked my startup list and nothing out of the ordinary is
there. My system has 2GB memory and my page file is set to 3070 min
and 4092 max.
Click to expand...

Answers such as what is consuming too much CPU time, what processes
are executing on startup, memory shortages, insufficient virtual
memory, etc are found in a tool called Task Manager. Get it either by
Cntrl-Alt-Del, right clicking on Task Bar, or from Windows Help. Some
will just continue to argue on speculation. But if you provide numbers
and observations from Task Manager, then your replies will be more
useful.
 
Shep, I know that that's an issue in 98. Same problem with XP? Ya think
they would have worked it out!
Click to expand...

Dunno but I've not trusted MS since win3.11 so move em out just in
case.Can't do any harm and may prove the point :)
 
Alan said:
Hello all,

I built this machine I have almost a year ago Aden I never was
satisfied at its performance. I hope someone can help me diagnose
this. Here are some of the symptoms:

1- Clicking the turn off Computer on start menu can take up to 1
minute to bring up the shut down menu.

2- Deleting simple folders can take too long when it should be almost
instantaneous on this machine.

3- When I play world of warcraft(WOW) I get 30fps max at lowest
settings when people with older machines get 70 at max graphics.

4- When I run something like WOW I can not d much else. I can not
play music on my media player for example.

5- Starting some programs such as firefox takes too long fro a machine
this "powerful".

6- I noticed that the CD light comes on at times and never turns off.

7- USB seems to fail sometimes. Have to unplug and replug items such
as keyboard headset etc.

Here are my specs:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI
Dual SLI: Leadtek Winfast PX 7800 GTX TDH
HDs: Dual Raptors 74GB 10K RPM
Soundcard: SB XIFI Elite Pro

Please advise

Alan
Click to expand...


Alan, my thought is that posters who mentioned RAM are on the right
track. The one thing I can add is that the RAM you purchased may not be
compatible with the GA-K8N m'board. I say this because the problem has
apparently been there since rig was built. Do you know the specs of the
memory you used? If more than one, are the cards a matched set?
 
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