J
Jason
Hi all-
I'm helping to administer a small network of XP machines and could use a few
ideas about diagnosing a sporadic annoyance: from time to time, launching an
application can take 30 seconds or more before showing the slightest sign of
progress. As in:
1 Double-click Firefox 3
2 The arrow+hourglass mouse pointer appears immediately, but no apparent
progress is underway. A quick check of the process list shows that
firefox.exe is not yet running.
<30+ seconds go by>
3 Firefox.exe appears in the process list and loads in the normal few seconds.
The process list shows no significant CPU or network activity during step 2,
and I haven't been able to learn anything interesting using Process Explorer.
The odd delay arises sporadically and is not constrained to FF - it
definitely appears when launching Word XP as well and may appear with other
software. (FF and Word tend to be most frequently used, it's hard make any
strong claims about other software.) Generally, it appears to happen when an
app hasn't been used in a while almost suggesting that it's more frequent
when an app is completely paged out of memory. Very speculative though.
The issue appears on only 2 of the machines on the network, but the 2
machines are very similarly configured and quite old Dell Pentium 4
somethingorothers. XP SP2 is up-to-date, Office XP is up-to-date. They used
to be running some Norton 2008 package and are now running Norton Internet
Security 2009; the issue is the same before and after. Ran all the normal
spyware removal stuff without results.
Finally, I should note these machines also exhibit some other odd behavior -
occasionally the whole UI will fail to register mouse clicks anywhere
(appearing to freeze) although it tracks the mouse pointer properly and
keyboard input works, again for a good maybe 30 seconds - but it's not clear
whether its symptoms of the same problem or soemthing else entirely.
At this point, I could use any and all ideas about how to diagnose what's
going on. Any other tools or techniques you would recommend? It seems clear
the problem won't resolve itself, so we're considering more drastic measure
such as reinstalling XP or just tossing the boxes and getting new ones. (It
seems minor, but a minute delay launching your browser a few times a day adds
up...)
TIA!
Jason
I'm helping to administer a small network of XP machines and could use a few
ideas about diagnosing a sporadic annoyance: from time to time, launching an
application can take 30 seconds or more before showing the slightest sign of
progress. As in:
1 Double-click Firefox 3
2 The arrow+hourglass mouse pointer appears immediately, but no apparent
progress is underway. A quick check of the process list shows that
firefox.exe is not yet running.
<30+ seconds go by>
3 Firefox.exe appears in the process list and loads in the normal few seconds.
The process list shows no significant CPU or network activity during step 2,
and I haven't been able to learn anything interesting using Process Explorer.
The odd delay arises sporadically and is not constrained to FF - it
definitely appears when launching Word XP as well and may appear with other
software. (FF and Word tend to be most frequently used, it's hard make any
strong claims about other software.) Generally, it appears to happen when an
app hasn't been used in a while almost suggesting that it's more frequent
when an app is completely paged out of memory. Very speculative though.
The issue appears on only 2 of the machines on the network, but the 2
machines are very similarly configured and quite old Dell Pentium 4
somethingorothers. XP SP2 is up-to-date, Office XP is up-to-date. They used
to be running some Norton 2008 package and are now running Norton Internet
Security 2009; the issue is the same before and after. Ran all the normal
spyware removal stuff without results.
Finally, I should note these machines also exhibit some other odd behavior -
occasionally the whole UI will fail to register mouse clicks anywhere
(appearing to freeze) although it tracks the mouse pointer properly and
keyboard input works, again for a good maybe 30 seconds - but it's not clear
whether its symptoms of the same problem or soemthing else entirely.
At this point, I could use any and all ideas about how to diagnose what's
going on. Any other tools or techniques you would recommend? It seems clear
the problem won't resolve itself, so we're considering more drastic measure
such as reinstalling XP or just tossing the boxes and getting new ones. (It
seems minor, but a minute delay launching your browser a few times a day adds
up...)
TIA!
Jason