Determining the bottleneck in my PC
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From: asdf on 22 Aug 2006 21:57 My computer has a strange problem which i can't seem to be able to diagnose. Some of the symptoms are: 1. Trouble listing folders with a lot of files--this takes a long, long time. 2. Deleting multiple items in the folder or in a specific app such as ACDSee 3. Marking items as read or catching up in Outlook Express. 4. Several apps running at once often causes my computer to become unusually slow and unresponsive. 5. Some applications sorting through a list of items. This computer has the following specs: 2.4 Ghz Pentium running winxp SP2 1 Gb of 333Mhz RAM Asus P4PE mobo System is installed on 80 GB WD ATA disk which is connected to the onboard RAID connector Now you might say that all those things are normal however my other, much older machine feels much smoother and has no trouble handling any of the things above. the specs for my old machine are AMD 1800+ 512 RAM cheap mobo and 60Gb WD HD. Any idea how i can determine what the bottleneck is in my newer machine? Wondering if it's my onboard RAID that's causing or my RAM or intel's slower performance. thank you very much
From: Ginchy on 22 Aug 2006 22:09 "asdf" <asdf(a)asdf.com> wrote in message news:wCOGg.436$Hp4.8(a)newsfe09.lga... > My computer has a strange problem which i can't seem to be able to > diagnose. > Some of the symptoms are: > 1. Trouble listing folders with a lot of files--this takes a long, long > time. > 2. Deleting multiple items in the folder or in a specific app such as > ACDSee > 3. Marking items as read or catching up in Outlook Express. > 4. Several apps running at once often causes my computer to become > unusually slow and unresponsive. > 5. Some applications sorting through a list of items. > > This computer has the following specs: > 2.4 Ghz Pentium running winxp SP2 > 1 Gb of 333Mhz RAM > Asus P4PE mobo > System is installed on 80 GB WD ATA disk which is connected > to the onboard RAID connector > > > Now you might say that all those things are normal however my other, > much older machine feels much smoother and has no trouble handling any > of the things above. > the specs for my old machine are > AMD 1800+ > 512 RAM > cheap mobo and 60Gb WD HD. > > > Any idea how i can determine what the bottleneck is in my newer machine? > Wondering if it's my onboard RAID that's causing or my RAM or > intel's slower performance. > > > thank you very much > Do you have a lot of files in MY DOCUMENTS?? If so then reduce them right down into folders and see what happens. There is a known problem of slow downs due to this. I assume you have defragged recently and scanned your hard drives for errors. Check also that your drives are running at their correct ATA mode by examining IDE/ATA ATAPI CONTROLLERS in DEVICE MANAGER. Run a spyware check!
From: Rod Speed on 22 Aug 2006 22:54 asdf <asdf(a)asdf.com> wrote: > My computer has a strange problem which i can't seem to be able to > diagnose. Some of the symptoms are: > 1. Trouble listing folders with a lot of files--this takes a long, > long time. > 2. Deleting multiple items in the folder or in a specific app such as > ACDSee 3. Marking items as read or catching up in Outlook Express. > 4. Several apps running at once often causes my computer to become > unusually slow and unresponsive. > 5. Some applications sorting through a list of items. > This computer has the following specs: > 2.4 Ghz Pentium running winxp SP2 > 1 Gb of 333Mhz RAM > Asus P4PE mobo > System is installed on 80 GB WD ATA disk which is connected > to the onboard RAID connector I'd check the cpu temp with Everest. It may be slowing down the cpu because its getting too hot because the heatsink isnt installed properly. If it isnt that, check the SMART data for the drive, you can get an effect like that if the drive is repeatedly retrying on marginal sectors and eventually succeeding in reading them. Post the Everest SMART data here. http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181 See what everest says about the system speed too, it may be grossly badly configured and isnt running the cpu properly. > Now you might say that all those things are normal however my other, > much older machine feels much smoother and has no trouble handling any > of the things above. > the specs for my old machine are > AMD 1800+ > 512 RAM > cheap mobo and 60Gb WD HD. > > > Any idea how i can determine what the bottleneck is in my newer > machine? Wondering if it's my onboard RAID that's causing or my RAM or > intel's slower performance. > > > thank you very much
From: Mxsmanic on 23 Aug 2006 00:41 asdf writes: > Any idea how i can determine what the bottleneck is in my newer machine? Possible causes (not necessarily in any particular order): - spyware and adware, viruses, etc. - disk fragmentation (especially if you are using FAT) - Windows XP indexing left on (should be shut off) - CPU overheating and throttling - disk drive access time - too many files per folder (especially on FAT) - background tasks consuming resources > Wondering if it's my onboard RAID that's causing or my RAM or > intel's slower performance. You don't need and can't really have RAID for one disk. An Intel processor at 2.8 GHz will not be slower than an AMD processor at 1.8 GHz. Most computers are not processor-bound, anyway. Disk drives and network delays are the usual sources of poor performance, if the machine is not infected with malware. Fragmentation can (eventually) slow things down on FAT, much less so on NTFS. -- Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.
From: Jaimie Vandenbergh on 23 Aug 2006 07:53
On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 21:57:43 -0400, "asdf" <asdf(a)asdf.com> wrote: >My computer has a strange problem which i can't seem to be able to diagnose. >Some of the symptoms are: >1. Trouble listing folders with a lot of files--this takes a long, long >time. >2. Deleting multiple items in the folder or in a specific app such as ACDSee >3. Marking items as read or catching up in Outlook Express. >4. Several apps running at once often causes my computer to become > unusually slow and unresponsive. >5. Some applications sorting through a list of items. That's most likely to be a spyware infestation taking over a bunch of Windows Explorer time. Or possibly a real-time antivirus scanner that's being seriously overeager. Make sure your AV is fully up to date - engine as well as virus definitions. Run complete Adaware and Spybot S&D scans, which'll take forever, but may help enormously if that's the problem. Defrag your hard drive - you'll need to. It may be much much quicker to yank the hard drive out of this computer and plug it into the other one: Then you're using an untroubled Windows install to scan the problematic one, without any interference from any possible spyware/viruses. Cheers - Jaimie -- L33t 5p3@|< 1s f0R R3t4rds |