Sluggish performance Help!!!

[mattkenn_4545]

This is bugging the hell out of me. Why can't I run bearshare, watch a movie and do light browsing at the same time with out everything taking forever to launch. (Its like trying to use winxp on my 166 with 128MB of memory. Very slugish) See my sig for my system should be able to handle the load.

Also Task manager shows ~300MB free and about 40% proc usage. I don't think that the harddrive is being used too much bearshare rarely transfers at above 1.5Mb and it shouldn't be hashing any files. The movie is divx/xvid decoded by ffdshow running off a networked server. (Copying files also slows dramatically it took 15 mins to copy a 700MB file to one harddrive to another.)

The performance seems to worsen as time goes by.

[ragejg]

welcome to nvnews, matt...

:)

FYI: don't bump your own thread unless 4-6hrs have gone by...

But as for your problem:

From the getgo I'd try re-installing DirectX9, your nvidia chipset drivers, and possibly switching browsers (got FireFox?)...

You have no spyware, and do have a spyware removal tool installed, correct?

And you are running Service Pack 1, right?

... and your case/hard drives don't get too hot?

[mattkenn_4545]

Everything you said I have done. The thing is running bearshare and divx/xvid movies slows things down to a point that it is unbearable. Are those tasks just to big of hogs they can't be run and expect to do anything else in the meanwhile.

[Son Goku]

One question. How much memory do you have in the comp? Your system specs don't seem to mention it. You should have at least 256 MB of RAM with Windows XP, and 512 MB would be preferable. If your comp is swapping too much, that could slow things down.

And is that ~300 MB free, physical RAM, or total? Beyond that, if you have enough physical memory, how many programs are you running in the background such as anti-virus and whatnot... (Yes, I've seen some comps before with about 45 TSRs loaded on them, though that was a 95 box :D )

[mattkenn_4545]

I have 512 MB of memory and 300MB is free most of the time. It does go down drastictly when I'm using the apps that I mentioned above to about 100-150MB free but that isn't everytime. Sometimes it will be hovering around 350 free and it will still be slow as hell.

I have Norton Anti-Virus 2003 and Spybots resident prog usually running in background but shuting those down seems to have no effect. I Usally have around 30-35 running processes. And have no spyware etc. I run adaware and Spybot weekly. If I end all non vital processes the same thing happens eventurally.

[Son Goku]

OK, 512 MB is a decent amount of memory for your rig, and it doesn't sound like an inordinate number of background programs... Just checking, you wouldn't believe some of the things I've seen before, unless you've been around some other people's computers. I had one person who wanted me to come and help tweak their computer to make it run acceptably. They only had like 8 MB of RAM for Windows 98 or something :eek: There drive was also full of more trash, then... Many here will probably get the idea.

The sure method to deal with this would be a format and reinstall...though that's probably the last thing you want to here. Sounds like one of them things that will take more probing. Just out of curiosity here, have you ever defragmented your hard drives?

Also make sure your drivers for your chipset and what not are up to date...

[Nutty]

Are you sure your hard-drives are in Ultra DMA mode ? I had a Dell machine at work and the useless buggers had it running in PIO mode, which for doing anything off disk, (watching movie) will kill your cpu and read speed. I couldn't even read email and compile at the same time it was soo bad.. I knew something was up and eventually found it.

[mattkenn_4545]

I consider myself very computer litterate and I pride my self on keeping my computer and others I work on in good and updated shape. (Known affectionatly as the computer genius :lol2: ) Defragmenting yap use Executive Software Diskeeper great program by the way. This just bugs the hell out of me :bash: :bash: ! Maybe it will fil itselve :screwy: I just dont want to reinstall eveything

Just thought of this, don't think I mentioned it earlier The movies are running off a server I have setup could the fact that it is using the network be causing the problem?

[Son Goku]

Depends on how much BW you have, and what you're using. Watching the movie over the network, with browsing, and what not could be a bit of a problem, if your network connection is saturated and you're trying to pull more data through the pipe then the pipe can deliver...