Page File issues?

[sportwarrior]

So I almost posted this in the Hardware Storage forum... and then almost in the memory forum. But I settled on posting it here and in the General Hardware forum. First and foremost it's a software issue. Or at least I think it is. But there's also a confluence of strange things going on with hardware.

Basically, my computer chugs. A lot. It never used to, but lately it's just completely and totally unbearable. I have an Opty 170, 2 gigs of OCZ Platinum PC3200 DDR RAM, and two hard drives partitioned into 3 at sizes of 30, 120, and 300. First of all, the 30 gig partition serves as my C Drive running Windows XP, and I now know that was a mistake... Much too small for all of my programs. I need to redo things on a faster dedicated drive, but that's not the issue here. Things always used to work smoothly... Loading up Firefox, using Adobe, listening to music, and most games all ran seamlessly. But over the past few months things are going haywire. Right now I have firefox open with 4 tabs and am playing music in iTunes, and the cursor and text are lagging big time as I type this post. The hard drive caches every time I do ANYTHING, whether it be load up Adobe Photoshop or simply open up My Computer. It almost seems like my computer is forgoing my RAM altogether and simply using the Page File to perform operations.

I've done some heavy defragging of my Hard Drives and have checked the health with Diskeeper. My memory checks out completely in MemTest. But when I open up Windows Task Manager and monitor my system usage, it appears as the Page File is taking all the work from the RAM. Right now my Commit Charge is at 1.22 gigs (why, I'm not sure... Processes total at about 600 mb right now). Thing is, the Page File is at 1.2 gigs, just as high as the commit charge. Physical Memory lists as having about 1.4 gigs left, which indicates some usage, but I'm not sure why the HD is caching so much. It's literally causing everything to slow, even right after a fresh boot and/or defrag.

And another thing. I've got my Page File set up to be 1-3gigs available on D drive and 1.5-3 gigs available on E... But whenever I open up the Virtual Memory manager it says I only have 1 gig committed to the Page File, and it never seems to get higher than 1.3. To top it all off, processor usage spikes all the time. Conversely, when I'm playing a game it'll just simply drop for a few seconds before picking back up.

This is a 3 year old build that has served me pretty well, and I'd like for it to continue doing so until I can afford a new rig. But right now I just cannot figure out what the heck is going on. I've got plenty of free space on each drive, too, so that's not the problem.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm just totally lost on what to do.

[Joe Average]

My immediate impression is possible virus activity or a serious infection going on. As it's been 3 years (meaning it's been 3 years since the XP installation), my first recommendation will be back up your data and wipe it, do a fresh installation. Sorry if that's not what you want to hear, but I gave up trying to actively troubleshoot swamped PCs (basically what I classify your machine as considering the age of the install and the hardware) because it's a complete waste of time.

Decades ago when something went wrong with an electronic circuit, people would actually bring them to a service shop and they'd get a repair done with a soldering iron and the proper tools. If a cap blew, it got replaced. If a resistor fried, it got replaced. Over time, things moved from board level repairs to parts replacement because a) parts were plentiful and b) it took less time.

Same principle with OS issues like the one(s) you're describing. Sure, it's possible to put a great deal of time, effort, and sweat into finding out how to eek out every last bit of performance from your machine and the current long-term installation of Windows you're still using.

Is it practical? Hell no, considering how fast you can start over.

Does Windows slow down over time? Yes, until Vista came along, that is. Pre-Vista versions of Windows just get slower over time, not one person around here would argue that point - and I run XP Pro x64 and have done so for years now. While this installation I'm on is only a few weeks old (I reinstall frequently because of so much software testing), it does noticeably perform with less snappiness and responsiveness than in the past.

Reason? Windows get larger over time, the Registry grows, etc, and no matter how much tweaking and tuning, trimming and pruning you or I or anyone else does, it just slows down, period. Vista, of course, finally breaks that mold because it will tend to get faster over time as it's used as long as you don't do something stupid like disable components that make Vista what it is and work the way it does.

So, based on what you've stated, I'm still suspecting a virus someplace, a possible infection of some system files that shouldn't be infected, causing the commit charge and the page file usage (they're not the same but they are intrinsically linked). Running the System File Checker would be a good start. Open a Command Prompt, type sfc /scannow and let it run completely, and you'll need your XP CD handy because it's definitely going to want some files I can promise you. It won't run through completely without replacing some files, but depending on the severity of the issues it could take some time.

Make sure your AV software is up to date - I'm stating that making an assumption that yes you are running SOME type of AV software. If not, well, geez... I won't even ask why as lately we (meaning the people here at the forum that offer assistance) keep getting slapped in the face by folks that tell us we're in no position to tell them they need to run AV software. We're talking about Windows here, the king of the hill, the very reason people sit around and write viruses - for no other reason than to damage Windows and get bragging rights.

If you're not running some type of AV software, then yep, you're most likely fucked and you truly should start over. :D But I'd still run some AV scans on the entire machine to make sure the data you have isn't infected before you back it up, or you're just shooting yourself in the proverbial foot. Go get that free Avira bootable CD for doing a solid virus/infection check; there's a thread about it in the General Software forum here.

When you'd done that, perhaps more advice can be offered...

[sportwarrior]

Thanks for the response. Here's my update.

I ran the System File Checker and was prompted several times to replace files. The strange thing was it kept telling me it needed the proper windows disk when it was in fact already inserted. Once I hit Retry it seemed to continue working everytime until finished.

I do have AVG and run it semi-frequently, but I NEVER have virus issues. Never. Whether that's through luck, caution, both or neither I'm not sure. But I downloaded and ran the Avira Boot CD anyway... and detected almost nothing. The only things I got were false hits, like registering the Gamespot Downloader as some sort of adware. I ran a full system scan, too, which took about an hour and 40 minutes.

So now I'm left with a spotless computer that still bogs down. The obvious solution is to, like you said, wipe the slate clean and start over with backed up materials, but I was hoping to wait for that until I could afford a new build. There's got to be a reason why my page file is so messed up and why this thing is constantly chugging when it should be sailing along smoothly. What else can I check?

It might be worth noting that Hard Disk Sentinal had previously detected my primary hard drive at 99% health, but after running the System File Check and Avira it's now rated at 97% with two damaged sectors. Still well within acceptable health ratings, but still eyebrow-raising.

[Danny Bui]

Oh just for the hell of it:
Download the CD image of Hitachi Drive Fitness Test, burn the ISO file to a CD, and then boot from it, just like you would do with the XP/Vista install CD. Test the hard drive and see if any problems are found. DFT will run on most manufacturers' hard drives. Alternatively, you can use Seagate's SeaTools for DOS to test a Seagate or Maxtor drive. For a Western Digital drive, you could use Data Lifeguard Tools for DOS to test a Western Digital drive.

[SmokeRngs]

You might also want to check in Device Manager to see if the hard drive is running in DMA mode or PIO mode. PIO mode really slows disk transfers down and causes very high CPU usage. If it's not running in DMA mode and you can't change it to DMA mode, remove the hard drive controllers from Device Manager, reboot and let Windows reinstall the drive controllers. The drive should be running in DMA mode then or you should be able to change it to run in DMA mode.

http://www.hardfolding.com/fhtag.php/mem/207/1/2.png (http://www.hardfolding.com/fh_stats/?pz=102&tnum=33&id=207) http://www.hardfolding.com/w_tag.php/mem/67729/1/2.png (http://www.hardfolding.com/?p=2611&tid=33&id=67729)

[sportwarrior]

I assume the Hitachi or Seagate utilities will give me a more complete/thorough picture of what's going on than Diskeeper and Disk Sentinel? I'd end up using Data Lifeguard I think, as both my drives are WD.

As for the Transfer Mode.... I'm running in SATA so as far as I know DMA mode doesn't apply. My secondary drive is in SATA 2-3G mode while my primary (the older drive) is in SATA 1-1.5G. Neither are operating in SATA II.

[Joe Average]

The typical reason for it not "seeing" the CD in the drive is because the original drive letter during the installation was most likely assigned to another device and you've since either added drives or partitions and changed the drive letter setup, not a big deal in the long run.

The page file reflects the necessity of applications to use virtual memory, hence, if the page file is growing by leaps and bounds and you can't see a reason for it in Task Manager, then something is going on in the background for some reason, which usually turns out to be some infection of some kind. Most people use the defaults for Task Manager which are useless; mine looks like this on all my boxes:

http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/5514/taskmanagerxh0.png

One thing that I've noted when I get a major slowdown and can't figure out why is to take a look at the Handles column. If you're using XP 32 bit, it has a "limit" to the number of handles it can work with before you get a shitload of slowdown on the machine. If that handles count crosses the 10K line, you'll start to notice the machine bogging down. I've had some errant and badly coded apps start off with a normal amount of handles and suddenly start spiking into the 2K, 4K, 8K, etc, even sometimes into the 15K+ range of handles just for that one app, and it forces Windows resources to choke and puke, to put it bluntly. Keeping that column visible allows you to spot such things if they happen or start to happen so you can kill off the errant task. Keep the level under 10K if possible for XP 32 bit - other versions of Windows don't suffer from the same issues.

I found long ago that the defaults were useless, that adding the columns I've added provides all the info I need, and whenever something "goes wrong" I can spot it quick. While some will argue with this, I'm about to say the two primary reasons a system will slow down and not show direct evidence of the reasons in Task Manager or any type of process monitoring tools:

1) You have a shitload of network activity going on, most notably high numbers of connections - the most common reason for this is BitTorrent. I've seen people with machines that, when their BitTorrent client isn't running, are very fast, snappy and responsive. But when they fire up their BT client (doesn't matter which one it is, actually), they end up having so many torrents running that the sheer number of connections chokes the shit out of Windows itself. Network adapters work at a processing level that's very close to sitting on the kernel itself, and when you have a bunch of 'em going the system in general just slows to a crawl and it's almost impossible to figure out why.

2) An infection, as already noted. This tends to affect specific system files more often than not, especially services.exe or svchost.dll, the two most affected and targeted files. Checking out the system fully for such activity is always recommended, and doing it from outside of Windows is preferred. That "new" Avira bootable AV CD is fairly useful for this stuff, but to be honest, if you do find you've got system files infected, a clean installation is truly the only way you're going to get the box fixed like it or not, there's just no shortcut way around it.

While testing the hard drive is a good idea just because, it won't have anything to do with the increase page file activity the OP is seeing; that's a software/OS issue and will work itself out, or he'll end up doing a clean install.

See what I mean about the time involved to "fix" such an issue? He's already spent 20x more time than it would take to back the stuff up and just start over again and he's nowhere closer to a solution. :)

[sportwarrior]

Lots of good info in that post, Joe Average. I added up all my Handle count and came up with a whopping 12692k. Almost all the biggest offenders are system processes... SVChost, Explorer, Winlogon, System, lsass, csrss, etc. Avira and AVG both give me clean bills of health with no virus, trojan, or worm activity, so I'm assuming all this stuff is legit. I know you said to start closing programs that are big offenders, but as I said most are system processes. That being said, I do have a crapload of processes. 58 to be exact. Compared to your screen shot my system looks like the fat guy taking up two seats at the movie theater.

I'm also a little curious as to why your Firefox load is so low. Mine is almost immediately about 100/100 right after launch and climbs rapidly to over 200 in the first few minutes of usage. Right now its sitting at 303mb for Mem, 289 for VM, and 572 for Handles with 4 tabs open and about 20 min of operation... Big time offender every time I start it. I'm running through and getting rid of some obviously unneeded programs, but there aren't too many.

[Met-AL]

Here is a nifty little utility that's main purpose is to lower the priority of processes that are hogging your CPU (not what I use it for). What makes it nifty is that it has a sort of histogram display of CPU usage.. over a period of time, you will see which processes are the big CPU users.
http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/proctamer/index.html


Ok, for a little more info..what's hitting the hard disk, what's writing to the registry, whats using the network, etc.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896642.aspx

And this last one is my favorite and most used utility to diagnose perf problems
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx