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Help me optimize vista.

M

MittWaffen

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 8, 2008
Messages
323
*****UPDATE*****



i found the issue, AUDIODG.EXE has a bad leak, using 1.5gb of ram.

My sound card is X-fi extreme music, latest drivers.
 
Install all the latest drivers, and get all the updates installed then leave it alone. Vista is very good about optimizing itself. Actually using memory is what is great about Vista.
 
I would suspect some other reason for the crawl as Vista is designed to use all system RAM for caching purposes with whatever is left over after apps and the OS itself are committed.

Leave it alone is still the best possible advice. Start mucking around with things and then you'll end up asking for help with resolving the issues you're likely to cause by not leaving it alone in the first place.
 
Well this is my issue, when i alt tab its VERY slow, even with 4gb.. doesn't seem normal to me.

After i close a game and all programs my ram is being held at 2.8gb which isn't normal at all.
No idea why this is happening, might be time for SP2 i think. Ive looked around everywhere on the comp, selective startup prefetch cleared out. Seems a little slugish, drivers are not the reason thats for sure.
 
The RAM is "being held" because of SuperFetch, which is exactly how Vista works. You simply have to look yourself in the mirror and say "It's not XP, I have to stop thinking like it's XP, it's not XP, it's new and different and it works better, and it's not XP..."

Because if you can't break out of that "Oh god I have no RAM" mentality you'll never figure it out. SuperFetch is designed - as long as you leave it alone - to cache your most frequently used data so it's right there in RAM, ready to load 100x faster than it ever could by pulling it off the hard drive just in case you decide to restart an app or reload a document, etc.

It's not XP, stop thinking like it's XP or any previous version of Windows. Be happy that it's better in that respect, that you paid for the RAM and now - unlike XP where it just sits there - it's actually being put to use to help the machine work better overall.

And go get a book about Vista, it'll help, because you seem to be lacking a lot of the most common knowledge that's available around here. Sounds like Vista is working fine save for the Alt+Tab thing which more than likely is related to video drivers (seen it before, it was always a video driver issue in the cases I've dealt with) or perhaps a clean fresh installation might be in order depending on how long the current one has been in place.

And then there's Windows 7... ;)

As for that Q6600, you're pushing it entirely too far, 3.6 is the cap for these things (as I have one myself). You're killing it at 3.87 GHz or whatever you're murdering it with. Ease off the clock, bub. It works just fine a 3.6 and you won't notice any difference at all in that 287 MHz I promise. And the RAM too... back it off or you'll end up buying new hardware sooner than you like... :) I have 5.9 scores on RAM (DDR2 800 4-4-4-12 stock) and CPU (Q6600 2.4 GHz stock) so that means nothing... the WEI/WinSAT scores are meaningless.
 
MittWaffen said:
Well this is my issue, when i alt tab its VERY slow, even with 4gb.. doesn't seem normal to me.

After i close a game and all programs my ram is being held at 2.8gb which isn't normal at all.
No idea why this is happening, might be time for SP2 i think. Ive looked around everywhere on the comp, selective startup prefetch cleared out. Seems a little slugish, drivers are not the reason thats for sure.
Click to expand...

Vista is still optimizing. It's creating an index for searches, learning how you use your computer, setting up it pre-caching (Superfetch). It'll seem sluggish for a week or two after installing. However, if it doesn't improve beyond that, there's something wrong.

And don't go disabling services per BlkViper. Services running do not equate a slower computer. Most of the time, if it's not being used, the service is not taking any CPU time and is paged out of RAM and not an issue.

As for 2.8GB still being used, look up Superfetch.
 
MittWaffen said:
I wanted to know what i can do to eliminate useless vista processes, and help me system free up memory, I have little to no startup programs/ non microsoft services.

Still with 4gb ram i can find myself closing 3.89gb and the system begins to crawl.

4GB should be enough to run a game (like wow) and watch a movie on my other screen, any help will be appreciated, since im an XP fan and ive started to use vista...help me stay with this OS.
Click to expand...


Please, do yourself a favor and take everyone's advice here. ESPECIALLY Joe Average's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vista_IO_technologies#SuperFetch
 
Seriously, if you've got the cajones to run a beta OS, just install Win7, the newest builds are very solid and stable. It's much, much better at memory management, you won't run into the issues you're having now. I wouldn't recommend using Vista anymore to anyone who has enough knowledge to format and install OSes themselves.
 
bonsai said:
Seriously, if you've got the cajones to run a beta OS, just install Win7, the newest builds are very solid and stable. It's much, much better at memory management, you won't run into the issues you're having now. I wouldn't recommend using Vista anymore to anyone who has enough knowledge to format and install OSes themselves.
Click to expand...

Win 7 is great, I'll give you that. I've been running build 7000 since it was release and only had one major problem that I've yet to figure out what caused it. But a simple SFC /scannow from the command prompt fixed it and it was good as new.
 
Well, my only issue with Win7 is the 'timer' built into it. Seeing how MS made me shell out a few hundred for vista bis and now i really dont want to do it all again.

If the beta is stable, i have no problem using it from now intill the end of time.
I bought my over clock to 3.48ghz, my ram is rated at 1066 so im really not pushing anything.
My drives ate 640GB WD which seem insanely fast for how much i payed.

Overall it isnt hardware related issue, XP runs like butter.
However i had the superfetch disabled to see how much vista ate naturally, and it still seemed the same (+/- 200mb).

If you can give me a link to the latest beta build, ill install it up and see if its worth keeping.
 
bonsai said:
The best way to optimize Vista is by uninstalling it.
Click to expand...
If you're totally inept and incapable of using the easiest-to-use version of Windows shy of 7, this might be true. But if that's true, then perhaps you shouldn't be around PCs anyway, bonsai.
 
MS didnt make you shell out anything, you choose to buy it.

and what is wrong with his overclock, if it runs stable @ 3.8 with good volts leave it there....

Vista works great being left alone, do you have alot of other crap running?

alt+tab out of games can be hard on any system, some games dont mind doing it, other ones have hissy fits as they write crap to the harddrive and such.
 
First link doesn't go nowhere, it should be:

http://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=1048

and it's still as meaningless today as it was when it was panned out last year. The second link, don't even get me started... if you're going to disable the guts of Vista, keep running XP, it's really that simple.

NEXT!!!
 
panhead said:
Just Say No To SuperFetch
http://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=1048Change
SuperFetch to Only Cache System Boot Files in Vista
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...etch-to-only-cache-system-boot-files-in-vista
Click to expand...

You're kidding right? I mean tweaking the OS is one thing but you're just doing more bad than good in this case. Plus your first link doesn't go anywhere. I'd love to see some proof (i.e., benchmarks) that you think SuperFetch caching only system boot files would do better for performance.

Met-AL said:
Posting that here on the [H] should be a bannable offense.
Click to expand...

Agreed.
 
I wasn't aware the [H]orde had something against blackviper......do tell o_0
 
I dont know if it works better, when prefetch is disabled and the OS is eating 1.7gb of ram, Im going to install win7 this weekend and will report back with my findings.
 
staknhalo said:
I wasn't aware the [H]orde had something against blackviper......do tell o_0
Click to expand...

his guides are useless and do nothing in terms of any real performance gains but more often then not cause more problems for people down the road.
 
MittWaffen said:
I dont know if it works better, when prefetch is disabled and the OS is eating 1.7gb of ram, Im going to install win7 this weekend and will report back with my findings.
Click to expand...

the OS isnt eating anything, it is using your ram, if something else requires the ram, the OS let's it go! for the program to use., i would think after 2 years of vista being out they would know this already.
 
What programs are you running when you reach your physical memory cap? Just WoW and a movie? What settings are you using in WoW and what kind of video is it? You may need to turn down your settings in the game.

You have a very capable machine and OS, but it still has it's limits. Your usage habits may have to change to stay within your system's limits, or you can get more RAM to accommodate your usage habits. It doesn't matter what OS tweaks you use when you're exceeding the limitations of your hardware.

Also, consider if your video card is the bottleneck. Video and 3d games running simultaneously at high resolutions might be too taxing on your video card. I have no experience with this, but I think it should be investigated.
 
Im running 32 processes, 0 apps, 1.7 gb's ram usage on startup.
My card isnt a bottle neck, GTX 280, im not a rookie with this area of computers..however i've heared many many many different ideas about vista memory management, thus i've come here for awnsers. It seems almost like a memory leak for media player or google chrome which can cause that 1.7 to jump to almost 4gbs over time, even if vista is holding it or not...my page file is going off the wall at that point and slows everything i normally do down.

Im going to investigate a bit more.
 
I was under the assumption you were using relatively stable programs, but alas buggy software is most likely the culprit. 1.7 GB on startup seems a bit high to me. My Vista install starts up with 1 GB/4 GB memory usage for reference. No major tweaks done on my part.
 
See, ive never had it that low. 64BIT version lowest ive seen (fresh install) 1.4gb ram used on startup.

When drivers are thrown in...G15, Set point, Avg, Drivers...that goes up quite a bit, ive disabled alot of useless programs and found a decent alternative to Ccleaner - Advanced system care which does a decent job with memory management ontop of cleaning my system out; getting my usage to 1.2 gb on startup, with keeping the page file down in size.

I did have WIN7 but the memory usage didn't seem to but impressive either with startup having >1gb ram used. But drivers install in 1/8th the time..which impressed me, on top of the 12 minute install time for the OS. I will most likely uninstall it eventually due to the timer built in. But theres ways around that.
 
The cause of your issue can be SO many things. You shouldn't automatically jump to the conclusion that Vista is the source.

You've been given great advice. Vista does a good job tuning itself for performance.

I'd look for other causes.
 
Im not saying vista is the source, but i just throw in everything into the name Vista (drivers, programs made for vista etc). Reason i do this is because I know how many causes and reason there can be, but i was seeing if there are any 'tweaks of the pros' i can try before i need to dig around.

Overall im not saying vista is bad, its just during a rare time i'll run into performance issues, which I know are related to page file being overused. What i might end up doing sometime is getting another 4gb of ram, I have a picture painted in my head that...4gb should be more than enough for what i do.
 
When you boot up, open the task manager and sort the processes by memory usage and see what are the big users there.

This is my taskmanager of Vista x64 Ultimate, 4GB of RAM


29% of 4GB is 1,187MB of RAM used. Of course, if I would have screenshotted the performance tab, it would show 0 RAM free because the rest of my RAM was being used as cache which is good and I am glad my RAM is being put to use.
 
man, ive had win7 for months on my main pc and vista for years on my laptop. i never really notice the difference... vista and win7 are both fast and easy to use. theyre not much different, i don't understand why people think win7 is so much faster.....
 
The improvement becomes more evident on marginal systems... I have a 2Ghz AMD Turion single core laptop with 1GB of RAM that struggles under Vista, but runs alot better on Win7.
 
woah, just noticed that my audiodg.exe is using 1.5gb of ram!!!

What might be the solution to that one?
 
"Drivers... it's always the damned drivers..."

Get updated drivers, obviously. :) Or roll back to a previous release if necessary, but definitely do something.
 
it isnt the drivers, goggling it drivers arnt the cause (even though i have the latest)


alright guys AUDIODG.EXE is the root cause of my problem.
 
Start here, http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2007/01/31/what-is-audiodg-exe.aspx audiodg is just a handler for audio. Drivers interface and add their own functionality (dsp options, environmental effects, eq settigns) to the audio subsystem. Every Vista install has audiodg.exe. It's got a memory leak because your drivers aren't handling it properly. Of course that's par for the course with Creative's drivers.


edit: here's some more info, dont' know how old it is though. http://connect.creativelabs.com/windows/Lists/XFi Issues/DispForm.aspx?ID=76

edit2: and more http://www.vistax64.com/sound-audio/181392-memory-leak-problem-audiodg-exe-need-help.html
 
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