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System feels always busy .....

A

amosf

n00b
Joined
May 17, 2005
Messages
6
Hi,

This issue is bugging me for quite some time - My rig is A64 3000, 1GB, 6600GT AGP, NF3 250GB. I have one 200GB WD SATA HD and a 120GB WD PATA HD. Windows XP Pro is installed on the SATA drive.

The problem is that the HDs always feel busy, even if there's not much stress in the system. At first I thougt it was the page file, but looking the PF usage, showed it wasn't. It goes as far as that when I maximize a minimized window of Firefox, it actually get some time till it get done, while accessing the HD - and there's plenty of free RAM.

The worse part is when I'm moving large files from one HD to another (like a 10GB folder) - Then the system gets almost completley unresponsive.

I double checked DMA settings, and it looks fine (I'm running Nvidia IDE driver 2.6).

It was also the same when the SATA drive was the only drive in the system.

Any thoughts ????

Thanks.
 
My ideas:

1.) Run antispyware (Spybot, Adaware, whatever else you can get your hands on)
2.) Run antivirus (housecall.trendmicro.com or whatever AV software you have)
3.) Defrag

Too tired to think of more... Must go sleepy night night. Bye. :)
 
Thanks for the suggestions -

I'm running Adaware pretty regulary along with Microsoft's AntiSpyware. I have Grisoft's AVG antivirus free edition in the background, and I just finished defraging both HDs with Diskeeper......

Still same, behaviour.... :confused:
 
I don't think it's any of these ideas. You could always do a bit more research:

Open Task Manager and perform the minimize/maximize see if anything spikes, takes CPU utilization or something of the sort.

Even better is running "Performance Monitor" or "perfmon". Go to the run line and type perfmon or go to Start/Programs/Admin tools

That's a sweet way to keep an eye on what's exactly going on with your system.
Post back with results.

My guess is it's the drive... does it do anything else slow?
 
Ok,

I ran the perfmon. I activated the counter log, and started maximizing windows , and copy large files (8 x 600MB). during copying the computer was unresponsive.

Avg. Disk Queue Length - Average 10.51 / Maximum 39.849
Pages/sec - Average 6369.085 / Maximum 16096.633
Processor time - Average 31.992 / Maximum 59.375
Duration 1:40

When left idle:
Avg. Disk Queue Length - 0.02
Pages/sec - 0
Processor time - 20 (emule is running in the background)
 
When I first built the system in my sig, I had a similar issue. It turned out that MS messenger was using a bunch of CPU time (I'm not quite sure what it was going). I don't use it, so I downloaded a little utility that totally removes messenger and all of its little subcomponents.

Does it look like there is something using CPU time in your task manager?

/edit: also, do you have all of the latest nVidia drivers installed?
 
I think I found it ..... :)

After running 'perfmon' I thought I'll play with the PF settings - when I went to the Performace tab, I saw the Memory performance is optimized for system cache, instead of the default 'prorgams'. I changed it, and rebooted - seems much smoother now, but I'm still testing.

Will post a definitive result later.
 
Well,

The issue was solved. I just can't remember if I changed this setting on purpose....

Thanks for the help guys!
;)
 
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