Vista is becoming slow...why?

S

solideliquid

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 27, 2005
Messages
449
I've been using Vista since it launched I love this OS.

It seems to be however that my vista machine is slowing down. The only example I can think of is opening WMVs in Media player. The last time I formatted my drive (about six-eight months ago) it opened in about one second and played the video immediately. Now it takes about five-eight seconds to open, then another five to ten seconds to start playing the video. It seems to hang on "opening media".

It seems to be a stark contrast to my XP machine that continues to open WMVs very quickly and start playing them. My specs are in my sig and I defrag at least monthly if not more.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!!
 
Run a disk cleanup, delete everything, then switch to the next tab and clean up shadow copy and system restore points, then defrag the drive, then setup a check disk, then reboot, and walk away for 2 hours.

Have you tweaked your page file? If so, revert it back to "let windows manage my page file" check box at the top of that page.
 
solideliquid said:
I've been using Vista since it launched I love this OS.

It seems to be however that my vista machine is slowing down. The only example I can think of is opening WMVs in Media player. The last time I formatted my drive (about six-eight months ago) it opened in about one second and played the video immediately. Now it takes about five-eight seconds to open, then another five to ten seconds to start playing the video. It seems to hang on "opening media".

It seems to be a stark contrast to my XP machine that continues to open WMVs very quickly and start playing them. My specs are in my sig and I defrag at least monthly if not more.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!!
Click to expand...

I noticed a big boost in Vista performance going from 2GB to 4GB. Boots up faster and has more ram to prefetch my most commonly used apps.

I didn't notice any improvement when I tried readyboost.

Also, check to see that your SATA drives are in AHCI mode instead of IDE. This gave me a noticeable boost in performance as well. Don't forget to do the registry fix if you installed Vista in IDE mode.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

And if you are running your computer on a good AVR UPS, which I am, enable all the advanced drive performance options vista has available. Even without raid my disk score is 5.9 in Vista. Before I did these easy steps it was only 5.6!!!
 
SirKronan said:
I noticed a big boost in Vista performance going from 2GB to 4GB. Boots up faster and has more ram to prefetch my most commonly used apps.

I didn't notice any improvement when I tried readyboost.

Also, check to see that your SATA drives are in AHCI mode instead of IDE. This gave me a noticeable boost in performance as well. Don't forget to do the registry fix if you installed Vista in IDE mode.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

And if you are running your computer on a good AVR UPS, which I am, enable all the advanced drive performance options vista has available. Even without raid my disk score is 5.9 in Vista. Before I did these easy steps it was only 5.6!!!
Click to expand...


How do I check if the drive is running in AHCI/what is that?
 
For some reason, I had floppy set as first boot, with the A drive on in my BIOS. I turned it all off/disabled it, and when I booted up, it was a LOT faster.....just a thought!
 
The Intel Storage Matrix Manager application will show you the mode the SATA controller is operating in, it's part of the Storage Matrix drivers and should be installed and on the Start Menu - if you have those drivers installed, that is. If you're just using the basic Vista hard drive controller drivers, you could be losing some performance by not enabling the features that SATA is known for. You have an Intel chipset mobo so, they should be installed.
 
ermmm...

This topic isn't about a system which is incorrectly installed or configured. It's about one which has been operating perfectly well, but on which performance has degraded.

I'd endorse the suggestion about disk cleanup/defrag etc, too. Whilst Vista does a pretty good job of looking after itself when left as a default configuration, it actually has to be running to be able to get it done. Those 'background maintenance' processes and tasks are low priority when the machine is busy being operated, and not running at all when the machine is shut down or in standby. The thing kinda needs periods of time sitting running and idle to remain fully efficient. I've privately advised people having problems to leave the machine running overnight every now and then, and they've reported benefit and better performance from doing so.


I's also be mindful, if there are other media file types in use, of any 'codec packs' which might've been installed. I'm not sure what, if any, impact that might have but to me it kinda sounds reasonable that if the rig is sifting through checks it'd create a slight delay.
 
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