   Windows really slow
  I have to work on a Windows XP computer and it's really slow. What could be the cause?When it's slow, it's usually not using much CPU. I think the disk access is slow. I just defragmented though. It is especially slow when starting up an application (even a simple application like pidgin or firefox).It's true, this computer has a lot to do, but is it normal that it's this slow? It has visual studio running, incredibuild (but I set it to low priority), outlook open all the time, etc... But even when incredibuild ins't compiling, it can still take a long time to start up e.g. pidgin, and as mentioned earlier, it doesn't use much CPU, it's probably the harddisk being slow.Specs:It's a desktop PC, not a laptop.Intel Core 2 CPU of 3 years old (E6400 or so I think).2 GB RAMone hard disk with two partitionsATI FireGL card (also of some 3 years old, don't know exact model number)Windows XP with all updatesThe thing is, the slowness is there *all the time*! Sometimes the outlook calendar doesn't respond anymore for a minute, or firefox takes ages to start up, or visual studio stops responding properly for minutes.It's as if some things manage to use up all resources of something other than the CPU and cause applications that are important to me (usually I assume that the window that is active should be responsive) to become not so responsive.What could be causing this. Any tips on what I could try to make this system more responsive and slick? Hardware and software tips? I don't think hardware upgrades will be allowed by the sysadmins though so especially things I can do in software are interesting...   
  I get this too, in fact it seems to be the standard situation with Windows PCs that run slowly... Task Manager shows nothing happening but apps take a long time to start, the disk chugs away, Explorer hangs for a few seconds, etc.Maybe the inner parts of the OS don't get included in CPU use?   ;  What's your RAM usage level?  How much free space do you have on your hard drive?   ;  Have you tried to use Process Explorer to determine the cause of the slowdown? One of the advantages of this program over Task Manager is that it can show fractional CPU load values - this will expose some processes/threads that might look like idle on casual inspection. Also, you can observe disk I/O and a lot of other stuff with it.---Old WinXP (and earlier) installs have a problem in that the registry allocation table becomes too crowded and fragmented if you have a considerable amount of programs installed. The problem doesn't necessarily go away even though you would uninstall the programs, because there's no effective or safe built-in way to defragment the table. This is why a new XP install always performs better than an old one. Vista and 7 (and Server 2008 + R2) address this problem somewhat by both allocating more memory for the table to begin with, and managing the pages more efficiently - thus avoiding the problem.---The slowdown can also be caused by imminent failure of your HDD hardware, or storage bus driver (as in, data bus and Windows driver) misconfiguration.   ;Quote:Original post by Nik02Old WinXP (and earlier) installs have a problem in that the registry allocation table becomes too crowded and fragmented if you have a considerable amount of programs installed. The problem doesn't necessarily go away even though you would uninstall the programs, because there's no effective or safe built-in way to defragment the table. This is why a new XP install always performs better than an old one. Vista and 7 (and Server 2008 + R2) address this problem somewhat by both allocating more memory for the table to begin with, and managing the pages more efficiently - thus avoiding the problem.Is there a way in XP to clean this up without a reinstall of the OS?   ;  test to see if youve got a virus/exploit etc   ;Quote:Original post by zedztest to see if youve got a virus/exploit etcI'm pretty sure there isn't any.   ;  Find out what's causing the slowdown.If you suspect the HDD, run Process Explorer and watch the IO meter. Usually I'd recommend Resource Monitor, but it only comes with Vista and above.To make sure it's not just a really slow hard drive, you can try downloading HD Tune to measure IO performance.Besides that, maybe you should upgrade to Vista. [grin] I'm only half joking, though, Vista's typically a lot better at hiding poor HDD performance because it does a lot of intelligent caching in the background. I found Vista to be significantly more responsive than XP.   ;  Try to install and run Speedfan and check the SMART health of your hard drive. I had a dying hard drive that took forever to do anything - computer ran fine, just agonizingly slowly whenever anything needed to hit the drive.If your hard drive is dying, seek times will increase, and Windows has an irritating habit of blocking on the disk.   ;Quote:Original post by RavuyaTry to install and run Speedfan and check the SMART health of your hard drive. I had a dying hard drive that took forever to do anything - computer ran fine, just agonizingly slowly whenever anything needed to hit the drive.If your hard drive is dying, seek times will increase, and Windows has an irritating habit of blocking on the disk.I just did it. I always wondered about speedfan why so many smart values have exactly value 253. Seek Time Performance is one of those values that has 253. Does this have any meaning?Speedfan reports no errors btw, and also it made me discover that it aren't two partitions in the PC but actually two different disks of each 160GB, which is good :)   