Re: Slow Vista Home Premium PC - lots of disk thrashing

"Victor Delta" <none@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Martin Underwood" <a@b> wrote in message
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What could cause a Vista Home Premium PC to run very slowly and with
constant disk thrashing?

The spec is:

- Intel Core Duo 2 T5250 12.5 GHz CPU
- 1024 MB RAM (shouldn't this be plenty?)
- loads of free disk space (at least 50 GB)

I've done an AdAware 2007 scan and can't see any spyware. Likewise I've
done an AVG scan - no viruses.

As originally supplied it had Windows Wanker (I mean Windows One Care)
installed, but the customer asked me to remove this and replace it with
AVG/AdAware (+Windows Firewall) when its trial subscription was about to
expire. The PC ran equally slowly both with and without OneCare.

Task Manager is showing:

Physical Memory

- Total = 1013
- Cached = 204
- Free = 0 (CAUSE FOR CONCERN?)

System

- Page File 1320/2278

Memory Graph

- hovers around 860 which is about 7/8 of the full-scale value


Processor usage is low (0 - 5% typically) when the PC is idle after
booting.


The Resource program linked to from Task Manger shows Memory and Disk
running at 100% on the blue line and fluctuating wildly around 40-80% on
the green line. (What's the significance of the blue and green lines -
it's not explained on the page)?


I can't seen any software that should not be there, either in Add/Remove
Programs or in the Run sections of the Registry.



What else should I be looking for which could give a clue as to why the
PC is running so slowly with constant disk thrashing?

On an XP PC I'd defrag the HDD just in case it had got badly fragmented
(odd in a PC that is only 3 months old and has only been used for web
browsing, email and a little light word-processing) but that's not an
option on Vista as you can't explicitly defrag the disk, only set it to
do background defragging as and when it feels like it.

Does the problem continue ad infinitum...?

If it only happens for approximately the first 10 minutes after switching
on, this is a common problem with Vista and there are lots of internet
articles about it and how you can improve things - to a degree...

If it continues endlessly, then obviously there is something more
seriously wrong.

It continues forever. I'm sure I'd have noticed if things quietened down 10
mins after booting: I'm sure the PC was on for more than that time between
one boot and the next.

PS 2GB of RAM would probably help to start with.

Well I've seen plenty of other PCs run fine with 1 GB. Do the Task Manager
results I've posted actually suggest that the PC is running out of memory?
The process with the largest memory usage dwm.exe (desktop windows manager)
which is using 42 MB.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Slow Vista Home Premium PC - lots of disk thrashing
    ... Physical Memory ... What else should I be looking for which could give a clue as to why the PC is running so slowly with constant disk thrashing? ... On an XP PC I'd defrag the HDD just in case it had got badly fragmented but that's not an option on Vista as you can't explicitly defrag the disk, only set it to do background defragging as and when it feels like it. ... PS 2GB of RAM would probably help to start with. ...
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