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

"Martin Underwood" <a@b> wrote in message news:13qraj1i3hp5efc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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.

V

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

.

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