Slow Computer

[Sulkdodds]

My laptop computer is slow. It didn't used to be, but it is now. Specifically, games do not really run anymore. Within the space of a month, Left 4 Dead and Bioshock have become completely unplayable. The computer is always generally troublesome; most ticeable is that folders will take longer to load, that Firefox will periodically freeze for 20 seconds or so and if I am typing continuously it may appear to stop and then paste in all my words all at once.

I'm not really sure what to do about this, or even what to do about finding out what to do about this. I've defragged recently enough and all of that low end maintenance stuff. My hard drive was very full, but now has 30gb free. There are as far as I can tell no background processes taking up inordinate amounts of memory: Steam 10k, Firefox 300k, whatever.

Does anyone know how I might more specifically locate the problem, or just any other general measures I could take? I would very much like to be able to use my computer to play games again, or at least to know why that ability has so suddenly and unaccountably been taken away from me. Someone suggested that my drivers might have magically instantly gone wrong. Hmm.

Thanks!

PS: I know that a total reformat of my hard drive would be an option. But it is not one I relish, because of the hassle of getting all the things I want off it and then putting them all back on, etc.

 

[Vegeta897]

My laptop computer is slow. It didn't used to be, but it is now.

Were you intentionally sounding like an advert when you typed this?

 

[kineaesth]

I have the same problem! One day I could play video games, and now I can not. I blame Vista for this.

 

[VirusType2]

Install XP with no AV and no start up programs. Gets you into Windows from a powered off state in about 5 seconds, shuts down and powers off in about 2.

 

[Laivasse]

My gut would still point me towards a background process as the culprit in this. When you're checking out background processes and how burdensome they are, it's CPU that you should keep an eye on rather than memory. Memory leaks can debilitate performance, but CPU usage spikes are far more common in my experience. Next time you're suffering from stuttering performance, check Task Manager and sort the processes by CPU (usage). Keep it open for a while and see if any processes sporadically shoot to the top of the list with a high CPU-usage-%. Isolate the exe, google it if it's obscure, nuke it from orbit. Failing this, it's always worth seeing if you can improve performance by pruning your startup items by disabling 'start with Windows' in their config, or via either Run -> 'msconfig' -> Startup, or Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services. Prime suspect, without knowing anything about what's running on your comp, would usually be antivirus, since it's often the most burdensome active process.

In my experience there aren't a great deal of things that can cause temporary freezes without giving themselves away in task manager, unless it's somehow hardware related. As it's a laptop, the problem could possibly be some kind of power-stepping feature misfiring - that is to say, your freezes could be a result of your processor changing speed in order to conserve power. Most laptops do this, but normally the effect is only noticeable as a 'micro stutter', usually in games, and I don't know why it would suddenly have gotten worse for you. I have heard stories of laptops slowing down drastically as a safety measure upon overheating, but I thought it only applied to an overheating graphics card, which wouldn't cause your problems. STILL, if you want to eliminate this possibility you can download HW Monitor to check temps and RMclock to set your CPU to a constant speed to see if the stuttering vanishes.

Barring background processes and power-stepping, the only other thing I know which might cause mysterious hiccups is a faulty CD/DVD drive or a dirty disc in same.

 

[Krynn72]

My hard drive was very full, but now has 30gb free.

You did make sure to actually delete all those files you removed by emptying your recycling bin right?

Also, right click on your hard drive in My Computer, and uncheck "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed"

Indexing files makes searches work faster, but most people dont do searches on their PCs so its really just something that is a resource hog. Could by why folders take a second or two to open and show their contents.

Also, do this:

When you're in MSConfig (as in Laivasse's post) go to the "Startup" tab and uncheck anything that doesnt look necessary. Lots of stuff you install defaults itself to starting up when your boot your pc, and you dont need most of it. Leave on anything that looks like its related to the windows OS, nvidia/ati, your antivirus, etc. Pretty much everything else can be turned off. This should reduce how much memory you're using, and increase your computers boot speed.

 

[Asus]

What is your total size of that drive? 30gb could be a big percent or it could be basically nothing. And full drives do make PCs slower.

Also, I would run check disk to make sure all sectors are in good shape still. (From Vista) Right-click on drive, properties, tools, error-checking (top option above defrag).

 

[Sulkdodds]

hanks for all ur help, doodes!

My gut would still point me towards a background process as the culprit in this.

Oddly enough, the biggest spike I am getting (looking at ask manager over the last half hour) is simply Firefox hopping around between 20 and 50. Spybot ('teatimer.exe') occasionally but very rarely jumps up to a similar number. I've eliminated some startup things, but I'd already done a fairly thorough purge of useless processes a while ago.

Something seems to be going on, though: here's a 1000 second Performance Monitor that I left on while no other programs were open:

These spikes seem highly suspicious to me.

I also wonder what's going on here (System) and if the discrepency between the numbers is supposed to be so big.

In the end, periodic mozilla freezes are far, far less important to me than the possibility of just being able to play a goddamn videogame once in a while. Just in case it is an indication of capability, I tried to play TF2 the other day, and it was fine as long as there were only 8 people on the server. When more began to join (or perhaps, in fact, just as time wore on) it became unplayable.

Krynndog, I really really like indexing as it allows me to find phrases inside my documents, but I'll try turning it off and see if that improves performance in any way.

What is your total size of that drive? 30gb could be a big percent or it could be basically nothing.

It is 220 gigs big. I'm going to run a disk check while I go and eat dinner.

Virus mentioned XP. Another friend advised me in his cavalier way simply to reinstall everything. Make a clean start of it. I could even get one of those Windows 7 student deals, and begin again with an empty hard drive.

I'd have to buy a new hard drive to back up all my documents and music on to, but I kind of need one anyway. I have an external box into which ordinary SATA drives can be slotted, so if anyone has a recommendation for that (I like the look of this) that'd be good.

Is this worth doing?

 

[Asus]

The WD 1 TB drives perform a little better across the board both random read/writes (which is usually like app use / OS boot) and sequential read/writes (file create and copy). The Samsung is strong just with sequential read/writes. So if this isn't going to be a boot drive and the F3 is cheaper, get that. Otherwise check out the WD.
(Although the F3 probably is still faster than an old drive in your system for booting)

 

[VirusType2]

Krynndog, I really really like indexing as it allows me to find phrases inside my documents, but I'll try turning it off and see if that improves performance in any way.

I use Everything for searching. It uses the Meta File Table [MFT], and builds a list of everything on a hard drive in seconds. (unless it's encrypted) Therefore, you don't even have to run it at all except when you want it. (you can close it before playing games without any issues).

This will not find phrases in your documents, however consider this -


I type all of my miscellaneous things into HelpNDoc, therefore everything is together. When minimized to the taskbar, this application takes up less than a megabyte! I build a tree on the left with titles like "To Do", "People's Birthdays". This has searching built in...


Sorry, often hotlinks will not paste to this forum. So, missing links.

 

[Laivasse]

These spikes seem highly suspicious to me.

Yeah, they're not what you'd expect from a machine that isn't performing anything strenuous. In the performance monitor you can observe the CPU load for individual processes by going to 'add counter', searching under 'Process' and then adding a counter for '% Processor Time' - either for 'All instances' or just for processes which you suspect of causing trubs, like Firefox and SB. After that you'll be able to go back to the graph and use the colour key to discover exactly which processes are causing the spikes.

I'd recommend shutting those processes off during gaming if you don't do so already. Since Spybot doesn't have a firewall (afaik...?), you can safely disable its active protection most of the time, particularly when gaming.

However, tbh I don't hold out much hope for this being the solution to your degraded performance in games, particularly if that changes as a result of time spent playing or the number of other players. Intermittent CPU spikes are unlikely to be the culprit there. I can't spot anything wrong with the memory usage breakdown either.

Maybe try running your Source games with the -heapsize [whatever amount] parameter, to commit a certain amount of RAM towards the game. You could try fiddling with your swap file - either leaving it to be managed by windows if it isn't already, or by managing the size yourself and increasing it by a Gb or two if it is. Beyond that I can't think of what you can do other than the HD-related stuff that's been suggested already (turning off Indexing, defragging, maybe reformatting or buying another HD as a last resort). It could also still potentially be an overheat causing your graphics card to automatically underclock.