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View Full Version : Unexplained slowdown

jwersan
19 Sep 2003, 09:49pm
I know that others of you have seen this, and probably this has come up before, but...

On my computer, after a while of using the OS (XP Corp Edition) it will inexplicable slow down or take unexplained pauses whenever I try to access the Internet or go to my hard-drive.

At first, I thought that it may be a runaway process, but the task manager shows more than 50% CPU idle, and I don't see that the system is hard-drive bound, because the drive activity LED is quiet.

In the past, when this has become intolerable, I have done a ground up rebuild. (Reformat the drive, and reload the OS & all the apps) I would like to avoid this, if possible…

Any thoughts or explanations.

Thanks!
citrixmeta
19 Sep 2003, 10:08pm
defrag?
jwersan
20 Sep 2003, 01:25am
Done that, checked for viri, the lot.

I suspect a bad DLL, or something, but I have yet to nail it down.

Thanks though....
citrixmeta
20 Sep 2003, 01:36am
can u go into

Device manager
expand ur IDE ATA controllers,
right click on primary ide
go to properties
advanced settings tab.


and tell me whats the CURRENT TRANSFER MODE.
do the same for the seconday IDE.
jwersan
20 Sep 2003, 01:41am
All are set to "DMA if available"

Does that help???:confused:
citrixmeta
20 Sep 2003, 01:50am
your in the right place, i need to know what it says below that field.

it should state the Current Transfer mode
stoopid
20 Sep 2003, 02:42am
Could be software, (for example) older versions of zonealarm were known to have "memory leaks" which caused the amount of memory used by the application to spike or for it to sieze memory addresses, which caused NT to cough up the proverbial lung.

Could be a variety of things, even someone dos-attacking you from the network could cause this as more and more of window's resources need to be diverted to handle the incoming packets... etc...
jwersan
20 Sep 2003, 03:13am
All are ultra DMA mode 2 (I can not change them either)
izzugotom
20 Sep 2003, 11:47am
CPU 50% idle....Which processes are taking up the other 50% ?

Which Antivirus do you have, and how is it programmed to run & monitor ?

>Any Windows Updates running....may be unsuccessful.?

>How much memory do you have.
>How much free memory ? [@ 50% idle]

>How is your pagefile setting set ?


>If you access the internet, which other destinations does your Firewall indicated ?