Re: FYI
- From: "Gerry" <gerry@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:22:16 -0000
Daave
That thread carries a load of baggage! Why bring it here
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general?
--
Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Daave wrote:
"JimL" <inkleput@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:65905$496cce6d$c4db910$1527@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Daave" <dcwashNOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:O$v9y3EdJHA.4900@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"JimL" <inkleput@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:158ef$496a1879$c4db890$25217@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
As regarding my posts about laptops flashing the hard drive light
continually:
It may be useful to someone to note my experience. I have spent
hours and hours identifying processes. I have switched off
processes. I have deleted stuff. I even totally removed AVG so
its huge stores of self-restarting and undeletable junk was gone.
One thing is clear.
As I shut down process after process of known software like my
firewall, my anti-spyware, my remote drive, my anti-virus, my
clipboard reader, etc., etc., the hard drive access lessened with
each one I shut down until there was almost none going on.
This indicates that there is no hidden malware driving the
continual accessing.
This indicates that my starting question about about whether it was
normal for laptops to do this (as opposed to piling up a bunch of
details about what machine I was using, etc.) was spot on,
appropriate and proper. (I wanted a simple answer and asked a
simple question.) And it indicates something about the people who
jumped down my throat for asking it.
Who jumped down your throat? Are you sure that's what happened? The
only thread I could see was the one called "Simple question for
laptop users." I saw only two replies, and both were helpful.
Unfortunately, there are some immature rascals posting here who
admittedly aren't helpful and can even be abrasive. It is best to
ignore them. :-)
In my experience with laptops, the answer is no, it is not normal
for a laptop's hard drive access light to flash 30 to 40 times a
minute. Perhaps an over-reliance on the pagefile is causing this to
happen with your laptop. But Malke is correct; if you want us to
assist you in finding and eliminating the cause, it is important
for you to provide the necessary details, including the amount of
RAM you have and the Commit Charge figures, among other things.
Judging by your paragraph above about eliminating processes one at a
time, my guess is that you either need more RAM or you need to
configure your system to run more lean.
I note that when I DID post full details about my system I got not a
single reply.
If you are talking about this one:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/688bd$4947ec69$c4db84f$23301@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
... keep in mind that the microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics group gets
very little traffic. You'll have better luck posting to
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, which is where I am now
cross-posting to.
In that post, the only pertinent info (specs-wise) you gave was:
"I have a Thinkpad T42, Centrino 1.7ghz, 1gb mem, 10 gb free disk
space, XP
Pro SP3. SP 3 is recent..."
Not a bad start, but we don't know how large your hard drive is. That
means we don't know what *percentage* of it is free. You later stated
you once had a Zlob infection. While it's possible it has been
completely eradicated, it's also possible there are remnants left
behind. That needs to be ruled out.
One gig of RAM is normally more than enough but without Commit Charge
figures, we just don't know. Sometimes errors force the hard drive's
transfer mode to a slower one. If you would really like to get to the
root cause of sluggshness (or excessive hard drive activity), you need
to use the scientific method. We can help.
I don't recall this moment how to check it, but such times as I have
stumbled across it I've always had near half a gig of memory free.
I'm not sure what this means.
Anywho, this is what I normally post regarding poor performance, etc.:
Regarding sluggishness in general, here are its usual causes:
1. Malicious software (malware)
2. Certain programs that are designed to combat malware (e.g., Norton
and McAfee). Ironically, they can slow things down because they simply
use way too many resources. Sometime they cause conflicts with other
programs. And their default mode is to scan your entire hard drive
each time you boot up.
3. Too many of *certain types* of programs always running in the
background -- with or without your knowledge.
Use these sites to determine what these programs are and to learn how
to configure them not to always run at startup:
http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_content.php#THE_PROGRAMS
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm
Sometimes it is recommended to use msconfig to configure the programs
to not run at startup. A better, more thorough program is Autoruns:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx
4. Not enough RAM, which causes the PC to overly rely on the
pagefile. A quick way to determine if this is happening is to open
Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then note
the three values under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand
corner: Total, Limit, and Peak.
The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory
you used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value
of Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM.
Otherwise, you may want to explore this further by running Page File
Monitor for Windows XP:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm
5. You might also want to check that your hard drive's access mode
didn't change from DMA to PIO:
http://www.technize.com/2007/08/02/is-your-hard-disk-cddvd-drives-too-slow-while-copying/
and
http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/itserviceduck/udma_fix/
.
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