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When I built this beast in May, it was a screaming machine - Intel i7 CPU, 12 GB RAM, 1.5 TB SATA HDD. Within the past month, though, it's become sluggish and unresponsive. Both AdAware and MSE report a clean system - no nasty beasties lurking and stealing CPU cycles. Task Manager displays no active apps, less than 2% CPU activity for any process, 0% network capacity used. Performance monitoring reports that one CPU core is about 60% occupied, while the other 3 are idle, and no more than 20% of RAM is in use. Defrag reports 0% fragmentation on the HDD, not surprising since I have it set to defrag once a week. Ordinarily, with information like this, I'd declare the machine healthy, but the fact remains that it's doggy poo. Simply loading Solitaire, which used to start up in under one second, now takes 12 to 15 seconds to load. Navigating the web used to be an instantaneous process, but it now takes half a minute or so just to see a new URL. Once there, navigating the site is still extremely fast, but switching to a new domain again takes a long time. I purchased Registry Booster from Uniblue and ran that; it claimed to find 309 registry errors and fixed them. After rebooting the system it actually did run like the wind again for about two days, then it was back to crawling.
I've used up all the tools in my toolbox, and I'm out of ideas. Any suggestions?
Will Rogers never met me.
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Thank you, Richard - I'll try these suggestions out, and if they help, I'll publish them, I can't be the only one experiencing this... 
Will Rogers never met me.
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Roger Wright wrote: I've used up all the tools in my toolbox, and I'm out of ideas. Any suggestions?
Roger, are you running an anti-virus or other security tools? Many of them hook hundreds of kernelmode/usermode functions to 'double check' absolutely everything... opening files... memory access... and can cause a fast computer to become slow or mediocre.
You said that you have a 1.5TB SATA drive. Congratulations, however... it is always better to put the swap file on a drive other than the drive containing the operating system. With 12 GB RAM your swap file is going to be enormous... and despite what you might think... even with 12GB RAM the swap file will still be utilized.
I cannot think of much else... other than using a tool such as Trend Micro HijackThis[^] to check if you have too many browser helper objects. Another useful tool is Microsoft Autoruns[^] by the infamous Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. Autoruns will tell you absolutely everything running on your computer.
Best Wishes,
-David Delaune
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Thanks, David!
Actually, the swap file was one of the first things I thought of, along with the possibility of having too large data clocks. I've been out of the computer repair business for several years,but two things used to be true - the default block size grows with the hard drive capacity, and once data has been stored, it's too late to split the drive into logical drives. If I'd partitioned the thing at first, I would have had smaller blocks, resulting in faster reads, and I'd be able to select a different drive for the swap file. I don't know if it's still true that I can't create a new logical drive without risking data loss or not, but if that's been improved and can be done safely, I'd certainly consider it!
The only tools I use are AdAware and MSE, and neither of them seems to be active; at least they don't show up as using any CPU cycles in the performance monitor. Brpowser Helper Objects are a possibility, though. I'll check that out.!
Will Rogers never met me.
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Hi Roger,
I apologize for not responding to your post yesterday. Your comments left me scratching my head for several minutes so I decided to leave it be.
Some comments:
Roger Wright wrote: I've been out of the computer repair business for several years,but two things used to be true - the default block size grows with the hard drive capacity
I have never heard of a filesystem with 'block sizes' that automatically grow. Typically the cluster size is determined when you create the filesystem. The only thing I can think of that could potentially grow... would be the MFT on an NTFS partition.
Roger Wright wrote: I would have had smaller blocks, resulting in faster reads
Smaller cluster sizes essentially mean the drive head will potentially need to thrash around more... and gather more data. For example... if you save a 1MB file... on a filesystem with 1KB clusters... the drive head will need to gather 1024 blocks. If the filesystem was created with 4KB the drive head would only need to gather 256 blocks.
Larger cluster sizes usually result in faster data access... but will waste drive space. For example... If you save a 1KB file on a filesystem with 4KB cluster size.... there is 3KB wasted in the cluster.
With your 1.5TB drive I believe the default cluster size would be 4KB on NTFS.
Best Wishes,
-David Delaune
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Randor wrote: default cluster size would be 4KB on NTFS.
There's a good piece of info... What I meant by "growing" was that, as HDD sizes got larger, so did the clusters assigned by Windows. I didn't know that it topped out at 4k, but assumed the trend would continue.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Curious as to how large pagefile.sys has become? One thing I check with my customers right away are: Amount of cookies, temp file, IE temp files, recent documents, word temp, etc etc...
Cleaning these out and restarting it should free it up. Be carefull of word temp files, as they have saved my life a time or two with a wrongly deleted doc.
Are you running other browsers besides IE? I'm not aware of the correct terminology, but Windows 7 keeps a small file reference when "thumbnail view" is enabled. This can cause an amount of shite to accumulate.
Other things to check are a stalled Java or Adobe update. Some times they disappear from the taskbar notifications.
My favorite is quite brutish, but you could run a powershell command as administrator: Get-Process | Stop-Process
Be forewarned that it'll gather all processes and stop them, which will result in either a bluescreen memdump, or it'll restart windows prompting a repair sometimes. These will close out of ghosted services, or multiple svchost processes. I find it refreshing
Something worth reading, albeit it's invincible!
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Roger, Did you ever solve this problem? I had a similar issue. Turns out IE was thrashing the disk. Its temp file location became confused. Reset back to defaults and it fixed it.
Common sense is admitting there is cause and effect and that you can exert some control over what you understand.
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hello guys... If I am in wrong forum, please guide me to the right forum. I have this web site URL. If I open this web site in IE then it shows no security threats but if I open this web site in Firefox then it says This site can harm my computer. How can I know that whether it is secure or not? thnx
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The only way of finding out may harm your computer.
But personally, if I arrive to a bridge that has a sign saying that the bridge is unsafe, I would look for an alternative route before trying to cross that bridge.
And just because the sign is gone from the other side, I wouldn't use it in just one direction.
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overloaded,
I'm not exactly sure if this is what's happening - but it sounds as though you are visiting a website that uses SSL security. If that's the case, the likely cause of the security message in Firefox is because it doesn't have the SSL certificate listed in it's Trusted certificate store. Since Firefox does not use the certificate store that exists in Windows, the SSL certificate will need to be manually added in Firefox. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, uses Windows' certificate store to authenticate websites.
The reason for any SSL warning is one or more of the following:
1.) The certificate for the site has expired.
2.) The certification path cannot be completed or is not trusted all the way through.
3.) The certificate has been revoked by the issuer (same as 1, but for different reasons).
However, in this case it is the second reason. This leads me to believe that the site is safe, you just need to import the site's certificate into Firefox before Firefox can trust it.
SSL is SSL - to my knowledge there aren't different vendor implimentations. For that reason, if Internet Explorer trusts the site then it's a good bet that it is a trustworthy site. It's probably safe to import the certificate into Firefox and continue browsing.
-David
PS - If someone knows I'm wrong, I'm open for correction. I'd rather not be spreading false information around 
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Hi,
I am looking for the following device driver ENVY24HF.SYS
Would any know what Website I can get download this from as I hacve had all sorts of problems
Thanks
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Try this driver Envy 24 Audio driver[^]
When I was a coder, we worked on algorithms. Today, we memorize APIs for countless libraries — those libraries have the algorithms - Eric Allman
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Hi,
I've just set up Windows Server 2003 Standard as part of my networked computers. I created a shared folder for other PCs running XP. I granted full control of the shared folder to everyone. All networed computers are parts of the Workgroup; no domain.
Now I can remote connect to 2003; I also can see the shared folder as part of the networked places on each XP machine. However, I cannot open the shared folder - my access to the shared folder is denied. What am I missing?
Best,
Jun
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You need to set both the rights for accessing the share via the network and the rights on the file system.
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What do you mean by setting the rights via the network?
Best,
Jun
modified 22-Nov-11 10:52am.
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Jun Du wrote: What do you mean by setting the rights via the network?
You have already set the rights on the network when you gave Full Access to Everyone inthe Share permissions. Now you have to set the file (NTFS) permissions on the server.
If, as I suspect you are logging ion to the XP machines using local accounts the Server will know nothing about them. So set the file permissions to grant Full Access to an account on the Server and then when you connect to the share enter the user details SERVER\User + Password and check the Remembere credentials (can't remeber wha it's called on XP any more) and XP will store the username and password and present it to the Server every time it needs to access the share.
Michael Martin
Australia
"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."
- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
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In Linux, being able to see the share and being able to access it are two different permissions, I can't recall exactly if that's the same case with Windows. Make sure that you've given permission to "Everyone" to access the share (not just be able to "see" it). Usually Windows file sharing (when you have an open share) is relatively simple, make sure something like a firewall isn't blocking access.
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Hi,
what's your suggestion? what's the best ADSL router for small business? and are there any type of router which will be able to block the internet by user ID?
Thanks,
Jassim
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jrahma,
I can't really answer your question because I truthfully don't know a thing about ADSL routers. However, I'd like to provide an alternative solution.
I would steer away from putting money into hardware for something like a ADSL router. Instead, just get one that can connect you to the internet and leave all of the routing, NATing, internet access control, and reporting features to a capable platform like Untangle[^].
I use Untangle at my work. We have 3 offices and I have setup an Untangle box at each site - and I love it. It can handle internet access like you mentioned, but that is a paid feature (most of the platform is free).
Hope you find something that suites your needs.
-David
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Hi,
I have noticed Microsoft has removed the Windows Installer Clean Utility..
How can I clean the setup if I am using Windows Server 2003 on 32bit?
I have installed a Panasonic PBX software and it's not getting removed.. everytime I try to remove from the control panel it says (Was removed successfully) but it's still there in the program Folders as well as the Control Panel->Programs.
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You may have to manually delete the entries in the "Program Folders", which you may also want to check the All Users\start menu as well for left-overs.
Common Files is another folder to check as well. Be sure to give REGEDIT some due attention before calling it gone. These areas are usually the last place to hide for uninstalled software.
P.S. CCLeaner will make sure all the loose-ends are tied up too!
Hope this helps.
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I am planning to setup a small home network with a couple of servers for music, videos, documents etc. It is also a setup for me to learn more about network programming and administration.
Since the current multiple core CPUs are used nowhere near their potential, I am thinking of replacing the hardwares with VMs.
Also I feel that this would be easy on my electricity bill and the room would be less cluttered too.
I have a few questions.
1. would you recommend that? would you do that?
2. will I be able to "manage" the network similar to managing the physical machines?
3. would the ip address of host be shared or could each vm get its own?
4. could you provide links to some similar setups?
edit: I forgot this question.
5. I am thinking of running one VM per core on a multiple core CPU. Would that be possible? I suppose yes and I would have to use Windows 7 to which a VM is just another piece of program, right? Should I bother about this in the first place?
modified 4-Nov-11 7:43am.
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