Performance issues

[zaineyma]

Hi All,

So we have users running W7, 32 bi,4GB RAm, 1.7GHz processors. Without doing a memory upgrade or any other refresh what ways can we improve performance when they experience slowness/sluggish performances? I need to make recommendations as they have 800 users and no budget! I am ideally looking for the not so obvious things, any help will be much appreciated.

Thank you

 

[rclarke250]

Without more info not much we can offer, you say they have 800 users, but give no indication as to server,router/switches/backbone for the network. Is the slowness on the PC? or when being served by the server/SAN, is it too much traffic for their setup, is it a particular time of day, and there is a process running in the background that is affecting users, Is it with a particular program, say trying to load spreadsheets, or using the mail server. So many variables, and no budget......

 

[goombawaho]

Yeah, the problem could be anywhere. And "800 users and no budget" - you might as well quit now. No money = no improvement unless it's just a matter of shutting down services on the computers.

I would start with the computer itself and look at memory utilization, disk utilization and processor utilization and see if something is occupying the machine. Then, reducing services and programs that startup when Windows boots is the easiest thing to fix and free.

Google - Black Viper Windows 7 Services

If you had MONEY, I'd say 8GB of RAM and moving to SSDs would perk things up, especially the SSD if you could only choose one. But, no money. Funny/Sad.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[guitarzan]

>8GB of RAM
32-bit OS, so even that wouldn't help!

 

[guitarzan]

hmmm... cross-posted here:
thread1726-1766909

 

[goombawaho]

Oh yeah - missed that. Forget RAM, switch to SSD. But, again, no money.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[cdogg]

Also, if time isn't money to the organization (and it's hard to imagine that it's not), then you could spend time with a few of these workstations when they act up and use tools like Process Explorer and Process Monitor from SysInternals. They can help you narrow down what apps and processes are tying up CPU and memory utilization. You can also force nightly reboots once or twice a week to make sure users are rebooting often enough. You'd be surprised how many users go months before rebooting.



-Carl
"The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty: it's twice as big as it needs to be."

[tab][navy]For this site's posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[goombawaho]

Very often time is NOT money when you have a captive IT department. Or so management thinks that it's "free" since the IT staff have to be there all day anyway. Of course, they COULD be doing something more productive but that doesn't pop into some heads.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[cdogg]

Very often time is NOT money when you have a captive IT department.

Sad but true. Larger organizations tend to focus more on the importance of IT's capacity, in terms of time management. They need to fully understand the "cost" associated with a project's undertaking, and the limits (or capacity) of their IT staffing levels. Years ago, this kind of stuff never really mattered; IT existed as a service often seen as infinite resource.

While small-to-midsize companies still have this unrealistic view of their IT department, fortunately larger organizations are beginning to adopt time-budgeting strategies that assesses waste and looks for ways to eliminate it. Just google "lean IT" to see how popular this approach is becoming. Not sure if or when smaller businesses will ever get to that point, but they should. It costs them either way, whether they realize it or not.

-Carl
"The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty: it's twice as big as it needs to be."

[tab][navy]For this site's posting policies, click [/navy]here.