Performance problem (pagefile related ?) 1

[EvilCabal]

Hello !

Problem summary: I am having lots of annoying hang and slow down on my work PC.

PC description: Intel quad core with 4 gig of ram and 2x500 gig HD in raid (7200rpm) on two partitions (100g for OS 400 for data)

Environment: I work mainly on visual studio, building big projects, sometimes with 3ds max open. I work with outlook 2007 open all the time. I also have firefox 3.5. Appart from that, the occasionnal word or excel document.

Diagnosis: I worked with the task manager opened to see what took so much processing time when it frooze and the answer is nobody. I seldom use more than one full core and never more than two. My RAM does not go below 1.5g, never ever.

So I think it might be the paging file and a HD bottleneck that causes my troubles.

What I tried : I tried lowering the PF to 512 meg but even then after 1h of work I get the message : "Windows is running out of VM and will increase the size of your paging file". Why ? I have more than 2 gig of free ram left... I don't get it.

Questions:
1. Could this be my problem or part of it?
2. Why does window use so much VM when I have tons of free ram?
3. Should I totally disable paging?

Most applications in the task manager use more VM than ram...

Thanks in advance !

 

[linney]

Is there any useful information to be gained from the Performance Monitor or the Reliability Monitor?

Windows Vista Performance and Reliability Monitoring Step-by-Step Guide

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722173.aspx

RAM, Virtual Memory, PageFile and all that stuff.

http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/WindowsGeneralWeb/RAMVirtualMemoryPageFileEtc.htm

 

[linney]

Sorry about the Vista link, try these for XP.

SolutionBase: Monitor Windows XP's memory usage with a customized version of Performance Monitor

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-22_11-5263541.html

Using Performance Monitor to Troubleshoot System Performance in Windows XP Professional

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=26114

http://www.google.com/search?q=Perf...-au&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1

 

[BadBigBen]

it could be that Visual Studio, 3dMax, etc. are the culprits here, and that they need the PAGEFILE to be larger...

and they may not even work with NO PAGEFILE...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[EvilCabal]

Ok I'll try those out, the pagefile was 5g when I scaled it down... I hangs even without max also.

Thanks I'll let you know later today.

 

[EvilCabal]

I did setup the performance console as indicated, except for the sampling time because my hangs are short.

One of the most annoying thing I experience is step-by-step debugging with visual studio which is almost always slow (and it's not the case on my coworker machines).

The only things that peaks is the Page/sec which sometimes reach 1200 and often average around 100-120 on the graph vertical scale... Same things when outlook is receiving message (in the case the computer freezes 100% of the time)

What action could I take to improve this?

Another note, the page file in on a freshly defragged partition.

 

[EvilCabal]

Sorry for the triple post,

I noticed we are using generic driver for the hard drives.

The model is Barracuda ES.2 SATA 3.0-Gb/s 500-GB Hard Drive (ST3500320NS).

And the raid controller is Intel(R) ICH7R/DH SAT RAID Controller.

Could it be the hard drives getting old ? The raid misconfigured, or the generic driver that is suboptimal (though it used to be much faster)?

 

[BadBigBen]

Same things when outlook is receiving message (in the case the computer freezes 100% of the time)

sounds more and more like either a hardware failure or driver issue...

for checking system files, I would run from a CMD window the DOS command: SFC /SCANNOW

and have your XP CD at hand, this will check the system files and replaces corrupt files...

also which AV are you using? uninstall it and test run the system, turning it just off will not do, as the service is still running in the background...

besides the pagefile being on another partition, is it also on another drive?

Sysinternals (now MS) Process Explorer and RegMon, might be of help here to diagnose the problem child...

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[linney]

This thread talks about problems with that make of hard drive.

How do I find/fix a failing HD in a RAID array?
thread1583-1558770

 

[EvilCabal]

@BagBigBen:

Unfortunately we can't uninstall the anti-virus (the server keeps running a script to make sure we don't fool with it since we work with lot of confidential info.). It's McAfee. I can't even disable on access scan (well I can but it gets reenabled minutes later). But many people are not experiencing my problem and everybody has the same AV. Also I am already using process explorer, I'll have a look at RegMon.

As for the pagefile being on another drive it's not and the stupid reason is that we only have 2 HD in mirror RAID. I talked the IT team and they are trying to have this change but for now it is company policy so I am stuck with this awful setup (they do upgrade our ram, processor and GPU quite often, but the HD, why would we upgrade that ??) It really sucks. But then again most people are doing ok with this setup, but I'm not the only one complaining.

@Linney, I'll read this thread, I could have my HD changed quite easily I think but I would like to make sure it's the real problem.

By the way I continued testing and Pages/sec peaks all the time, all the way to 3500, sometime averaging at 340 for a whole 30 seconds.

Thanks again.

 

[EvilCabal]

No corrupt file using SFC. As for the other threads some problems are similar but not caused by the same things in the end.

What is weird thought is when I went to the Seagate site to see my HD firmware to determine if it was problematic with raid, there application was unable to detect my drive so something seems wrong... I'll write them an email.

 

[linney]

Is there any bios update available? Is the bios set for Safe Defaults?

 

[EvilCabal]

There is possibly a firmware update available for the drives but I can't install it as it involves opening the PC case which is locked and using a diskette and I don't have a diskette reader. Seagate utility does not work with RAID controller so I have no way of knowing the current firmware version of my HD.

As for the bios update I doubt it they keep this stuff pretty much up to date. And even it there was one we don't have the right to install it until IT test it themselves.