XP performance slowing down? 1

[J741]

Maybe it's just me but...

I've been using Windows XP since the day of it's public release. I run defrag regularily, ensure my anti-virus software is up-to-date, and apply all Windows patches as they are available. Despite all this, it seems as though Windows XP is slowing down!

It seems to me as though it's taking longer for programs to open, web sites to load, the PC to shut down, e-mail to be displayed in outlook, and so on. I thought I was just imagining this, but when the game "Warcraft III" came out, I installed it and began to play. The in-game cinematics were smooth, charachter animations were good, and game load times were not signifigant. Now that I have just finished the game, I noticed that the in-game cinematics are verry choppy, sound cuts out a little bit, and the load and close times are awful.

So is it just me, or is anyone else's Windows XP showing signs of degradation? Does anyone know of any simple, friendly, free tools to help clear this up?

 

[Guest_imported]

Did you all also try running bootvis? It helps with boot times at least.

Other than that, the #1 cause of slow downs, besides extreme disk fragmentation is stuff running in the background. Disable as much of it as you possibly can. Winamp agents, AOL, Realplayer, all those "helper" type apps, antivirus stuff. Scan for viruses manually instead.

You may also want to try X-Setup, which lets you adjust some high-end tweaky things Bill Gates doesn't want you to know about.

Lastly, the registry can grow after a while and start causing some problems too. It's a good idea to clean and compact it once in a while. Resplendent Registrar and JV16 Powertools are really good for this, plus you can take out any semi-hidden bloatware references with them that you don't want to have anymore.

 

[SQLScholar]

Javelin,

From what i noticed with XP, when XP gets to the desktop it then starts doing stuff like searching for new/existing Hardware, and various other bits and peices. During this time you cannot get to anything like Device manager - when it stops searching for stuff the harddisk goes crazy for a couple of seconds and the desktop freazes then everything becomes OK.

To test my theory on your Desktop freeze when you get to the desktop right click on my computer and click properties.... if it doesnt appear till the desktop unfreezes (obiviously if this is the same problem you will have time to click my computer b4 it freezes) - then i beleive this is the problem

HTH

Dan

 

[Newposter]

Only thing that I've noticed is that it takes much longer to shut down now. I've had NAV 2002 loaded since day one, but that hasn't affected it. It just seems to get slower on shutdown. Startup and running apps OK. Newposter
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

 

[fsu56495]

I have the same problem on two machines reported by techinfarmland on August 13th... Rouge AOL process (WAOL.EXE) never shuts down normally. The system slows to a crawl until I manually stop the process.

techinfarmland (or anyone else), have you found a solution?

 

[Thregwort]

Just a note of caution regarding bootvis.exe (from MS website) - optimising the boot processes sounds great, but post service pack 1, this little program just freezes up, and then bootvis won't even scan anymore, insisting on having write privileges to the temp file (!).
My guess is MS will put out a revised bootvis in a day or two or three to take care of super cautious SP1 fixes.
But you are all correct about the cumulative sluggishness of response from the XP. Outlook is prime culprit, and post boot desktop freezes for a minute or so whilst something is engaging the hard drive's attention (even with virus scanner disabled). Finally, the BlackViper site has loads of good suggestions - but a word of caution from the man himself - he may have to rewrite his tips post the service pack, so hang fire if you've done the download from MS.

 

[henden]

Sounds like you might have been invaded by spyware. Get AdAware from Lavasoft and run it. You'll be surprised how much you will find

 

[Thregwort]

Hendon, thanks for that. I got AdAware from Lavasoft (dot de not dot com) and it hoovered out a half dozen registry lurkers straight away. Result - even resource hogging graphics programs load like greased lightning. CorelDraw9 from double-click to ready in SIX seconds. On the non-plus side, Outlook still very slow to crank up.
Thanks again.

 

[Guest_imported]

I recently downloaded a critical update from Microsoft for an unchecked buffer in HTML. Well after that nice little patch my whole system was foobared. I always wanted a clean install of XP so I formatted and re-installed. I loaded all my hardware drivers. Got all the latest updates except the foobaring critical update.

I noticed that my system would freeze for about 10-15 seconds after startup. No items in startup and cut some of my services off to load quicker. Downloaded the "almighty" Bootvis and it sucks. On Microsofts site they claim it works for XP now after service pack. I got a timeout because scheduled services would not start error popped up. I tried about 5 times to optimize. Lets face it Bootvis isn`t as awesome as everyone claims. Took 68 seconds to finally load what I think to be some service that is messed up. It was faster on my updated 98 install. I think the service packs are adding crapp that is useless and performance bogging. Not to mention buggy.

Anyways I am going to do some more testing and see what is going on. I uninstalled my video drivers, network card, and motherboard drivers to see if that worked but no help. Btw I am running an AMD Duron 800, 256 MB RAM, Nvidia GeForce3 Ti 500, Network Everywhere ethernet card, Sound Blaster Live! card, Iwill KD266 Ali chipset, and latest BIOS. I might flash back on the Award BIOS to see any change. There are a billion different things it could be so i would just try uninstalling hardware first and observe then go software related. I keep you posted.

 

[linney]

I have not had any trouble with BootVis, even after installing SP1. It does need to have the Task Scheduler service started and set to Automatic to run. Also after you schedule it to optimize it will reboot your machine. After reboot it wont load for about 80 seconds to allow all other XP requirements to load then it will run on your machine for several minutes while it optimizes your system.

 

[denzilla]

Hello fellow PC users with problems! I can sympathize with all your troubles as I too have been through XP hell. I was having some speed problems awhile back so here is what I did:

1. Change Xp to classic mode (good speed increase)I did keep the drop down shadows on desktop icons though.
2. Delete the contents of the "prefetch" folder
3. Delete the temp internet files, checkdisk and defrag once per week.

I use Norton antivirus 2002 haven't seen a performance decrease yet.

Another little trick I learned was going msconfig, open the 386enh and add the line " ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 " This tells windows to not use virtual memory until all physical RAM is depleted. Its not recommended that you do this unless you have 512 meg or more of ram though. My programs seem to load much faster now and my games run smoother. Hope these tips help. Good luck!

 

[AEShier]

I am having similar problems. However, there is absolutely nothing going on with my system. I have 1.5 GHz, 512MB Ram, 80 GB disk. I have disabled anti-virus. I have run Ad-Aware. I have disabled all unnecessary services. If I go to My Computer and right-click a file, I get the hour-glass for about 25 seconds before I get the menu. Same thing happens if I double-click the file. Zero CPU utilization, zero memory utilization, zero disk activity. Nothing at all. Then all of a sudden it will pop. It happens every time I try to access a file through explorer. The strange thing is, I can open Word or Excel and use the File-Open just fine.

 

[denzilla]

FYI all,

The command "ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1" is a bogus command that does nothing. Just found out a while ago. I must have been having a FPS acid trip or something.

 

[bMaNoNe]

i formatted last nite...reinstalled the latest scard drivers (SBLive) and GCard Drivers (For geforce4 ti 4200). but my entire systems lags for 30 seconds - 1 minute, as in jumps every second. ive closed all the irelevant services and yet nothing happens still. this is incredibly annoying.

 

[Liz195575]

http://www.vtoy.fi/jv16/shtml/software.shtml

jv16 powertools are really nice.