Technical reason for a computer feeling slow?

[Smartazz]

I know it isn't always the case, but whenever you leave a computer on for a long period of time, it'll feel very laggy until you restart it. What is the technical reason for this?

 

[BrownTown]

probably some program with a memmory leak is eating up all your RAM and then the computer has to hit the hard drive more.

 

[Who Me]

Hmm.
I know that if I do some massive file transferring, it's REALLY slow (straight away).
I also know that said sloth is not a function of page-file (HDD) activity.
An interesting question - for which I have no interesting (or come to that, uninteresting) answer (unfortunately).

 

[Ktzero3]

I second BrownTown. Although it may very well be possible that your OS is the program causing the memory leak. When the RAM runs out and the OS has to refer to Virtual Memory to bring in pages, it takes SIGNIFICANTLY longer.

 

[Smartazz]

Originally posted by: Ktzero3
I second BrownTown. Although it may very well be possible that your OS is the program causing the memory leak. When the RAM runs out and the OS has to refer to Virtual Memory to bring in pages, it takes SIGNIFICANTLY longer.

Even if the RAM is seen as free in the Task Manager?

 

[bobsmith1492]

As background services run, they could move themselves into the apparently free RAM taking up space that was used by your most common programs, causing you to need to reload them from the HDD into the free RAM that now contains services and programs you don't need. Apparently that's part of the behavior that Vista's superfetch is supposed to eliminate.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Who Me
Hmm.
I know that if I do some massive file transferring, it's REALLY slow (straight away).
I also know that said sloth is not a function of page-file (HDD) activity.
An interesting question - for which I have no interesting (or come to that, uninteresting) answer (unfortunately).

WinXP will try to aggressively cache disk I/O, eventually to the point of booting idle programs in memory out to the pagefile (even if there is lots of "free" RAM). Sometimes this is the behavior your want... sometimes it isn't. There isn't really any way to tune it. As mentioned above, background processes/services can do the same thing -- although if you have >1GB of RAM, this usually isn't enough to actually exhaust all your free memory.

Vista's a lot better with memory management and caching...

 

[Xdreamer]

its entirely possible that the computer has not slowed at all. You have sped up.

 

[angminas]

Originally posted by: Xdreamer
its entirely possible that the computer has not slowed at all. You have sped up.

agrd

 

[leekirlew]

Isnt this to do with the way xp etc manages the ram and resources?

 

[tk11]

the xp cache tends to be very over aggressive for general use. I use a little utility called ntcacheset that resets the cache size at timed intervals (a few seconds) to prevent it from stealing memory used by programs. I've found 14000k every half second to work well for me (1gig).

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: angminas

Originally posted by: Xdreamer
its entirely possible that the computer has not slowed at all. You have sped up.

agrd

or

 

[corkyg]

I don't think it's a "one size fits all" condition. I leave my system on most of the time, 24/7, and notice no decrease in performance.

I have both XP Pro and Vista machines - and the latter boot and shutdown faster than the XP ones. All the comments on memory usage, etc. relate, of course.

I believe the big swingers are what you allow to run in background. Today's users tend to like things automatic - and cumulative actions are often the result. For best performance, keep things non-automatic and make all program updates and update checks wholly under your own control, and you should not see such degredation.

 

[Alexstarfire]

SIMPLE, fragmentation. Depending on usage things just become fragmented. Your RAM is fragmented all the time. Your RAM could become so fragmented that it makes it use Virtual RAM to run the program, most likely a game, a graphics editor, or video editing. RAM gets reset when you reset your computer.

That's my take. Could be wrong, but that's the best I can think of.

 

[Jeff7181]

My XP desktop goes days without reboots and three different people use it... it also hosts some shares on my home network.

My Vista laptop goes even longer between reboots... weeks.

 

[ForumMaster]

programs eat up RAM and then don't give it back. whenever my computer feels slow, i run FreeRAM XP Pro (which is free) and my computer is laggy no more.

 

[highwire]

After reading some of this thread, I ran across a Microsoft goody called Kernrate.exe in
"windows resource kit\tools". It might have potential for diagnosing boggy systems - or not. Have never used it. Here is a blurb from the doc:
--------------------
When To Use Kernrate

1. Use Kernrate for preliminary identification of CPU usage patterns and CPU hogs down to API level (and even down to code sections within API?s to a limited extent).
2. Use Kernrate for identifying specific CPU issues with profile sources other than the default (Time).
3. Use Kernrate to measure the effect of code changes and performance improvements on CPU usage.
4. There is little point in using Kernrate in cases where the bottleneck is not CPU related (low CPU usage), although the system-wide and process-specific summaries as well as lock information provided by Kernrate could help in initial identification of the culprits.

 

[Modelworks]

Another program I highly recommend is process explorer.
It allows you to see all the processes running, who started it, company, etc.
As well as monitor kernel, cpu, etc.
It often shows processes that task manager doesnt.


And its free.
http://www.microsoft.com/techn...s/ProcessExplorer.mspx

 

[HVAC]

Probably it has to do with your computer having a heavy lunch and wanting to take a nap.