Very slow Vista x64

[Cellulose]

Specs: e6600@3ghz 4gbXMS2 GTX260 OC

Vista recently has been running very slowly, and even clicking on a new tab in Firefox, or switching between apps, even typing takes time - temporarily freezing the computer/sometimes even stoping audio playing and causing the mouse to skip.

For example, if I click on explorer windows too much they will start to show 'not responding'. The computer is almost unusable.

This has been a recent thing, but CPU usage remains very low.

RAM on the other hand remains peaked at 3.85gb according to task manager.

At the time of typing this:

Physical Memory (MB)

Total: 4094
Cached: 265
Free: 7 (ranges between 0 and 35 or so)

Kernel Memory (MB)

Total: 3247
Paged: 244
Nonpaged: 3002

System

Handles: 53825
Threads: 880
Processes: 84
Up time: 135:36:35
Page File: 5830M/8397M

I realize Vista is meant to use the ram, but it has never been constantly this high AFAIK.

In task manager however the combined memory usage is very low, with no application using more than 200,000K atm.

Hard Faults/sec ranges, and will go from 0/sec up to 400/sec and back again all the time when doing anything. Depending on what applications I am using hard faults/min can be 300-400 for the highest application (e.g. iTunes), but then almost instantly go to 1000-2000 (e.g. svchost atm is 1500 and syncserver.exe is 1100. They probably go higher when im not looking

Any tips?

Cheers!

 

[lxskllr]

Check your HD to make sure it's healthy. Run chkdsk, look at the SMART status, and maybe bench the drive to see if everything's up to spec.

 

[Rhonda the Sly]

Non-paged kernel memory is 3~GB? Looks like you have an unruly driver or one of your pipes is leaking. Pop open eventvwr and see if there is anything... suspicious... going on.

3002
265
244
7
_____
3518

Looks like you're also missing some memory! I'm going to take a wild guess and say go back to "MSConfig" and uncheck that "Maximum memory" checkbox. Otherwise it could be memory remapping but I've found that to be far less common.

 

[Modelworks]

First thing I would do is run hijackthis and see what is loading and running in the background.
http://www.trendsecure.com/por...urity_tools/hijackthis

 

[Cellulose]

Thanks

The update: While trying to do some research on my hijackthis log, I got a BSOD (I don't think I have ever had one with this computer).

The screen showed DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL and STOP: 0X000000D1 (and some other 0x000 numbers).

Before it crashed I managed to check the Event Viewer and MSconfig. Maximum memory was already unchecked. the Viewer on the other hand showed a Perfdisk error every second (the list is HUGE): "Unable to read performance data for the Disk performance counters". Anything else in particular I should look for?

I looked at a CHKDSK from a couple of weeks ago - which turned up no error. Ill run another one tonight.

Also, I booted into Safe Mode after the BSOD - and the memory issue is gone (task manager shows far more free memory). It also fixed internet connection issues I had been having which meant, for example, I had to try refreshing a web page many times before it would work (connection kept interrupting) - I originally thought this was an ISP issue. Suspicious

Ill try booting into normal mode again later tonight and see if I can save that hijackthis log (or is a safe mod log exactly the same?).

Thanks again!

 

[lxskllr]

Sounds like it might be bad driver. Have you installed any new hardware, or updated drivers?

 

[Cellulose]

No new hardware recently, but quite a few games/apps. Other than DirectX and the drivers that came with the games, the only specific 'driver like' software has been net framework and MS Visual C++ Redist as far as I can remember.

I will try and check if there are any drivers I have forgotten about

 

[lxskllr]

It also wouldn't hurt to run Memtest86+. I doubt it's a memory problem, but you can do that overnight without any interaction by you.

 

[Cellulose]

Thanks.

Tonight Ill run some AV tests but ill add that to the list

 

[Cellulose]

Chkdsk was executed in read-only mode. A volume snapshot was not used. Extra errors and warnings may be reported as the volume may have changed during the chkdsk run.

Checking file system on C:
306752 file records processed. 4539 large file records processed. 0 bad file records processed. 0 EA records processed. 92 reparse records processed. 366520 index entries processed. CHKDSK is examining lost files.
1 unindexed files processed. 306752 security descriptors processed. Cleaning up 106 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 106 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 106 unused security descriptors.
29885 data files processed. CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
35553664 USN bytes processed. Usn Journal verification completed.
The master file table's (MFT) BITMAP attribute is incorrect.
The Volume Bitmap is incorrect.
Windows found problems with the file system.
Run CHKDSK with the /F (fix) option to correct these.

244196351 KB total disk space.
216992832 KB in 257812 files.
109340 KB in 29886 indexes.
421659 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
26672520 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
61049087 total allocation units on disk.
6668130 allocation units available on disk.

AV turned up clean. Haven't done Memtest yet.

BTW is there any easy way to check what drivers have are being run on startup?

Cheers.

edit: I didn't run CHKDSK /F

 

[lxskllr]

Check out Autoruns from the Sysinternals suite. That should tell you what's strting up with Windows.

 

[Cellulose]

Have been abroad for the last couple weeks, but I got the chance to run an 'advanced/extended' Windows memory test - with no errors.

I tried safe mode, which ran without the missing memory issues. Therefore I tried to disable a lot of the drivers with Autoruns, but without success.

Is it worth messing around with services as well?

Thanks again.