Slow Performance???

[Colt 53]

When I click on my My Computer Icon o my desktop and go to performance, it is running at 65%. I am told that in not very good. I also notice lots and lots of debug requests popping upamd runtime errors coming thru too. What kind og trouble shooting can anyone offer? I shut down everything but explorer and systray and ran scandisk, also ran defrag, and deleted all the cookies. My machine is a couple of years old and the processor is 800+, but still pretty slow compared to when i first got it. Man it was lightning quick and now runs at a snail's pace. Any suggestions?

[Pirate]

You didn't mentioned what's your OS ? anyways , my advice , don't install any of these crap called Service pack ! They slower my machine .I hate it !

[siyan]

Originally posted by Colt 53
When I click on my My Computer Icon o my desktop and go to performance, it is running at 65%. I am told that in not very good. I also notice lots and lots of debug requests popping upamd runtime errors coming thru too. What kind og trouble shooting can anyone offer? I shut down everything but explorer and systray and ran scandisk, also ran defrag, and deleted all the cookies. My machine is a couple of years old and the processor is 800+, but still pretty slow compared to when i first got it. Man it was lightning quick and now runs at a snail's pace. Any suggestions?

There's no "performance" option when you right click on my computer, but there is one under Manage...

What exactly is running at 65%? I assume you're talking about the performance logger but that thing cannot tell you that your computer is only running at "65%". It merely tells you your processor utlization, disk I/O, network I/O, memory usage, etc. Basically, you're *currently* using 65% of something.

If your computer seems to run slower now, then you probably have too much bloatware installed or something else going on. Also how long has it been since you reformatted? And don't forget the psychological factor

[siyan]

Originally posted by Pirate
You didn't mentioned what's your OS ? anyways , my advice , don't install any of these crap called Service pack ! They slower my machine .I hate it !

But that doesn't mean that they're "slower" his machine.

Yours is an isolated case.

[Colt 53]

You asked what operating system. I have ME...I have heard lots o stuff bad about ME but It used to work pretty fast then it slowed up I had it cleaned up by a computer guy and once again it was great and now it is awful no phsy factor at all IT IS SLOWER! Someone asked about re=formatting....ah....that sounds pretty intrusive of the system??? Please advise

[BodwadUK]

ME is probably your problem. It has a habit of slowing down your PC after a short while. When i had it i reformated three times before getting rid of it as every time it slowed to snail pace.

If you do reformat dont forget to backup all your files.

How much RAM have you got???

There's no "performance" option when you right click on my computer, but there is one under Manage...

What exactly is running at 65%? I assume you're talking about the performance logger but that thing cannot tell you that your computer is only running at "65%". It merely tells you your processor utlization, disk I/O, network I/O, memory usage, etc. Basically, you're *currently* using 65% of something.

If your computer seems to run slower now, then you probably have too much bloatware installed or something else going on. Also how long has it been since you reformatted? And don't forget the psychological factor

Right click my computer goto properties then the perfomance tag

[siyan]

Originally posted by Colt 53
You asked what operating system. I have ME...I have heard lots o stuff bad about ME but It used to work pretty fast then it slowed up I had it cleaned up by a computer guy and once again it was great and now it is awful no phsy factor at all IT IS SLOWER! Someone asked about re=formatting....ah....that sounds pretty intrusive of the system??? Please advise

reformatting isn't intrustive....its something you should do once in a while to get rid of the clutter that builds up on your system.

[siyan]

Originally posted by BodwadUK

Right click my computer goto properties then the perfomance tag

not being in Windows ME, I can't try it I assumed it was XP/2K.

well...there is a performance tab, but it only has settings for virutal memory and such...no percentages.

[BodwadUK]

I would suggest changing OS if you can ME has a very bad reputation

[DaveBo]

Can anyone recommend a tool that measures, i.e. quantifies performce on a PC?

e.g. exercize the CPU, memory, drives etc and report on their speeds.

I'd like to periodically measure these aspects and compare so I can spot degradation or improvements after making mods.

Thanks, DaveBo

[BodwadUK]

What OS???

If its windows cant you use performance manager??

[DaveBo]

I'm interested in Windows OSs generally, e.g. Win2000, WinXp, Win98.

Where is "performance manager"? I see "system monitor".
And, will this provide "numbers" to quantify performance?

Thanks, DaveBo

[DiGiTaIErRoR]

Use Windows 2000. You want atleast 256 MB of RAM.

[DiGiTaIErRoR]

Originally posted by DaveBo
I'm interested in Windows OSs generally, e.g. Win2000, WinXp, Win98.

Where is "performance manager"? I see "system monitor".
And, will this provide "numbers" to quantify performance?

Thanks, DaveBo

Get SysMark.

Or another benchmark program.

[BodwadUK]

I am doing this on win98

Select

View ===> Numeric Charts

You can do logging but i dont know what its like (File Menu)

Remember you can add new objects to monitor with

Edit ==> Add New

Its what i tend to use for quick checks

[DaveBo]

FWIW I tried writing a home-grown VB app to beat up on the system, e.g. running 30 million int calcs, then 30m FP calcs, consuming memory and doing file IOs while timing everything.

I ran this repeatedly on 4 diff systems and got pretty much the results I expected, with one strange exception below.

Here's the code I used to try to exercize and consume memory, I know it's kind of arbitrary and maybe not meaningful (that's why I'm here. Please suggest something better!)

    Dim BigArray() As Long
    Dim x As Long
    For x = 1 To 500000
        ReDim Preserve BigArray(x)
        BigArray(x) = x
    Next x

And here's the results, in order of what I thought would be fastest to slowest:

CPU  Speed  Mem   OS    Seconds
P4  2.27GHz 512MB WinXP 1.748
P3   800MHz 256MB Win2K 4.570
P3   800MHz 256MB Win98 0.460
P2   300MHz  64MB Win98 1.340

Any ideas? Are the "more advanced" OSs adding overhead?

Thanks, DaveBo

[BodwadUK]

Win 98 only needs 32MB+ of RAM whereas XP and 2000 need a minimum of 128MB or RAM so the answer is yes they run a hell of alot more in the background.

[si_the_geek]

more importantly, I'm led to believe that memory access is more secure - which means that each request for extra memory (such as ReDim) takes more time.

try something similar without the Redim code, eg:

Dim BigArray(500000) As Long
    Dim x As Long
    For x = 1 To 500000
        BigArray(x) = x
    Next x

[DaveBo]

I tried that 500,000 array write & read w/o Redim, big difference!

On both the Win2K and Win98 (both P3-800MHz systems)
the time went down to about 15ms.