Windows Vista How to troubleshoot two WEIRD Vista behaviours...?

On system #1, I have a very clean install of Vista Business on a dual-core AMD machine with lots of RAM and disk. I have two very annoying behaviours which I can't figure out how to troubleshoot to any depth:

1) Delays. I seems to get 3-5 second delays for alot of operations. When I open the system tray VOLUME control, I see the slider for master volume, but the slider is NOT active for up to 5 seconds. The mouse simple won't be 'seen' by the slider control. Also, when I open IE7, the window opens and goes into a delay state before the first page loads, and the IE7 frame itself seems to be less than fully loaded. There are other little symptoms of the delay, but more or less a few seconds before anything new starts.

2) S3 sleep. When I installed Vista on this machine, S3 sleep worked perfect! After 1 hour, the machine went into a low-power mode and touching the mouse would wake it up. Somehow, this no longer works even though the hardware has not changed at all, and the only software changes are Microsoft updates. I do NOT have a wireless mouse or keyboard or ANY other input device which has been identified elsewhere as a possible cause.

Now, on System #2, I have a clean copy of Vista Ultimate, on a E6400 based PC with lots of Disk and RAM too. This one works perfect EXCEPT no screen saver! I have manually killed EHTRAY.EXE and all seems to be fixed, but I assume that EHTRAY.EXE is kinda required for the Media Center background processes to operate properly. I actually DO use the TV Tuner and Media Center on this machine. The screen saver fails to invoke EVER! I am only using stock Vista screen savers, but there is nothing I can do in the settings to make the screen saver kick in.

Any ideas how to troubleshoot these two PCs would be greatly appreciated.

 

When programs are slow to open it is generally a sign of a drive access problem.
Run Error-Checking on the HDD. Do a defragmentation. Check that a background program is not constantly accessing the drive (watch that the HDD LED is not running constantly). Is it slow when you are looking for files or folders?

Have you updated your drivers from the manufacturer's website (Note: as opposed to setting Windows Updates to update drivers automatically, Windows Updates can "get it wrong ")? Look for the chipset drivers which may have drive controller drivers included, although there may be separate drivers for SATA or RAID controllers.

I expect you have checked that there are no problems listed in Device Manager.

Screensaver, have you tried using the Screensaver set to "none "? Is the screensaver set to start at the same time as another power saving item (eg., sleep, turn off monitor, turn off hardrive(s), etc)?
"Check that a background program is not constantly accesssing the drive ", again, check for constant activity in the background.
You are using an optical mouse? Is it dropping to "no activity" when not being used (and staying there). If it is being used on a reflective surface, it may think it is being moved. Watch if the mouse lights up when you are not touching it.

Matt