Windows XP slows down after half a day's use...

Hello,

Any of you seen this and have a possible idea what could be causing it?

I have a Nexlink 1.2GHZ machine with XP Professional, SP1, 128MB RAM on a LAN. After several hours of use, the computer becomes slow to respond. Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the Task Manager takes a good 5 minutes, using anything involving the system (Device Manager, etc.) takes an equivalent amount of time. Programs that are open seem to work fine and respond, but not quickly. In checking the resources in the Task Manager Resource tab, none of them are overwhelmed. The processes running are normal. The only thing I did notice is that the System Idle Process was at 99% CPU usage???

System has no viruses, have looked for spyware and gotten rid of them all using Ad-aware, but still this problem continues...

Any ideas on this one?

 

I'd start by checking the Scheduler, there may be a few things in there by default, perhaps a cleanup, defrag or system backup ?

 

System Idle Process is sort of a misnomer. It tells you how much is free and available. 99% indicates your system at that point is very lightly loaded in terms of running processes.

128Mb isn't much memory for that system though and it could easily be all taken up by the system.

I've also seen this behavior when the PC was trying to locate and use a network resource and having trouble with it.

Might be worth opening the task manager and going to the screen that shows memory useage and pinning that window open so you can keep an eye on things. Or the performance monitor to watch details of any process you think may be causing the problem.

 

Newt,

You hit the nail on the head. It was the network resources problem. There was a problem with a DNS setting that was making it flake out. XP really relies upon DNS versus the old days of Win9x that relied more on WINS.

 

Glad you found the problem and squished it.

And you are absolutely correct. 2K & later prefer DNS. Only have WINS support so they can still play on a classic NT4 network.

 

As Newt alluded to. 128Mb is not a lot for XP Pro. Believe me, you will notice a sizeable difference going to 256Mb, and still a smaller performance increase from 256 to 512Mb. After 512 it's a bit like audiophiles and oxygen free speaker cable

Paul

 

Newt,

Yeah, we don't have a native 2000 domain yet. Still have some NT4 servers running. We hope to go to native 2000 domain this coming budget year with total XP clients. Boy would that make life easier on our front.

Galdor

 

XP Slow Down

1 gig Intel, 512 ram, Graphics heavy, reboot 4 to 6 times a day, NO choise as XP keeps eating ram

 

robinshoods,

Are you running SP1 yet? Also, have you updated the machine using Windows Update? I beleive I read somewhere that SP1 corrects a memory leak in XP and there is a known memory leak in the Windows Media Player that ships with XP. These could be potential problems and there are fixes for both off of Windows Update.


Windows Update

Give it a try...

Galdor

 

Clean up!

Configure CleanMgr to max settings
Go to Start-Run and type

cleanmgr /sageset:1
The above need only be ran once (these settings will be remembered as the default until another sageset is ran).

It will present a menu select all except compress, then

Go to Start-Run and type

cleanmgr /sagerun:1
As long as /sageset above has been ran on this computer from now on the /sagerun is the only thing that needs to run.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spyware and adware removal

SpyBot http://security.kolla.de/index.php?lang=en&page=download
Run this twice delete all it finds, always run this before AdAware. Leave all items after the second run.

AdAware http://www.lavasoftusa.com/downloads.html
Delete all it finds
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BHO Demon http://www.definitivesolutions.com/bhodemon.htm
This program runs stand alone no install is required post me the items it finds
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Registry and System cleaners

RegCleaner http://www.vtoy.fi/jv16/shtml/regcleaner.shtml
Look in first 2 cols for programs you thought you uninstalled or removed, these are the dregs left by the uninstaller. Also tag and remove any that you are POSITIVE are not supposed to be on your computer. After removing these go to the top Tools-Registry Cleanup-Do them all. Delete all it finds.

EasyClean1.7 http://gswi.com/downloads.htm

Run only unnecessary files and registry clean delete all it finds
in the Unnessesary files type the word HELP in the SKIP field!
DO NOT RUN DUPLICATE FILES.

RegScrubXP http://home.carolina.rr.com/lexunfreeware/RegScrubXPSetup_3.2.exe

Select RegScrub finds problems and remove all it finds.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.webattack.com/get/xpantispy.shtml

Select most read the help you decide, everything except these 4 items.
1. Don’t show balloon tips
2. Enable fast shutdown
3. Increase MaxConnectionsperServer to 10
4. Disable Task Scheduler service

After the first reboot after you run XPAntiSpy go back to XpAntiSpy and uncheck the clear Pagefile at shutdown, as we only want to clear it once.

Do all of these and it will probably run better than ever before.

Mike

 

Robin

Good idea Galdor!

But do the cleanups first. And before you go for a major large update like a full service pack. Shut down as many startups as you can including Virus scanners, Firewalls etc.

Mike

 

slow down

You already have the major problem solved, but I run XP with
2.2 Mz CPU and 784 Ram and go the slow, slower, slower bit
after a half day. My problem was heating! Put a bigger fan in
and VOILA; back to speed!

 

XP slowdown

XP-1 SP-1, XP just keeps inhaling ram,. and the MS people that I know that work in Redmond Agree..512 ram is just barely enough