Delay In Opening Programmes

exel1966

Hi,

I'm looking for some help with a fault I seem to have picked up recently. When trying to open programmes / system functions / restart etc it can sometimes take 5-10 minutes for the machine to respond to the request. Sometimes its instant as it should be, sometimes its not !!! Any already opened programmes will function as normal so im slightly baffled here.

I'm operating XP with SP2 and have no known virus issues as I rigourously keep such things updated.

HELP !!

Cheers E.

culpepper

Have you defragmented lately? Fragmentation can slow things to a crawl.I do my pc once a week.

Chippy_Minton

Bring up Task Manager - Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Click the Processes tab and click twice on the top of the CPU column to sort by descending CPU % usage. On an idle system, 'System Idle Process' should be getting 98-99% CPU.

Which processes are using the most CPU on your system?

exel1966

Thanks for the replies so far chaps.

Culpepper - Like you I defrag weekly.

Chippy - System Idle Process is running at 96-99%. When idle most other processes are running at CPU 00% with a few at between 1-10% on and off , but Mem Usage does seem high on some of these functions : ie. svchost.exeup to 12k (which is listed 6 times all with differing mem usage), waol.exe @ up to 50K, MSACCESS.exe @25k when access is open. Are those figures normal ???

Does that help you in the diagnosis ?

Cheers E.

bbb_uk

Those figures are generally normal. I notice you use AOL - if its the latest version of AOL it uses a few processess (3+) and from what I've seen on some computers they do take up a lot of CPU usage sometimes depending on usage.

Your problem doesn't appear to be due to a certain programme (process) using most of your CPU time. It could be due to the number of processess you have running.

If you view this image you'll see that what processes I have running. There are 21 listed (the bare minimum I can get my system to run on to both remain stable and use hardly any of my processor time). Most processes are part of windows XP except the following:-

VSMON.EXE & ZLCLIENT.EXE - these are part of my firewall, "ZoneAlarm Security Suite"
NOD32KRN.EXE & NOD32UI.EXE - these are part of my AntiVirus, "NOD32"
PGLITE.EXE - this is part of PeerGuardian Lite and I use it for blocking certain IP addresses

How many have you got listed (shown at the bottom of task manager)?

exel1966

BBB - I currently have 45 processes running, but i do have approx 12 of which i think belong to AOL9, AVG, Ad-AWARE, Norton Internet Security. One of these, svchost.exe is also listed 6 times.

Cheers E.

bbb_uk

Can you restart your computer and close down AOL, AVG, Ad-Aware & NIS. Close down AOL from the windows task manager (right-click on all of the many AOL processes and select End Process Tree. You may need to do this to AVG or NIS if they still appear.

Disconnect from the internet first for security reasons!

Now after you have closed down the above, try and see if it there is a speed increase in opening any programmes?

Chippy_Minton

Having multiple svchost.exe processes is normal. Each svchost.exe is running one or more Windows services - you can see exactly which by using the free Process Explorer from SysInternals.

Tick the Always On Top option in Task Manager and watch it as you start one of your applications.

How much memory have you got and what's the size of your page file?

Also, run HijackThis, create a log and post it on one of the Help Forums.

exel1966

bbb - Tried all that and can't say I noticed much difference, but as I said before this problem is intermittent and at the moment all progs seem to be opening upon request without any stalling. When the problem crops up again (which it will probably tomorrow) i'll run through your suggestion again and see what happens.

Chippy - I'm running with 256 RAM on a 30GB hard drive with 17GB free, on a Dell Inspiron 8100 which is about 3.5 years old now, but as for the size of my page file, you've got me there !! Maybe you could enlighten me as to what that is.

Cheers E.

bbb_uk

The paging file (Pagefile.sys) is a hidden file on your computer's hard disk that Windows XP uses as if it were random access memory (RAM). The paging file and physical memory make up virtual memory.

This was taken from this M$ support page.

To view your pagefile details try this (assuming you have WinXP):-

1. Start > Settings > Control Panel
2. Double-click 'System' to bring up the system properties window.
3. Select 'Advanced' and click on 'Settings' within the 'Performance' box and this should bring up the Performance properties.
4. Click 'Advanced' and at the bottom of that page will be the size of your Virtual Memory. This can also be changed if needed but depends on what it is set at now and how much memory/disk space you have left.

exel1966

bbb - it seems to be set at 384mb which is showing as 2mb above the reccomended level.

Cheers E.