Computer acting like it has virtually NO physical memory

[Creig]

It's a 1.33 GHz T-Bird on an Abit KR7A-RAID motherboard, 2x256mb PC2100, a Maxtor 40 gig 7200rpm drive with WinXP installed and a secondary 80gb Maxtor 7200 rpm drive, each on its own channel.

It has plenty of hard drive space left on the XP drive and I've even increased the swap file size to 1GB. But while doing ANYTHING on the computer the HD is constantly accessed. Even to the point that while doing NOTHING else it will pause an AVI file for 4-5 seconds while playing it because the HD activity light is on solid. I've never come across this particular problem before. Any suggestions?

 

[BoberFett]

DMA problem perhaps?

 

[chizow]

Bring up task manager and check for background processes or TSRs. Run Ad-Aware or something similar and check for spyware or bloatware. Call in the Doctor and see if you didn't pick up something nasty in the form of a virus or worm.

Chiz

 

[NokiaDude]

Make sure that CPU isn't running at 100 FSB, that'll create a HUGE bottleneck between the CPU and system memory.

 

[Creig]

The only thing taking up spare CPU cycles is United Devices. I've tried disabling it but it made no difference. The machine is running 10x133 to get 1.33 Ghz. The HD is on its own channel using the HighPoint controller. There is a DVD-Rom on one IDE channel and a CDRW on the other IDE. I used adaware and it found a few minor things, but made no difference.

Any other ideas?

 

[thorin]

1) Make sure everything is set to DMA if available.
2) Run a full VirusScan.
3) Defrag.
4) Increasing Virtual Memory only allows windows to use your HD more (why'd you do that?).
5) Start in safe mode.
6) Hold shift as windows loads to disable your startup items (or even better use msconfig).
7) Turnoff all your un-needed services.

Thorin

 

[Creig]

DMA is already checked to use if able. I use Norton Antivirus on a regular basis and it's set to autoscan once a week and autoupdate every 14 days. The reason I increased the page file size was that I thought maybe it was only using a small amount/none. My thought was that if the swap file was too small it would constantly be writing/rewriting to it if it couldn't store all the info it needed to.

 

[Ketchup]

Originally posted by: Creig
It's a 1.33 GHz T-Bird on an Abit KR7A-RAID motherboard, 2x256mb PC2100, a Maxtor 40 gig 7200rpm drive with WinXP installed and a secondary 80gb Maxtor 7200 rpm drive, each on its own channel.

It has plenty of hard drive space left on the XP drive and I've even increased the swap file size to 1GB. But while doing ANYTHING on the computer the HD is constantly accessed. Even to the point that while doing NOTHING else it will pause an AVI file for 4-5 seconds while playing it because the HD activity light is on solid. I've never come across this particular problem before. Any suggestions?

Well, since you increased your swap file to double the amount of RAM you have, it shouldn't be very surprising that your computer accesses your hard drive so much. Are you familiar with how virtual memory works? Switch this setting to auto and let Windows handle it, as XP handles memory pretty well.

Did this happen all of a sudden? Did you install some hardware or software around the time that this happened? Are you running System Restore?

 

[Creig]

AFAIK, virtual memory is only used extensively when the machine runs out of physical memory or when it hibernates. With 512mb of physical memory, it shouldn't be constantly accessing the hard drive with only one window open.

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: Creig
AFAIK, virtual memory is only used extensively when the machine runs out of physical memory or when it hibernates. With 512mb of physical memory, it shouldn't be constantly accessing the hard drive with only one window open.

That is how it 'should' work but that isn't how MS implemented theirs.

Thorin

 

[S0me1X]

Do you have the drivers installed for your high point controller? Perhaps Windows isn't trying to use the virtual memory: it might just be that your hard drive performance is very poor.

 

[Creig]

Yep, already checked and the Highpoint controller driver is installed. This problem is VERY weird since I have another machine with an Abit KR7A-133RAID w/2x256 PC2100 with a 40gig Maxtor 7200RPM drive/80 gig Maxtor 7800rpm on the Highpoint and a DVD-Rom/CDRW on the IDE channels and it works just fine. Almost an identical setup.

 

[S0me1X]

You might try running the hard drives on the onboard IDE just to be sure that the high point controller isn't having any issues.