Hi all,
My laptop tends to run slower over time, and I noticed the page file usage reported by task manager is pretty high when I feel the slow down (disk activity associated). The slow down is associated with simple tasks such as opening a new explorer window, folder, or clicking on a link in IE. It seems like the system freezes for one or more seconds before coming back to life, during which time the HD light tends to be on - although not always.
Right now it's 325MB used and I only have two IE windows open.
Here's my laptop's spec:
Gateway M505X
Pentium M 1.4GHz (banias)
768MB PC2700 RAM
40GB Fujitsu MHT2040AT HD (4200RPM, but QUIET as hell... I bought a Seagate Momentus to replace it but it's so noisy that I've come back to the Fujitsu)
Radeon 9600 64MB
Intel 802.11b
I am running Windows XP Pro SP1 with all patches. The installation should be fairly clean; I did it back in September when I got the laptop (full format, clean install).
Programs that run at start up:
Norton Antivirus 2003
Zone Alarm Pro
speedswitchXP
Programs I've installed:
Adobe Photoshop CS, Acrobat 6, Premiere Pro (removed all items in start up folder)
Macromedia MX suite 2004
Nero (latest version)
Office 2003 Pro
Opera
Firefox
other utilities such as AIM, WinZIP, WinRAR, partition magic, etc (nothing that runs at start up)
I also have an Audigy 2 NX, so when I activate that, the pagefile usage goes up by about 15MB or so.
My Page file is set to static at 768MB on C drive. My 40GB HD is partitioned into 2, C is about 15GB and D is 25GB. I have to admit, C only as 190MB free right now, but I thought it shouldn't be a factor since my page file is static (the pagefile.sys file is 768MB always).
I've been religously scanning my system every week with AdAware Personal and SpyBot search & destroy. There's nothing to report besides the usual IE cookies (adaware) and the always present DSO exploit in SpyBot.
At fresh boot, PF usage ranges from 170 ~180MB. After Audigy 2 NX, it's 190~200MB. Then over time, it'll balloon up to max (so far) of ~540MB. When I had 512MB of ram in the laptop (stock), I felt the same slowdown at around 300MB or so of PF usage; at this point I'll reboot and everything's okay. Now it simply raises the threshold to 540MB or so with 768MB of RAM.
Is this normal???? One thing, I use I2Hub from time to time, and the slow down *seems* to come after using it. I don't know if this is a "memory leak", but I'll do more testing and report back. I thought XP was suppose to be able to block this sort of thing though.
My laptop tends to run slower over time, and I noticed the page file usage reported by task manager is pretty high when I feel the slow down (disk activity associated). The slow down is associated with simple tasks such as opening a new explorer window, folder, or clicking on a link in IE. It seems like the system freezes for one or more seconds before coming back to life, during which time the HD light tends to be on - although not always.
Right now it's 325MB used and I only have two IE windows open.
Here's my laptop's spec:
Gateway M505X
Pentium M 1.4GHz (banias)
768MB PC2700 RAM
40GB Fujitsu MHT2040AT HD (4200RPM, but QUIET as hell... I bought a Seagate Momentus to replace it but it's so noisy that I've come back to the Fujitsu)
Radeon 9600 64MB
Intel 802.11b
I am running Windows XP Pro SP1 with all patches. The installation should be fairly clean; I did it back in September when I got the laptop (full format, clean install).
Programs that run at start up:
Norton Antivirus 2003
Zone Alarm Pro
speedswitchXP
Programs I've installed:
Adobe Photoshop CS, Acrobat 6, Premiere Pro (removed all items in start up folder)
Macromedia MX suite 2004
Nero (latest version)
Office 2003 Pro
Opera
Firefox
other utilities such as AIM, WinZIP, WinRAR, partition magic, etc (nothing that runs at start up)
I also have an Audigy 2 NX, so when I activate that, the pagefile usage goes up by about 15MB or so.
My Page file is set to static at 768MB on C drive. My 40GB HD is partitioned into 2, C is about 15GB and D is 25GB. I have to admit, C only as 190MB free right now, but I thought it shouldn't be a factor since my page file is static (the pagefile.sys file is 768MB always).
I've been religously scanning my system every week with AdAware Personal and SpyBot search & destroy. There's nothing to report besides the usual IE cookies (adaware) and the always present DSO exploit in SpyBot.
At fresh boot, PF usage ranges from 170 ~180MB. After Audigy 2 NX, it's 190~200MB. Then over time, it'll balloon up to max (so far) of ~540MB. When I had 512MB of ram in the laptop (stock), I felt the same slowdown at around 300MB or so of PF usage; at this point I'll reboot and everything's okay. Now it simply raises the threshold to 540MB or so with 768MB of RAM.
Is this normal???? One thing, I use I2Hub from time to time, and the slow down *seems* to come after using it. I don't know if this is a "memory leak", but I'll do more testing and report back. I thought XP was suppose to be able to block this sort of thing though.
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