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System Extremely Sluggish Right After Vista x64 Boots

T

TC91

Golden Member
Basically whenever I boot up my pc, the first couple of minutes right after it starts loading, trying to load anything is just very painfully slow, even though all of my startup apps are loaded; I assume this is when vista is "superfetching" as the task manager (whenever it decides to open) shows the "cached" physical memory under the performance tab increasing and the "free" decreasing. My system is as follows, everything is running stock, no overclocking:
QX6850
Asus P5Q
4GB Mushkin HP2
4870 1GB
WD 640gb Caviar SE16 (WD6400AAKS)

The hard drive is defragmented, and the only startup programs are the ati ccc, asus xonar audio centre, razer deathadder control panel, avg free anti virus 8 and msn messenger (v8.5).

There is also problems when I try to skip songs forward while loading a game/game level via keyboard hotkeys, where i have to wait for the level/game to load first before the song skips...

Anyways, would something along the lines of a velociraptor, or a few 7200rpm drives in raid 0 greatly alleviate these issues? I would like to stay clear from ssds for the time being. Thanks.
 
It shouldn't be as sluggish as you're sayng.

I have the same hard drive and same amount of ram as you. I can open up any program the second I get to my desktop almost instantly.

Maybe check your AVG settings, that's about the only difference I can see between your system and mine, I use Avira.

Superfetch is not supposed to have a high priority, so it shouldn't really slow things down dramatically as it's loading programs
 
I have not really changed many settings in avg free apart from disabling the scheduled scan. The sluggishness goes away about 2-3 minutes after getting to the desktop (cold boot) and everything is fine but during that time it's just very annoying. Also, when i launch games, sometimes it causes my music to skip playback, is that possibly related to the harddrive?
 
Originally posted by: Blain
Are your Windows advaced settings adjusted for "best appearance" or adjusted for "best performance"?
Click to expand...

it's set to let windows choose what's best for my computer (everything in the checklist is checked off)
 
Do you have write-back caching enabled and AHCI mode?

I have the same drive as you, and almost an identical setup, so I really doubt it's your hardware.

Maybe try disabling Superfetch temporarily to really see if it is the culprit.
 
I have write caching and advanced performance mode enabled, but it's in IDE mode. Disabling superfetch via services or through the registry does not seem to help as the sluggishness is still there; when I open task manager, it still shows the "cached" under the performance tab still going up until the "free" is nearly 0 despite the fact I had disabled superfetch.

I disabled it using the instructions on the following link, as well as in services:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto...m-boot-files-in-vista/

thanks.
 
alright I downloaded and ran the Data Lifeguard Tools 11.2 for Windows from the link n7 posted, the SMART status passed, the quick test passed, and the extended test passed too (this one took 1hr 38minutes to complete). Under the SMART Disk Information, everything in the menu is a green checkmark. I will try disabling/removing avg free to see if it helps.
 
Disabling avg free appears to help a little bit, but loading firefox or wmp right after boot is still laughably slow.

Not sure if this is a big deal but I usually have around 20-25 tabs saved in firefox from the previous session, and wmp is trying to queue about 800-1000 songs (i just hit play and it plays back the songs i had previously queued to the now playing playlist).
 
Originally posted by: TC91
Disabling avg free appears to help a little bit, but loading firefox or wmp right after boot is still laughably slow.

Not sure if this is a big deal but I usually have around 20-25 tabs saved in firefox from the previous session, and wmp is trying to queue about 800-1000 songs (i just hit play and it plays back the songs i had previously queued to the now playing playlist).
Click to expand...

That's a lot of tabs and your winamp queue is quite large.

Why don't you try testing out Firefox with no previous tabs saved and see if it responds instantly.

As I said before, I have the same drive as you, and nearly the same computer specs; however whenever I open Firefox, I never have any previous tab sessions saved to open up.

Are you able to open explorer (my computer) the second your desktop appears, and have it open up instantly (or damn near instantly)?


Hate to say it, but you might be expecting a bit much from your computer.
 
Actually I'm using windows media player 11 and not winamp 🙂 During that first little bit during loading I can get windows explorer to open up but it takes a little bit, not exactly instant or near instant but it opens up; the same goes for firefox with no tabs, it is a little faster but not nearly instant. The hdd activity light on my case during that time is solid, not blinking but solid and i can hear the drive working. I guess I may be expecting too much but it does annoy me...

Would something like a velociraptor or maybe like 3 short stroked drives in raid 0 make things faster?
 
I think you need to stop using WMP for music 😛

I can have hundreds of songs queued in Winamp & it doesn't take nearly that long.
That said, i don't have the music on the same drive as my OS either.

I'd say an SSD or VR would certainly speed up the loading of all those Firefox tabs, sure...but do you really need to load 25 tabs?

 
I guess I can cut down on the tabbed browsing... If anyone is willing to test their vraptor/raid 0/ssd storage subsystem and see if they don't get the same sluggishness with the aforementioned tasks I would appreciate it since well, that is quite a bit of $$ and I would like to know if for sure it would help 🙂 Thanks.
 
I was having this same problem recently and ended up uninstalling AVG, it was using 50-60% CPU usage for 5+ minutes after booting. Not sure if it was a bad install or what happened, but now things are working as they should again.
 
lol @ telling him to use less tabs in FF. Come on people, if you don't know dont start reaching for snake oil and other sorcery. Its most likely some rogue process sucking away his cycles.
 
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