Unusual slowdowns - correlation with recent changes?

[mset]

Hi everyone

WIN XP PRO SP2 (build 2600) with all updates except Q886903
AMD X2 3800+
2 GB RAM
Asus A8N-E mobo
Western Digital Raptor 74 GB C: drive
Western Digital Caviar 300GB internal backup drive (clone of C: drive is the only contents)
Western Digital External USB drive (storage)
Two video cards plugged into the mobo (Visiontek X300 and Radeon 9250?? I can confirm this if necessary, one is PCI 16x and the other is PCI 4x I believe,
but they are each driving two Dell 2005fpw monitors and seem to have been doing so problem free for about 3 months).

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As usual, thanks in advance for any help. I have an unusual one here. Sorry, this may be a bit long.

Last year I built my first computer (with some help from you guys). For some reason, the tech who installed Windows XP Pro made my discs dynamic. He also partitioned the C: drive. I wanted the space back
but I couldn't eliminate the partition using the usual programs so I converted my discs back to basic using Paragon Partition manager. All went well, I was able to eliminate the partition and get the unused HD
space back.

I then bought a new HD and made a clone of my HD on it. It is not an external drive, it resides in my box plugged into my mobo.

Last week I updated a piece of software I have (called Amibroker) that I use for trading the markets. As soon as I updated, I noticed a slowdown in my computer (and this is very important - I thought
that the two events seemed correlated). I normally have multiple charts open, as well as a direct connection to my broker, as well as a data feed. Usually this all performs perfectly. Now I was noticing that open
windows tended to 'lag' or 'fragment' if I tried to move them around my workspace (I am running 4 monitors, off of two video cards, with one big desktop so that I can drag and drop between monitors). As well,
my programs were all responding very slowly (except the Java programs - again, I am not a programmer, but this is what I suspect). The developer of the software says this is an overheating video card or some
other hardware problem. I told him that the problems coincided exactly with the upgrade, but...

I checked the Task Manager and saw that my CPU usage was running very high, often 90+%. I asked the developer if the update could have caused this but he swears up and
down that it's not possible (the update is not a beta or anything, I was just slow to update -it is being used by others, apparently with no problems).

So I shut all programs down and checked Task Manager. No CPU usage to speak of. Then I launched a browser window and immediately my CPU usage started to go like this

2%... 5%... 23%... 4%... 35%...40%...8%...

changing about twice a second.

So I went ahead and took a number of steps. I used msconfig to close all unnecessary programs at startup. I ran full disc cleanup, then checkdisc, then disc defragmenter.
I did an Avast virus scan on all 3 drives (two internal and one external drive) and they came up clean. I did all Microsoft Updates. However, I do all of these things regularly anyway.

Unfortunately, my CPU usage is still spiking whenever even one program is up and running. When I get a few programs up and running, the computer just isn't the same.

Finally, when I try to reboot, the computer hangs at the screen which says 'Windows is Shutting Down'. I eventually have to manually turn it off using the power switch.

So... there it is. I am kind of at a standstill. Is this a situation where you guys would need a HJT log?

Needless to say, I need to get this fixed as fast as possible, since this is my main trading computer.

Thanks again, I will check back after 4 p.m. EST on Friday.

 

[robisbell]

sounds like you're overtaxing those old cards.

 

[mset]

Okay - now, is it possible that the performance of the cards would slowly degrade over time (like 3 months)?

 

[robisbell]

well, those are old cards, and you're pushing them to their limit from the sounds of it.

 

[mset]

Okay, thanks for the comments. I guess there's only one way to troubleshoot that possibility.

 

[cubby1223]

Always could be the hard drive. Just to throw out a very extreme case, I've seen a failing hard drive not present any errors - however sometimes the computer booted up in 30 seconds... sometimes the computer booted up in 30 minutes! No joking. When I cloned the drive to its replacement, took something like 3 hours to transfer 10gb.

Of course with most all computer troubles, there are 10,000 possibilities, but only 1 answer... And sometimes springing for an Athlon X2 4400+ is cheaper than time lost figuring it out.

 

[mset]

Originally posted by: cubby1223
Always could be the hard drive. Just to throw out a very extreme case, I've seen a failing hard drive not present any errors - however sometimes the computer booted up in 30 seconds... sometimes the computer booted up in 30 minutes! No joking. When I cloned the drive to its replacement, took something like 3 hours to transfer 10gb.

Of course with most all computer troubles, there are 10,000 possibilities, but only 1 answer... And sometimes springing for an Athlon X2 4400+ is cheaper than time lost figuring it out.

You know what's strange, and what I forgot to put in the OP. When I staretd trying to troubleshoot this problem, I had to reboot a few times. Normally my computer runs 24/7. However, when I tried to reboot, the computer hung on the 'Windows is shutting down' screen. I had to manually force it to completely power down using the power button and then manually power it back up. When I did all the disc cleanup, disc defrag, scans etc., I did another reboot and this time the computer rebooted correctly.

In a weird way I hope it is the HD because I am fully backed up and swapping out a HD is going to be a hell of a lot easier than coming up with and testing and implementing a whole new 4-monitor system.

 

[madh83]

I had a similar issue where the computer would slow to a crawl and cpu util was very high on almost no activity, it turned out to be my cpu fan was not functioning. Don't know if that's something you checked, but worth looking into.