OT - computer speed

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AndyC the WB wrote:

||||||| "Richard" == Richard Brookman
||||||| <[email protected]> writes:
||
|| Richard> Rule of Tim - somebody here will know.
|| Richard> My laptop has been getting steadily slower over the last
|| Richard> 6 months.
||
|| In addition to the other tips, clean out the Cache in Internet
|| Explorer or whatever you're using for browsing the intraweb-thing.

I do that about weekly, thanks.

|| After that, take a look at what's using the most memory on the
|| processes tab of the Task Manager, and see if it's something that
|| shouldn't be there (report back here or google for the name).

There are four programs using >10MB:

explorer.exe (manages windows interface)
svchost.exe (handles DLL processes)
ccapp.exe (apparently auto-protect in NAV)
msimn.exe (outlook express open)

Google searches all recommend not to terminate these.

Thanks Andy.

--
Rich
==============================

Take out the obvious to email me.


 
Duracell Bunny wrote:

|| William Tasso wrote:
||| On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:19:19 +0100, Richard Brookman
||| <[email protected]> wrote:
|||
|||| Rule of Tim - somebody here will know.
||||
|||| My laptop has been getting steadily slower over the last 6 months.
|||| ...
|||
||| Backup the data and reinstall from scratch?
|||
||| --William Tasso
|||
||| Land Rover - 110 V8
||| Discovery - V8
|| As usual, I agree with William on that. Most Windoze systems still
|| benefit from
|| a regular clean install on a regular basis.
||

Agreed. I am still a bit confused as to why they should need this - or
rather why my work PC (running XP as well) never gets any attention and
still runs as fast as they day I got it.

--
Rich
==============================

Take out the obvious to email me.


 
Richard Brookman wrote:

> || Only one partition? If so the above will limit the ability of the
> || swap file to cope. If you have another partition with space it might
> || be an idea to relocate the swap file there.
>
> Only one partition. The HD is 30GB with about 17GB of data - would I be
> better off creating a second partition of (say) 5GB and leaving that for the
> swap files?

Not entirely keeping to the subject but I will always place my data on
separate partition to the operating system. That way, when (not if!)
Windows goes belly up you can reinstall Windows in full without
worrying about securing the data. (I think that my 'data' may be
defined differently to yours. You refer to files in general. I
specifically mean stuff created by me - photos etc. for example.)

Putting the swap file onto another partition will not help speedwise
unless, as William mentions, it's on another hard drive. However, if
you had a variable size swap file on the 'C' drive (Windows default)
and the drive was filling up with rubbish there would be an
increasingly smaller space for the swap file to be able to use. If the
swap file is on another partition it's safe from being squeezed. As
you seem to have around 12Gb of space this shouldn't be the cause of
your problem.

The Windows updates themselves are not the problem it's the backup
files that are created to allow you to uninstall the updates. I
believe (but don't take my word for it) that it's safe to delete these.
 
Darren Griffin - PocketGPSWorld.Com wrote:

|| On 2006-08-22 15:40:48 +0100, "fanie" <[email protected]>
|| said:
||
||| As has been commented, installing service packs can have a
||| significant effect. I took a clean 2K machine, with just doze
||| loaded it was using about about 50Mb. Downloaded all the service
||| packs and updates and that shifted to nearer the 120Mb level, and
||| this was before installing software.
||
|| In addition to all that has been mentioned, 256MB RAM is nowhere near
|| enough for an average XP SP2 machine these days. You really should
|| have a minimum of 512MB. With the extra loads that XP SP2's firewall
|| adds as well as the numerous service pack's and security centre, the
|| more memory you can install the better and it is currently one of the
|| cheapest upgrades you can perform. Ideally 1Gb would give your
|| laptop a new lease of life.
||
||
|| --
|| Darren Griffin
|| PocketGPSWorld - www.PocketGPSWorld.com
|| The Premier GPS Resource for News, Reviews and Forums

That would make sense. The laptop has two memory slots, each capable of
256MB. From new, it has had 256 in the user-accessible slot, but fitting
512 in there doesn't work (I've tried it). The other slot is deep within
the bowels of the case, and I got half way there and stopped, as I was in
danger of breaking something. They certainly don't make it easy. Dell
recommends "back to the factory" for this - surprise surprise.

--
Rich
==============================

Take out the obvious to email me.


 
William Tasso wrote:

|| On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 18:34:04 +0100, Richard Brookman
|| <[email protected]> wrote:
||
||| William Tasso wrote:
|||
||||| On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:19:19 +0100, Richard Brookman
||||| <[email protected]> wrote:
|||||
|||||| Rule of Tim - somebody here will know.
||||||
|||||| My laptop has been getting steadily slower over the last 6
|||||| months. ...
|||||
||||| Backup the data and reinstall from scratch?
|||
||| That's the Final Solution - worked on my daughter's, when she had
||| been spending too much time on kazaa and had a ton of malware.
||
|| That would do it ;)
||
||| However, I'd
||| quite like to know why a computer could slow down over the months
||| with no (obvious) reason why, and fix that rather than reformat and
||| re-install.
||
|| How long have you got? been plenty good suggestions in this thread -
|| could take another six months to work out which apply and elimate the
|| others.
||
||| As
||| I said in my post, my work PC is incredibly fast by comparison and
||| gets no
||| regular maintenance at all. That hasn't deteriorated in a year of
||| my daily
||| use.
|||
||| I'll keep your suggestion in my Last Resort file :)
||
|| Thought: The easy way is to buy a new HD unit, install onto that
|| and then load the old HD as a slave [1] - gives instant access to
|| your old data files and you get a HD upgrade to boot (pardon the
|| pun).
||
|| [1] possibly marking the entire she-bang as read-only - MMV
|| --
|| William Tasso
||
|| Land Rover - 110 V8
|| Discovery - V8

I'd been thinking along those lines - I have a 30GB HD in a case linked to
the USB which I use for backups. Perhaps I could swap the drives over,
install afresh on the new drive and transfer the important data back as and
when. Unfortunately, being a laptop, there is no room to install drives
together as master/slave as I have done in a desktop before now.

--
Rich
==============================

Take out the obvious to email me.


 
Dougal wrote:

|| The Windows updates themselves are not the problem it's the backup
|| files that are created to allow you to uninstall the updates. I
|| believe (but don't take my word for it) that it's safe to delete
|| these.

Do you know how I find 'em to delete 'em?

--
Rich
==============================

Take out the obvious to email me.


 
Larry wrote:

|| Quickest way to defrag a disc is copy all of the data off it and
|| reformat, wouldn't recommend that for the C drive though, unless you
|| copy it with something like Norton Ghost.

I'm prepared to do that, but (risks showing total ignorance) isn't a ghost
the exact image of the existing drive? And if so, wouldn't it copy all the
crap* I want to get rid of at the same time?

*whether it's files, backups, settings, whatever


--
Rich
==============================

Take out the obvious to email me.


 
On or around Tue, 22 Aug 2006 19:10:29 +0100, "Richard Brookman"
<[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:

>Aha - I think I have all the patches for SP2 installed, so that would
>account for the slowing down gradually. Is there a way to restore speed
>without reinstalling XP and not letting it update? I assume the patches are
>necessary for security, which is why I always let it update when it asks to.

that depends on what software you're using and what other protection you put
on it. On mine, for example I have Outpost firewall v3.51 which has a
built-in spyware detector, so windows firewall is turned off. Outpost is
set to "rules" mode which will only allow what you tell it to allow for each
bit of software. I almost never use IE and then only under supervision,
it's not allowed to connect to anything without asking. OE is not on the
machines at all.

in general, software only gets to do what I think it should: for example,
Agent is only allowed to connect via POP3 or SMTP to the relevant mail
server hosts, and via NNTP to the news server.

If you use OE or IE regularly, I'd go with SP2 which I think patches some
vulnerabilities in those. I'd still not use windows firewall, though -
mickeysnot seem to have no idea about network security...
--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
If all be true that I do think, There are five reasons we should drink;
Good wine, a friend, or being dry, Or lest we should be by and by;
Or any other reason why. - Henry Aldrich (1647 - 1710)
 
On or around Tue, 22 Aug 2006 20:59:00 +0100, "Larry" <[email protected]>
enlightened us thusly:

>Quickest way to defrag a disc is copy all of the data off it and reformat,
>wouldn't recommend that for the C drive though, unless you copy it with
>something like Norton Ghost.

I have a thing called PerfectDisk 7 which is much nicer than windows' thing,
and more useful - you can do scheduled defrags (at times when the machine
isn't going to be in use) and stuff like that.
--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
If all be true that I do think, There are five reasons we should drink;
Good wine, a friend, or being dry, Or lest we should be by and by;
Or any other reason why. - Henry Aldrich (1647 - 1710)
 
Richard Brookman wrote:

> Dougal wrote:
>
> || The Windows updates themselves are not the problem it's the backup
> || files that are created to allow you to uninstall the updates. I
> || believe (but don't take my word for it) that it's safe to delete
> || these.
>
> Do you know how I find 'em to delete 'em?
>
In my case (W2000), there's a great load of folders in my c:\winnt
folder with names like $NtUninstall....

They haven't gone yet but I'm sorely tempted.
 
On or around Tue, 22 Aug 2006 19:12:47 +0100, "William Tasso"
<[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:

>On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 19:03:36 +0100, Richard Brookman
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> ...
>> would I be
>> better off creating a second partition of (say) 5GB and leaving that for
>> the
>> swap files?
>
>Not really - best solution is to give the swap process a dedicated spindle
>(HD unit) to play with.

one thing you can do is to get into the system properties and turn off "let
windows manage virtual memory", then define a size you want to use (say 2GB)
and set both minimum and maximum to that size. This stops windows farting
about adjusting the size of the swap space.

I tend to put it on a separate small partition so that it's not in danger of
being written into. That partition is only for swap so doesn't get used for
anything else.

On the other machine I happen to have a spare 1.2GB drive, so that's being
the swap space there. That's only got 256MB ram, and it really ain't
enough, it's fine for what it's normally doing (not much) but if I want to
fire up a browser on it or something it's very slow. This one has 1.5GB of
ram and once fired up and running with all the stuff that runs on it like
firewall, AV, BOINC and so forth, it's only got a bit over 1GB free.
--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
"The great masses of the people ... will more easily fall victims to
a great lie than to a small one" Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
from Mein Kampf, Ch 10
 
On or around Tue, 22 Aug 2006 21:36:29 +0100, "Richard Brookman"
<[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:

>ccapp.exe (apparently auto-protect in NAV)

ur, yuk.

>msimn.exe (outlook express open)

double-yuk.



but that's just my personal opinion. I fell out with symantec a long time
ago and wouldn't touch NAV with a long pole. and OE is the work of stan.

biggest things on the list here:

setiathome - 60MB
xplanet - 37MB [changes the monitor background]
VSPDFPRSRV - 31MB [PDF print server which mean you can "print" to pdf]
explorer - 24MB
svchost - 18+5+4+4+4 =35 [never worked out what half of these are]

plus a ton of other things. 42 processes altogether, including taskmgr and
agent, of course.
--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
"The great masses of the people ... will more easily fall victims to
a great lie than to a small one" Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
from Mein Kampf, Ch 10
 
On 2006-08-22 22:23:14 +0100, Austin Shackles <[email protected]> said:
> but that's just my personal opinion. I fell out with symantec a long time
> ago and wouldn't touch NAV with a long pole. and OE is the work of stan.

Speaking with my IT Consultancy hat on here I'd have to agree about
NAV, wouldn't let it near my client systems, but OE is a pretty decent
newsreader, it has its problems but it works well in conjunction with
OE-Quote when configured properly.

Having converted to Mac recently I long for a decent newsreader!

--
Darren Griffin
PocketGPSWorld - www.PocketGPSWorld.com
The Premier GPS Resource for News, Reviews and Forums

 
Richard Brookman wrote:
> Duracell Bunny wrote:
>
> || William Tasso wrote:
> ||| On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:19:19 +0100, Richard Brookman
> ||| <[email protected]> wrote:
> |||
> |||| Rule of Tim - somebody here will know.
> ||||
> |||| My laptop has been getting steadily slower over the last 6 months.
> |||| ...
> |||
> ||| Backup the data and reinstall from scratch?
> |||
> ||| --William Tasso
> |||
> ||| Land Rover - 110 V8
> ||| Discovery - V8
> || As usual, I agree with William on that. Most Windoze systems still
> || benefit from
> || a regular clean install on a regular basis.
> ||
>
> Agreed. I am still a bit confused as to why they should need this - or
> rather why my work PC (running XP as well) never gets any attention and
> still runs as fast as they day I got it.
>
I've always felt that this is because work computers are normally used in a much
'safer' manner - kids at home go places mere mortal adults fear to tread,
download keygens, dubious music & so on that may well contain a hidden payload,
or just plain badly written software. I always advise clients not to put work
computers on a home network - by all means take them home, but keep 'em isolated
from the unwashed ones.

Karen

--
Karen

And thanks to Tam at aus.bicycle for the cool new nick :)

"Sometimes I think I have a Guardian Idiot - a little invisible spirit just
behind my shoulder, looking out for me ... only he's an imbecile" - Jake Stonebender
 
Richard Brookman wrote:
> William Tasso wrote:
>
> || On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 18:34:04 +0100, Richard Brookman
> || <[email protected]> wrote:
> ||
> ||| William Tasso wrote:
> |||
> ||||| On Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:19:19 +0100, Richard Brookman
> ||||| <[email protected]> wrote:
> |||||
> |||||| Rule of Tim - somebody here will know.
> ||||||
> |||||| My laptop has been getting steadily slower over the last 6
> |||||| months. ...
> |||||
> ||||| Backup the data and reinstall from scratch?
> |||
> ||| That's the Final Solution - worked on my daughter's, when she had
> ||| been spending too much time on kazaa and had a ton of malware.
> ||
> || That would do it ;)
> ||
> ||| However, I'd
> ||| quite like to know why a computer could slow down over the months
> ||| with no (obvious) reason why, and fix that rather than reformat and
> ||| re-install.
> ||
> || How long have you got? been plenty good suggestions in this thread -
> || could take another six months to work out which apply and elimate the
> || others.
> ||
> ||| As
> ||| I said in my post, my work PC is incredibly fast by comparison and
> ||| gets no
> ||| regular maintenance at all. That hasn't deteriorated in a year of
> ||| my daily
> ||| use.
> |||
> ||| I'll keep your suggestion in my Last Resort file :)
> ||
> || Thought: The easy way is to buy a new HD unit, install onto that
> || and then load the old HD as a slave [1] - gives instant access to
> || your old data files and you get a HD upgrade to boot (pardon the
> || pun).
> ||
> || [1] possibly marking the entire she-bang as read-only - MMV
> || --
> || William Tasso
> ||
> || Land Rover - 110 V8
> || Discovery - V8
>
> I'd been thinking along those lines - I have a 30GB HD in a case linked to
> the USB which I use for backups. Perhaps I could swap the drives over,
> install afresh on the new drive and transfer the important data back as and
> when. Unfortunately, being a laptop, there is no room to install drives
> together as master/slave as I have done in a desktop before now.
>
The other point to bear in mind is that if the data on there is that important
to you, it's important enough to back up anyway. Sooner or later, hard drives
fail & you lose all anyway. Burn to a CD /series of CDs, memory sticks, DVD, or
network copy to a larger PC.

Of course these days the real issue is that with the enormous hard drives now
sold as standard, back up solutions haven't really kept pace with the storage
needs, so second hard drives become much more a necessity for this purpose.

With that in mind, when setting up your systems make sure that all your data has
a common root, such as My Documents (did you know you can define where that is?)
and then copy EVERYTHING in that directory tree somewhere else.

--
Karen

And thanks to Tam at aus.bicycle for the cool new nick :)

"Sometimes I think I have a Guardian Idiot - a little invisible spirit just
behind my shoulder, looking out for me ... only he's an imbecile" - Jake Stonebender
 
On or around Tue, 22 Aug 2006 22:13:15 +0100, Dougal
<DougalAThiskennel.free-online.co.uk> enlightened us thusly:

>Richard Brookman wrote:
>
>> Dougal wrote:
>>
>> || The Windows updates themselves are not the problem it's the backup
>> || files that are created to allow you to uninstall the updates. I
>> || believe (but don't take my word for it) that it's safe to delete
>> || these.
>>
>> Do you know how I find 'em to delete 'em?
>>
>In my case (W2000), there's a great load of folders in my c:\winnt
>folder with names like $NtUninstall....
>
>They haven't gone yet but I'm sorely tempted.

don't get rid of them if you want to uninstall stuff. I think they're
records of installations so that when you uninstall XYZ it knows how to
uninstall it.

There are also backup install things, which are not the same thing; Nero
left a load on this machine. These are things that unpack a CD into 3 CD-s
worth of install files, then don't have the courtesy to remove them after
the install is complete. These, you can remove, mostly.

--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
"Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero" (sieze today, and put
as little trust as you can in tomorrow) Horace (65 - 8 BC) Odes, I.xi.8
 
On or around Tue, 22 Aug 2006 22:54:43 +0100, Darren Griffin -
PocketGPSWorld.Com <[email protected]> enlightened us thusly:

>On 2006-08-22 22:23:14 +0100, Austin Shackles <[email protected]> said:
>> but that's just my personal opinion. I fell out with symantec a long time
>> ago and wouldn't touch NAV with a long pole. and OE is the work of stan.
>
>Speaking with my IT Consultancy hat on here I'd have to agree about
>NAV, wouldn't let it near my client systems, but OE is a pretty decent
>newsreader, it has its problems but it works well in conjunction with
>OE-Quote when configured properly.
>
>Having converted to Mac recently I long for a decent newsreader!

there are some for Macs. I've often rather fancied a Mac, but the problem
traditionally is that bang-for-buck, PCs were cheaper and software more
readily available. I think this is not so much the case now, but there's
still a lot more software for PC than for Mac even so.


main problem with OE is that it ships and installs wide-open; it's possible
to make it secure (and make it work reasonably) but you have to do a lot of
farting about to make it so, and joe public doesn't bother and thus spreads
viruses all over the place.
--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.net my opinions are just that
"Quos deus vult perdere, prius dementat" Euripedes, quoted in
Boswell's "Johnson".
 
On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 09:16:43 +0100, Austin Shackles
<[email protected]> wrote:

> ...
> main problem with OE is that it ships and installs wide-open; it's
> possible
> to make it secure (and make it work reasonably) but you have to do a lot
> of
> farting about to make it so

it's not too onerous:
o http://williamtasso.com/words/hardening-outlook-express.asp
o http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/

> and joe public doesn't bother and thus spreads
> viruses all over the place.

that much is true.

--
William Tasso

Land Rover - 110 V8
Discovery - V8
 
Duracell Bunny wrote:

||| Agreed. I am still a bit confused as to why they should need this
||| - or rather why my work PC (running XP as well) never gets any
||| attention and still runs as fast as they day I got it.
|||
|| I've always felt that this is because work computers are normally
|| used in a much 'safer' manner - kids at home go places mere mortal
|| adults fear to tread,
|| download keygens, dubious music & so on that may well contain a
|| hidden payload,
|| or just plain badly written software. I always advise clients not to
|| put work computers on a home network - by all means take them home,
|| but keep 'em isolated from the unwashed ones.

True, if my daughter's PC was anything to go by. However, my work PC and my
home laptop get used by just the one person - me. The only difference (as
far as I know, which ain't much) is that the work PC runs off the central
server, so all the AV software, firewall etc are remote from my desktop.
(Thinks - might have answered own question, turn off the AV as an
experiment.)

--
Rich
==============================

Take out the obvious to email me.


 
On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 18:34:22 +0100, Richard Brookman
<[email protected]> wrote:

> ...
> my work PC and my
> home laptop get used by just the one person - me. The only difference
> (as
> far as I know, which ain't much) is that the work PC runs off the central
> server, so all the AV software, firewall etc are remote from my desktop.
> (Thinks - might have answered own question, turn off the AV as an
> experiment.)

AV == Anti Virus? never use it, on any platform.

Also - Firewall should be a separate box/appliance/unit dedicated to the
task of firewalling - anything else renders it more likely to
interference. Firewalls running as software on the box they're
'protecting' are about as much use as a chocolate Tea Pot.

--
William Tasso

Land Rover - 110 V8
Discovery - V8
 
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