---- START NEW MESSAGE --- Received: from cherry.ease.lsoft.com [209.119.0.109] by dpmail10.doteasy.com with ESMTP (SMTPD32-8.05) id A404439600D2; Thu, 29 Jan 2004 17:31:48 -0800 Received: from PEAR.EASE.LSOFT.COM (209.119.0.19) by cherry.ease.lsoft.com (LSMTP for Digital Unix v1.1b) with SMTP id <14.00CC3AEE@cherry.ease.lsoft.com>; Thu, 29 Jan 2004 20:31:35 -0500 Received: from MITVMA.MIT.EDU by MITVMA.MIT.EDU (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8e) with spool id 6968 for PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU; Thu, 29 Jan 2004 20:31:29 -0500 Received: from MITVMA (NJE origin SMTP@MITVMA) by MITVMA.MIT.EDU (LMail V1.2d/1.8d) with BSMTP id 1161; Thu, 29 Jan 2004 20:30:35 -0500 Received: from albatross.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.120] by mitvma.mit.edu (IBM VM SMTP Level 430) via TCP with ESMTP ; Thu, 29 Jan 2004 20:30:34 EST X-Comment: mitvma.mit.edu: Mail was sent by albatross.mail.pas.earthlink.net Received: from user-0c994j1.cable.mindspring.com ([24.148.146.97] helo=xppro) by albatross.mail.pas.earthlink.net with smtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 1AmNUS-0001ew-00 for PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU; Thu, 29 Jan 2004 17:30:36 -0800 References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 Message-ID: <08c301c3e6d1$3faf1ce0$0100a8c0@xppro> Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 20:34:48 -0500 Reply-To: pic microcontroller discussion list Sender: pic microcontroller discussion list From: John Ferrell Subject: Re: [OT:] Windows XP intermittent performance To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Precedence: list X-RCPT-TO: Status: U X-UIDL: 371856403 The indexing goes on hot & heavy for a while and then slows down. Zone Alarm caused me considerable grief. When I removed it, all did not come out. Control-Alt-Del ONE TIME will bring up a panel that shows what processes are running. There are tabs at the top that bring up more performance related information. This may not apply if you are not using XP Pro. John Ferrell 6241 Phillippi Rd Julian NC 27283 Phone: (336)685-9606 johnferrell@earthlink.net http://DixieNC.US NSRCA 479 AMA 4190 W8CCW "My Competition is Not My Enemy" ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Nick Sears" To: Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 7:09 PM Subject: [OT:] Windows XP intermittent performance Hello, I have a Windows XP desktop that has been driving me crazy lately. Generally speaking, it runs fine for a few days and then will all at once (normally on a reboot) get into a slow motion state where it takes forever to boot, logon, open a folder, etc, sometimes to the point where it is completely useless. I then go through a regimen of defragging and running various Norton Systemworks tools, etc which typically will bring it back to life for a few days, in which it performs very well and then the cycle repeats itself. In this process I have also turned off the fancy display settings, disabled unnecessary services, set my paging file to one large constant file size, etc. Yesterday I had a major slowdown (couldn't even program a PIC with the damned thing), defragged my system drive and took a nap and all was well. I used it all evening into the night with no problems and shut it down before bed. I woke up this morning to work and BAM it's back running slowly again. Not as bad as sometimes, but very frustrating to use and I can't get it to program a PIC. I have defragged both partitions (several times actually) but this time the problem continues. As I said I have Norton Systemworks and run the virus scan and do the updates and everything so I think it's unlikely that a virus is to blame. I do have some processes running that I can't account for so I may have some spyware or something running, but killing them does no good. What is a good spyware/adware/etcware removal program (preferably free but I'd be willing to pay if it came with an excellent recommendation) to use. I'm starting to think it's time for a reinstall and always in the past I would have gone for it by now, but I would really rather not. Mainly I feel like MS has had sufficient time to get this stuff figured out that I SHOULDn't have to completely wipe my computer clean every few months and that there must be a better solution to keep a windows install going long-term. I wrote a software package for my full time job that manages their sales, reporting, etc and it is running on 2 XP systems that I built that are much lower end systems (all athlon XPs though) and it has been in place since 7/2002 with none of these problems. The point is that I use my computer pretty heavily and I'm sure that is largely to blame but what is the sense in having an 1.8GHz machine if you can only do with it what you would with a Pentium 100MHz without having it self-destruct. Anyway I am a pretty big fan really of MS stuff *when it works properly* so I hope I'm just missing something or have some adware leeching around. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks, Nick -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. .