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Windows Unbearable slowness

Discussion in 'Tech Support' started by 731|\|37, 2 Apr 2010.

  1. 731|\|37

    731|\|37 ESD Engineer in Training

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    Alright, I usually don't have to ask for tech support, but I'm at my Whitt's End with this.

    My laptop (08-ish) is running absurdly slow from time to time. Usually it happens when performing simple graphics (e.g. Diablo 2, plants vs. zombies) but it occasionally Chrome will bog it down too. That being said I can keep Matlab churning numbers all day long without a hitch.

    I'm running XP pro SP3 on a Core 2 Duo clocked at 2.4Ghz with 2GB of RAM and an NVidia Quadro NVS 140M in a Dell Latitude D830. I just cleaned off some old files to leave about 15GB of free HDD space, I've run Ad-Aware, Spybot, CCleaner (including CC's rege cleaner), and AVG which all came up pretty clean. I just reinstalled the graphics driver to no avail. I should also note that this is a reasonably fresh install (less than 9 months) and I take quite good care of my systems.

    Does anyone have any ideas here? I'm drawing a blank, a rather frustrated blank.

    Cheers, and thanks in advance.
     
  2. confusis

    confusis Kiwi-modder

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    defrag?
     
  3. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    Sounds like you've given the system a good clean but have you actually given it a good clean, physically?

    I was amazed how much dust and dirt had collected in my lappy, heat may be a factor on your graphics (?).
     
  4. 731|\|37

    731|\|37 ESD Engineer in Training

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    Ohh, forgot, the defrag didn't help. I'll tear it down and clean it out this morning and see what I get. Any other suggestions?
     
  5. 731|\|37

    731|\|37 ESD Engineer in Training

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    Update:

    Well, I tore her down and gave her a good cleaning. In doing so I removed a good pad of fuzz from between the vent fan and the sink. It does run noticeably cooler now and I'm not surprised given it's new ventilation but It still runs choppy. Even after quitting a game I'm stuck lagging around for another minute or two.

    Any other ideas?
     
  6. Showerhead

    Showerhead What's a Dremel?

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    Have alook at whats running on startup either in MSconfig or using autoruns. You'd be amazed the amount of crap that runs from boot in the background.
     
  7. 731|\|37

    731|\|37 ESD Engineer in Training

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    I'd be surprised if I let it run amok, but I don't. There's nothing in there that doesn't have to be or that I don't actively want running.

    Well, it seems to have gotten worse. After starting chrome for the first time this boot there are at least 9 different processes taking up anywhere from ~12k to ~50k mem a piece. 'explorer.exe' is being a resource hog by chewing up up to 50% of the available process time. As a result, both cores are doing SOMETHING at peak capacity when I'm not doing anything. Right now it's isolated from the network so whatever it's doing it's doing by itself.

    Any other ideas?
     
  8. theskirrid

    theskirrid What's a Dremel?

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    Tyr removing AVG free and replacing it with Microsoft Security Essentials. I found the newer AVG's a lot less groovy than they used to be, and AVG9 is terrible with Windows 7 in particular. It's the pre-scan part of AVG that just doesn't play right.
     
  9. 731|\|37

    731|\|37 ESD Engineer in Training

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    AVG got nixed this morning in favor of Avast, no luck there. I had heard something about it and spybot not playing nice. I should also note that the Chrome multi-thread issue has occurred after a clean reinstall of Chrome.
     
  10. 731|\|37

    731|\|37 ESD Engineer in Training

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    Alright, apparently the chrome process thing is a result of plugins. I don't know if it's new with the last update or it's something I've never noticed before but chrome runs a separate process for each plugin and that's where that 'funny' behavior comes from.
     
  11. yuusou

    yuusou Multimodder

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    That's normal Chrome behavior. After leaving a game, how long does the process continue running for (if it continues)?
     
  12. 731|\|37

    731|\|37 ESD Engineer in Training

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    It terminates immediately. Processes don't tend to linger so much as just run incredibly slowly.
     

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