Hi everyone I'm having problems with my computer slowing down. I usually have loads of stuff going on (right now my taskbar looks like this and I have 80ish tabs open in Chrome) and it's all fine. Windows task manager says 2.8GB used of 4GB, and the CPUs aren't really up to much (in fact, it's clocked itself down to 2GHz). If I do anything or open up other software, it's snappy and it works. However, as soon as AVG starts scanning, or I start MATLAB doing something big (RAM intensive), the whole system grinds to a halt. My spec is: 2x2GB DDR2, a Q6600 at 3GHz and a 1TB Samsung F1. Surely it should be fine? MATLAB and AVG are single threaded and therefore use 25% of the CPU maximum. However, they make the computer un-useable. If you click on the start button, you have to wait about 15 seconds for it to appear. It's really irritating me, because it should be fine. Is there anything I can do to make things more responsive? Thanks for any help ch424
Is that Seven or Vista, and which version of whatever it is? You can't really expect a computer with a 3GHz Q6600 and 4GB of RAM to run so much at once and not slow down... My i7 rig could possibly handle all that, but it's a monster spec in comparison. Also, MATLAB is more system intensive than you think, and also horribly inefficient in its design, so it might be what is causing the problem.
It's 64-bit Vista Ultimate. I was wondering if maybe something was wrong with the hard disk? HDTune says it's fine though
Vista is a resource hog to begin with, but I'm honestly thinking that the system is just running out of memory and CPU time to handle everything you're throwing at it. You've got your 80+ tabs in chrome, iTunes (in itself very resource hungry in Windows), Adobe and Excel running at once. Most of what you have open are what I'd call large programs. You mentioned above that the CPU was throttling itself back - you might want to try turning speedstep off for a while and see if that helps. It can get the CPU clock that the system requires wrong sometimes, and leave the PC underpowered. The last thing I can recommend is telling us your CPU overclock settings. If it's a Q6600 running at 3GHz then there's obviously an overclock on it, so post what FSB, ratio and Multiplier you're using etc as well as what brand and speed of memory you're using just to make sure your RAM isn't running slower than it should be.
OK, thanks for the help so far! I'm not convinced by the RAM thing as there's still over a gig free. Also, when AVG and MATLAB aren't running the computer is absolutely fine, which is the confusing part; it slows down immensely even if I don't have all the other stuff open. This is with MATLAB doing something intensive: When idle it's the same but with the 6x multiplier. RAM is at 334MHz / 4-4-4-15, and the box said you could run it at that. It's some OCZ Platinum stuff. And no, the hard disk sounds fine, it never makes a sound, and will read large files at 90MB/sec. I don't remember changing any page file stuff since I installed windows, but could it be that?
80 tabs is a HELL of a lot. I'm really not surprised its grinding to a halt if your using all those programs + a virus scanner.
First of all, I would do some housekeeping. Won't cost anything. If you aren't using it, download CCleaner and run it, including the registry cleaner, then turn off auto defrag and install Contig and Power Defrag (probably best to Google how to do it). Run it through and defrag your drive. Have a look at what is running in the background, personally I turn off Superfetch also and system restore, but that is up to you. Process Explorer from Sysinternals is good, if you aren't using it. Make sure you have SP2 installed also. Defrag your system manually once a week. If that makes a difference, then budget for a second hard drive, relocate page file and temporary folders to it, and anything that uses disk for things like scratch (i.e photoshop) make them do it on the other disk. Then budget for more ram, with 8GB I had no probs turning off the page file, but that is up to you also. Finally upgrading the CPU to a 2nd hand Q9550 and overclocking it would help too. But just remember, whenever a programme needs to access the hard drive, particularly to write something, it will have a performance effect in the way you mention. Even the fastest mechanical HDD's (at least desktop ones) will cause bottlenecks in fast systems, hence why SSD's make such an impact. But the short term remedy to this is having more than one disk, so that it decreases the 'load' on the one your OS is on.
Thanks cybergenics, I've downloaded Ccleaner and it found 3GB of stuff! I'll run the defragmenters in the morning. I just looked at RAM and it'd be £90 for stuff that matches what I have now. I paid £43 for it a year ago! I do have a second 1TB F1 that I use as a backup drive, and yeah, my Premiere Pro scratch folder is on it. I might try moving the page file over as well, because I certainly don't have £90 for the RAM! Thanks again everyone, I'll post again when I've done all the disk stuff.
