My XP/SP2 has slowed down and I'd like to actually benchmark
its speed.....anybody refer me to some tools? I've done most
of the obvious things....defrag, remove all old clutter,
chkdsk, but when it takes two hours for a simple Norton Utilities
virus scan of one operating system, and an hour for step 4
of the chkdsk run before the OS actually loads and desktop
appears, I think something is broke and needs fixing.
--
William B. Lurie

Bill

Have you run any anti-spyware?.. SpyBot, Adaware, SpywareBlaster?.. if you
haven't, do it now.. you might also want to run Ewido's online scan..

http://www.ewido.net/en/ .. it is abeta scan, and there is a warning with
it, but I have had no problems running it on mine or any of my client
computers..

Do yourself another favour and dump Norton Utilities.. regardless of claims
made by Symantec, NU is a scourge..

Benchmarking will serve no useful purpose..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/User


<billurie@nospam.org> wrote in message
news:OGlnCkGDGHA.208@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> My XP/SP2 has slowed down and I'd like to actually benchmark
> its speed.....anybody refer me to some tools? I've done most
> of the obvious things....defrag, remove all old clutter,
> chkdsk, but when it takes two hours for a simple Norton Utilities
> virus scan of one operating system, and an hour for step 4
> of the chkdsk run before the OS actually loads and desktop
> appears, I think something is broke and needs fixing.
> --
> William B. Lurie

Thanks, Mike. FYI, I run SPYBOT frequently, and it almost always finds
just the same three nuisances that I wish I could find a way to
block. I also have Microsoft's Anti-Spyware Beta running....

I have been using Norton NSW and its predecessors for as long
as NU was available, and they are truly a royal pain, not to
use but to install and keep working without maddening error
messages. But they've kept me virus and worm-free for so many
years, I hate to dump them. And getting instructions from them
always leads to pages and pages of print-outs and in many cases
incorrect as well as inadequate instructions. But the inertia
of scrubbing them off and replacing them is mighty hard to
look forward to.

I'll try the rest of your advice.....and thanks again.

Bill L.

Mike Hall (MS-MVP) wrote:
> Bill
>
> Have you run any anti-spyware?.. SpyBot, Adaware, SpywareBlaster?.. if you
> haven't, do it now.. you might also want to run Ewido's online scan..
>
> http://www.ewido.net/en/ .. it is abeta scan, and there is a warning with
> it, but I have had no problems running it on mine or any of my client
> computers..
>
> Do yourself another favour and dump Norton Utilities.. regardless of claims
> made by Symantec, NU is a scourge..
>
> Benchmarking will serve no useful purpose..
>


--
William B. Lurie

Bill

Dump MS Anti-spyware..download and run Adaware and SpywareBlaster.. SpyBot
is not enough on it's own

Adaware SE - http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

SpywareBlaster - http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html..

Norton Utilities is invasive and will help slow your system down.. it is
best removed and forgotten.. the Symantec site should have removal
instructions if Add/Remove does not eliminate it..

Get a free anti-virus program..

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5 or
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/User


<billurie@nospam.org> wrote in message
news:OG34ocJDGHA.312@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
> Thanks, Mike. FYI, I run SPYBOT frequently, and it almost always finds
> just the same three nuisances that I wish I could find a way to
> block. I also have Microsoft's Anti-Spyware Beta running....
>
> I have been using Norton NSW and its predecessors for as long
> as NU was available, and they are truly a royal pain, not to
> use but to install and keep working without maddening error
> messages. But they've kept me virus and worm-free for so many
> years, I hate to dump them. And getting instructions from them
> always leads to pages and pages of print-outs and in many cases
> incorrect as well as inadequate instructions. But the inertia
> of scrubbing them off and replacing them is mighty hard to
> look forward to.
>
> I'll try the rest of your advice.....and thanks again.
>
> Bill L.
>
> Mike Hall (MS-MVP) wrote:
>> Bill
>>
>> Have you run any anti-spyware?.. SpyBot, Adaware, SpywareBlaster?.. if
>> you haven't, do it now.. you might also want to run Ewido's online scan..
>>
>> http://www.ewido.net/en/ .. it is abeta scan, and there is a warning with
>> it, but I have had no problems running it on mine or any of my client
>> computers..
>>
>> Do yourself another favour and dump Norton Utilities.. regardless of
>> claims made by Symantec, NU is a scourge..
>>
>> Benchmarking will serve no useful purpose..
>>
>
>
> --
> William B. Lurie

How much RAM memory? Try Ctrl+Alt+Delete to select Task Manager and
click the Performance Tab. What is the Total, the Commit Charge and the
Peak?

You may check on pagefile (virtual memory) usage with Page File Monitor for
XP:
http://www.dougknox.com/

If you get anything much more than 20 / 30 mb virtual memory usage you
need to add RAM memory. The system uses virtual memory for a
limited number of tasks rather than RAM memory.

Make sure you study the readme.txt file carefully to ensure you get the
utility to work as it should.

Have you installed any "memory boosters" ?

How large is your hard drive? Is it partitioned? How much free space on each
drive / partition? How is the drive / partition formatted -FAT32 or NTFS? To
get this information, whilst in Windows Explorer, place the cursor on each
drive in turn, right click and select Properties.

I have recently dumped Norton Anti-Virus in favour of AVG 7 ( freeware ) and
Norton Personal Firewall for the Windows Firewall. If your system is
struggling
then a similar change would definitely help with your performance. I do not
agree with Mike Hall regarding Microsoft Anti-Spyware.

--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<billurie@nospam.org> wrote in message
news:OG34ocJDGHA.312@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
> Thanks, Mike. FYI, I run SPYBOT frequently, and it almost always finds
> just the same three nuisances that I wish I could find a way to
> block. I also have Microsoft's Anti-Spyware Beta running....
>
> I have been using Norton NSW and its predecessors for as long
> as NU was available, and they are truly a royal pain, not to
> use but to install and keep working without maddening error
> messages. But they've kept me virus and worm-free for so many
> years, I hate to dump them. And getting instructions from them
> always leads to pages and pages of print-outs and in many cases
> incorrect as well as inadequate instructions. But the inertia
> of scrubbing them off and replacing them is mighty hard to
> look forward to.
>
> I'll try the rest of your advice.....and thanks again.
>
> Bill L.
>
> Mike Hall (MS-MVP) wrote:
>> Bill
>>
>> Have you run any anti-spyware?.. SpyBot, Adaware, SpywareBlaster?.. if
>> you haven't, do it now.. you might also want to run Ewido's online scan..
>>
>> http://www.ewido.net/en/ .. it is abeta scan, and there is a warning with
>> it, but I have had no problems running it on mine or any of my client
>> computers..
>>
>> Do yourself another favour and dump Norton Utilities.. regardless of
>> claims made by Symantec, NU is a scourge..
>>
>> Benchmarking will serve no useful purpose..
>>
>
>
> --
> William B. Lurie

Here's what Task Mgr reports:

Totals: Handles 9701 Threads 626 Processes 46
Commit Charge(K): Total 255936 Limit 2398164 Peak 301016

Phys Mem: Total 1015280 Available 662344 SysCache 513764

Kernel Mem: Total 54816 Paged 30452 Non-paged 24364

It looks like there's enough of everything to spare,
but how do I know? One would think that a Meg of RAM ought to
suffice, and it always did until this recent noticeable
slowdown, with no changes in anything that I'm aware of.

I would have thought that since chkdsk/r runs only during boot-up,
before any of my own applications are loaded, that it would
perforce have all the resources it needs. Correct me if I'm
wrong in that line of thinking. Of course, while it's running
chkdsk, there's nothing, but nothing, I can do except time it.

Thanks for sticking with me on this.

Gerry Cornell wrote:
> How much RAM memory? Try Ctrl+Alt+Delete to select Task Manager and
> click the Performance Tab. What is the Total, the Commit Charge and the
> Peak?
>
> You may check on pagefile (virtual memory) usage with Page File Monitor for
> XP:
> http://www.dougknox.com/
>
> If you get anything much more than 20 / 30 mb virtual memory usage you
> need to add RAM memory. The system uses virtual memory for a
> limited number of tasks rather than RAM memory.
>
> Make sure you study the readme.txt file carefully to ensure you get the
> utility to work as it should.
>
> Have you installed any "memory boosters" ?
>
> How large is your hard drive? Is it partitioned? How much free space on each
> drive / partition? How is the drive / partition formatted -FAT32 or NTFS? To
> get this information, whilst in Windows Explorer, place the cursor on each
> drive in turn, right click and select Properties.
>
> I have recently dumped Norton Anti-Virus in favour of AVG 7 ( freeware ) and
> Norton Personal Firewall for the Windows Firewall. If your system is
> struggling
> then a similar change would definitely help with your performance. I do not
> agree with Mike Hall regarding Microsoft Anti-Spyware.
>


--
William B. Lurie

William

Try PageFile Monitor. This is a better indicator but memory is
most likely not the problem. It just needs to be eliminated.

What about these questions?

How large is your hard drive? Is it partitioned? How much free space on each
drive / partition? How is the drive / partition formatted -FAT32 or NTFS? To
get this information, whilst in Windows Explorer, place the cursor on each
drive in turn, right click and select Properties.

What is your CPU speed?

Please look in the System and Application logs in Event Viewer for Warning
and Error Reports over the last 2 days use and post copies here.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Administrative Tools, and
Event Viewer. When researching the meaning of the error, information
regarding Event ID, Source and Description are important.

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default...308427&sd=tech

Part of the Description of the error will include a link, which you should
double click for further information. You can copy using copy and paste.
Often the link will, however, say there is no further information.
http://go.microsoft.com/fw.link/events.asp
(Please note the hyperlink above is for illustration purposes only)

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Double click the button and close Event
Viewer. Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body
of the message. This will paste the info from the Event Viewer Error
Report complete with links into the message. Make sure this is the first
paste after exiting from Event Viewer.


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FCA

Stourport, Worcs, England
Enquire, plan and execute.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please tell the newsgroup how any
suggested solution worked for you.

http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


<billurie@nospam.org> wrote in message news:43B46E6D.2070409@nospam.org...
> Here's what Task Mgr reports:
>
> Totals: Handles 9701 Threads 626 Processes 46
> Commit Charge(K): Total 255936 Limit 2398164 Peak 301016
>
> Phys Mem: Total 1015280 Available 662344 SysCache 513764
>
> Kernel Mem: Total 54816 Paged 30452 Non-paged 24364
>
> It looks like there's enough of everything to spare,
> but how do I know? One would think that a Meg of RAM ought to
> suffice, and it always did until this recent noticeable
> slowdown, with no changes in anything that I'm aware of.
>
> I would have thought that since chkdsk/r runs only during boot-up,
> before any of my own applications are loaded, that it would
> perforce have all the resources it needs. Correct me if I'm
> wrong in that line of thinking. Of course, while it's running
> chkdsk, there's nothing, but nothing, I can do except time it.
>
> Thanks for sticking with me on this.
>
> Gerry Cornell wrote:
>> How much RAM memory? Try Ctrl+Alt+Delete to select Task Manager and
>> click the Performance Tab. What is the Total, the Commit Charge and the
>> Peak?
>>
>> You may check on pagefile (virtual memory) usage with Page File Monitor
>> for
>> XP:
>> http://www.dougknox.com/
>>
>> If you get anything much more than 20 / 30 mb virtual memory usage you
>> need to add RAM memory. The system uses virtual memory for a
>> limited number of tasks rather than RAM memory.
>>
>> Make sure you study the readme.txt file carefully to ensure you get the
>> utility to work as it should.
>>
>> Have you installed any "memory boosters" ?
>>
>> How large is your hard drive? Is it partitioned? How much free space on
>> each
>> drive / partition? How is the drive / partition formatted -FAT32 or NTFS?
>> To
>> get this information, whilst in Windows Explorer, place the cursor on
>> each
>> drive in turn, right click and select Properties.
>>
>> I have recently dumped Norton Anti-Virus in favour of AVG 7 ( freeware )
>> and
>> Norton Personal Firewall for the Windows Firewall. If your system is
>> struggling
>> then a similar change would definitely help with your performance. I do
>> not
>> agree with Mike Hall regarding Microsoft Anti-Spyware.
>>
>
>
> --
> William B. Lurie

Gerry Cornell wrote:
> William
>
> Try PageFile Monitor. This is a better indicator but memory is
> most likely not the problem. It just needs to be eliminated.
>
> What about these questions?
>
> How large is your hard drive?

HD is 80GB, there are 6 partitions, all NTFS, but only one
Active Primary. The others are Logical, drive images taken
at various times in the past year.

Is it partitioned?
Yes
How much free space on each
> drive / partition?
Master partition, containing this OS, is 12 GB in size, with
9 GB in this OS and 3 GB to spare.
How is the drive / partition formatted -FAT32 or NTFS? To
> get this information, whilst in Windows Explorer, place the cursor on each
> drive in turn, right click and select Properties.
>
> What is your CPU speed?
CPU is about 2 GHz...Nice stable AMD Athlon.
>
> Please look in the System and Application logs in Event Viewer for Warning
> and Error Reports over the last 2 days use and post copies here.
>
> You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Administrative Tools, and
> Event Viewer. When researching the meaning of the error, information
> regarding Event ID, Source and Description are important.

I went there, Gerry, for the first time. There is an awful lot in
3 categories, a few pages, but all the 'events' are dated 2003.
That is, except a few that seem to be dated in year 2021. I can do
Copy and Paste but do you really want to see them, and which ones?
Surely not from 2 to 4 years ago, and the 2021 I don't dig at all.

What next???

WBL

>
> HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
> http://support.microsoft.com/default...308427&sd=tech
>
> Part of the Description of the error will include a link, which you should
> double click for further information. You can copy using copy and paste.
> Often the link will, however, say there is no further information.
> http://go.microsoft.com/fw.link/events.asp
> (Please note the hyperlink above is for illustration purposes only)
>
> A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
> click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
> button resembling two pages. Double click the button and close Event
> Viewer. Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body
> of the message. This will paste the info from the Event Viewer Error
> Report complete with links into the message. Make sure this is the first
> paste after exiting from Event Viewer.
>
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Gerry
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> FCA
>
> Stourport, Worcs, England
> Enquire, plan and execute.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Please tell the newsgroup how any
> suggested solution worked for you.
>
> http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
> <billurie@nospam.org> wrote in message news:43B46E6D.2070409@nospam.org...
>
>>Here's what Task Mgr reports:
>>
>>Totals: Handles 9701 Threads 626 Processes 46
>>Commit Charge(K): Total 255936 Limit 2398164 Peak 301016
>>
>>Phys Mem: Total 1015280 Available 662344 SysCache 513764
>>
>>Kernel Mem: Total 54816 Paged 30452 Non-paged 24364
>>
>>It looks like there's enough of everything to spare,
>>but how do I know? One would think that a Meg of RAM ought to
>>suffice, and it always did until this recent noticeable
>>slowdown, with no changes in anything that I'm aware of.
>>
>>I would have thought that since chkdsk/r runs only during boot-up,
>>before any of my own applications are loaded, that it would
>>perforce have all the resources it needs. Correct me if I'm
>>wrong in that line of thinking. Of course, while it's running
>>chkdsk, there's nothing, but nothing, I can do except time it.
>>
>>Thanks for sticking with me on this.
>>
>>Gerry Cornell wrote:
>>
>>>How much RAM memory? Try Ctrl+Alt+Delete to select Task Manager and
>>>click the Performance Tab. What is the Total, the Commit Charge and the
>>>Peak?
>>>
>>>You may check on pagefile (virtual memory) usage with Page File Monitor
>>>for
>>>XP:
>>>http://www.dougknox.com/
>>>
>>>If you get anything much more than 20 / 30 mb virtual memory usage you
>>>need to add RAM memory. The system uses virtual memory for a
>>>limited number of tasks rather than RAM memory.
>>>
>>>Make sure you study the readme.txt file carefully to ensure you get the
>>>utility to work as it should.
>>>
>>>Have you installed any "memory boosters" ?
>>>
>>>How large is your hard drive? Is it partitioned? How much free space on
>>>each
>>>drive / partition? How is the drive / partition formatted -FAT32 or NTFS?
>>>To
>>>get this information, whilst in Windows Explorer, place the cursor on
>>>each
>>>drive in turn, right click and select Properties.
>>>
>>>I have recently dumped Norton Anti-Virus in favour of AVG 7 ( freeware )
>>>and
>>>Norton Personal Firewall for the Windows Firewall. If your system is
>>>struggling
>>>then a similar change would definitely help with your performance. I do
>>>not
>>>agree with Mike Hall regarding Microsoft Anti-Spyware.
>>>
>>
>>
>>--
>> William B. Lurie
>
>
>


--
William B. Lurie

William

Well that's quite unexpected.

To clear an event log
1.. Open Event Viewer.
2.. In the console tree, click the log you want to clear.
3.. On the Action menu, click Clear all Events.
4.. Click Yes to save the log before clearing it.
Click No to permanently discard the current event records and start
recording new events.

Notes

a.. To open Event Viewer, click Start, click Control Panel, click
Performance and Maintenance, click Administrative Tools, and then
double-click Event Viewer.
b.. You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the
Administrators group to clear an event log.
c.. After you clear a log, only new events will appear in the log.
d.. If you select Do not overwrite events (clear log manually) in the
Properties dialog box of an active log, you must periodically clear the log
either when the log reaches a certain size or when a message notifies you
that the log is full.
e.. You cannot clear archived logs; instead, delete the archived log file.
Let's see if we can get a log with todays date.


--

Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England

Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gerry, I gather that it is your intent that I clear out all
the ancient history from my Event Viewer and then accumulate
some new Events over the next few days. I shall attempt to
do that.

I saved your attached .GIFs and shall print them out
to see what they tell me. I presume they will augment thinstrutions. It
is now 2300 here and time to break off for the night.

By the way, I juggled partition size so that I now have
6 GB of unused space in the Active partition......and
chkdsk still took an hour to go through Step 4...

Bill L.

Gerry Cornell wrote:
> William
>
> Well that's quite unexpected.
>
> To clear an event log
> 1.. Open Event Viewer.
> 2.. In the console tree, click the log you want to clear.
> 3.. On the Action menu, click Clear all Events.
> 4.. Click Yes to save the log before clearing it.
> Click No to permanently discard the current event records and start
> recording new events.
>
> Notes
>
> a.. To open Event Viewer, click Start, click Control Panel, click
> Performance and Maintenance, click Administrative Tools, and then
> double-click Event Viewer.
> b.. You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the
> Administrators group to clear an event log.
> c.. After you clear a log, only new events will appear in the log.
> d.. If you select Do not overwrite events (clear log manually) in the
> Properties dialog box of an active log, you must periodically clear the log
> either when the log reaches a certain size or when a message notifies you
> that the log is full.
> e.. You cannot clear archived logs; instead, delete the archived log file.
> Let's see if we can get a log with todays date.
>
>
>


--
William B. Lurie