way OT: thrashing swap file in W2K

  • Thread starter William Sommerwerck
  • Start date
W

William Sommerwerck

Guest
I'm looking for a likely solution from someone who's seen the same problem
and fixed it -- not theoretical speculations.

I expect to buy a new computer early next year, (presumably) eliminating the
problem. The obvious fix -- putting in a new drive and reinstalling
everything -- would easily take a week, time I don't have for an obsolescent
OS and hardware. (The thought of having to download and install 100+ OS
updates from the Microsoft site pretty much puts the kibosh on the whole
idea.)

Over the past few years (not weeks or months -- years), my W2K-based PC has
been running slower and slower. It started when the OS began appropriating
additional swap-file space, something that rarely, if ever, happened during
the first few years. Oddly, the more space it took, the slower it became.

This slowness manifested itself as "grinding to a near halt" when switching
among applications. Once the switch occurred, the computer appeared to run
normally.

In recent months, the slowdown has become what I can only call appalling.
When I move to another application -- particularly when moving among FireFox
tabs -- the drive light will come on and stay on for several /minutes/.
Again, once the move has occurred, the machine generally runs at a
reasonable speed -- for a while.

It sometimes slows noticeably when loading -- or even displaying -- e-mail.
It just took nearly a minute to download a 2K message -- but is now running
normally.

The problem doesn't appear to be caused by malware. Though that possibility
can't be ruled out, neither the Task Manager nor Process Explorer (which I
highly recommend) reveal anything "nasty".

The Performance and Processes displays don't show anything odd. CPU usage is
"normal", even when the drive light is on continuously.

The paging (swap) files are set to 128MB to 768MB on the boot drive (C:),
and to 768MB to 1280MB on drive F:, a partition that uses the drive space
left after C:, D:,and E: were partitioned to give the minimum cluster size.

In case you're wondering... I periodically empty out the trash bin, and run
C[rap]Cleaner (another highly recommended free product). Otherwise, the boot
drive would be quickly overrun.

Thoughts, anyone?

Thanks in advance.


--
"We already know the answers -- we just haven't asked the right
questions." -- Edwin Land
 
"William Sommerwanker the FUCKWIT TROLL "

I'm looking for a likely solution from someone who's seen the same problem
and fixed it -- not theoretical speculations.
Click to expand...

** Whaaaaaaaaattttt !!!!!!

ROTFLMFAO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FFS what a classic example of :

" Do as I say, NOT as I do. "
 
There's two rather critical bits of information missing here.

1) What's the PHYSICAL memory installed?

2) What's the TOTAL COMMIT after it's been thrashing like this?

I'd bet that you've got a TC of about 2 to 3 times (possibly more!) of
physical memory. Which would cause it to thrash the page file.

More RAM is the best suggestion I could make, without those two
extremely critical bits of information.

RwP
 
On 09/25/2011 09:28 AM, William Sommerwerck wrote:
I'm looking for a likely solution from someone who's seen the same problem
and fixed it -- not theoretical speculations.

I expect to buy a new computer early next year, (presumably) eliminating the
problem. The obvious fix -- putting in a new drive and reinstalling
everything -- would easily take a week, time I don't have for an obsolescent
OS and hardware. (The thought of having to download and install 100+ OS
updates from the Microsoft site pretty much puts the kibosh on the whole
idea.)

Over the past few years (not weeks or months -- years), my W2K-based PC has
been running slower and slower. It started when the OS began appropriating
additional swap-file space, something that rarely, if ever, happened during
the first few years. Oddly, the more space it took, the slower it became.

This slowness manifested itself as "grinding to a near halt" when switching
among applications. Once the switch occurred, the computer appeared to run
normally.

In recent months, the slowdown has become what I can only call appalling.
When I move to another application -- particularly when moving among FireFox
tabs -- the drive light will come on and stay on for several /minutes/.
Again, once the move has occurred, the machine generally runs at a
reasonable speed -- for a while.

It sometimes slows noticeably when loading -- or even displaying -- e-mail.
It just took nearly a minute to download a 2K message -- but is now running
normally.

The problem doesn't appear to be caused by malware. Though that possibility
can't be ruled out, neither the Task Manager nor Process Explorer (which I
highly recommend) reveal anything "nasty".

The Performance and Processes displays don't show anything odd. CPU usage is
"normal", even when the drive light is on continuously.

The paging (swap) files are set to 128MB to 768MB on the boot drive (C:),
and to 768MB to 1280MB on drive F:, a partition that uses the drive space
left after C:, D:,and E: were partitioned to give the minimum cluster size.

In case you're wondering... I periodically empty out the trash bin, and run
C[rap]Cleaner (another highly recommended free product). Otherwise, the boot
drive would be quickly overrun.

Thoughts, anyone?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Run defrag lately? Old PCs tend to get low on free space, which causes
fragmentation pretty rapidly.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
 
William Sommerwerck wrote:
I'm looking for a likely solution from someone who's seen the same problem
and fixed it -- not theoretical speculations.

I expect to buy a new computer early next year, (presumably) eliminating the
problem. The obvious fix -- putting in a new drive and reinstalling
everything -- would easily take a week, time I don't have for an obsolescent
OS and hardware. (The thought of having to download and install 100+ OS
updates from the Microsoft site pretty much puts the kibosh on the whole
idea.)

Over the past few years (not weeks or months -- years), my W2K-based PC has
been running slower and slower. It started when the OS began appropriating
additional swap-file space, something that rarely, if ever, happened during
the first few years. Oddly, the more space it took, the slower it became.

This slowness manifested itself as "grinding to a near halt" when switching
among applications. Once the switch occurred, the computer appeared to run
normally.

In recent months, the slowdown has become what I can only call appalling.
When I move to another application -- particularly when moving among FireFox
tabs -- the drive light will come on and stay on for several /minutes/.
Again, once the move has occurred, the machine generally runs at a
reasonable speed -- for a while.

It sometimes slows noticeably when loading -- or even displaying -- e-mail.
It just took nearly a minute to download a 2K message -- but is now running
normally.

The problem doesn't appear to be caused by malware. Though that possibility
can't be ruled out, neither the Task Manager nor Process Explorer (which I
highly recommend) reveal anything "nasty".

The Performance and Processes displays don't show anything odd. CPU usage is
"normal", even when the drive light is on continuously.

The paging (swap) files are set to 128MB to 768MB on the boot drive (C:),
and to 768MB to 1280MB on drive F:, a partition that uses the drive space
left after C:, D:,and E: were partitioned to give the minimum cluster size.

In case you're wondering... I periodically empty out the trash bin, and run
C[rap]Cleaner (another highly recommended free product). Otherwise, the boot
drive would be quickly overrun.

Thoughts, anyone?
Click to expand...

How much RAM do you have? The computer needs a swap file when it
runs out of physical memory. Go to www.belarc.com/free_download.html
and download Belarc Advisor. It will tell you how much and what type of
RAM you have. The updates you've installed over the years, plus all the
other programs that load at startup use a lot of RAM. That slows down a
computer.

I use Spybot S&D and AdAware to look for spyware. Spybot is from
Safer Networking and Adaware is from Lavasoft.


www.safer-networking.org/en/download/

www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php


Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.
 
"Phil Hobbs" <pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net>
wrote in message news:4E7F69A2.10608@electrooptical.net...

Run defrag lately? Old PCs tend to get low on free space, which causes
fragmentation pretty rapidly.
Click to expand...
Last time was about three months back. About 10% of the boot drive is free.
 
"Ralph Wade Phillips" <news@philent.biz> wrote in message
\news:j5nino$804$1@dont-email.me...

There's two rather critical bits of information missing here.
1) What's the PHYSICAL memory installed?
2) What's the TOTAL COMMIT after it's been thrashing like this?

I'd bet that you've got a TC of about 2 to 3 times (possibly more!) of
physical memory. Which would cause it to thrash the page file.

More RAM is the best suggestion I could make, without those two
extremely critical bits of information.
Click to expand...
Good questions.

I have a half-gig of RAM. The total swap file space available (as opposed to
being in use) is 1.5 gigs.

The confusing issue is that performance has been gradually deteriorating,
despite the fact that the configuration hasn't changed for years.

I've never seen a clear explanation of how one selects an optimum swap-file
size. I might very well remove the F: swap file, restart the machine, and
see what happens.

Thanks.
 
"Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terrell@earthlink.net>
wrote in message news:zJ-dnVHiUZra9-LTnZ2dnUVZ_gGdnZ2d@earthlink.com...

How much RAM do you have? The computer needs a swap file when it
runs out of physical memory. Go to www.belarc.com/free_download.html
and download Belarc Advisor. It will tell you how much and what type of
RAM you have. The updates you've installed over the years, plus all the
other programs that load at startup use a lot of RAM. That slows down a
computer.
Click to expand...
Half a gig. I'm reluctant to add RAM, as I will be getting a new computer (I
hope) sometime in January.

To clarify a point... The swap file is often used /before/ the computer runs
out of RAM. Contrary to the claims being made for "recent" Windows editions,
this has been true at least since W2K and possibly earlier. Basically,
programs load DLLs and other extensions into the swap file when the program
initially runs.


I use Spybot S&D and AdAware to look for spyware. Spybot is from
Safer Networking and Adaware is from Lavasoft.
Click to expand...
I have both, and agree with your recommendation. Haven't run them in a
while. Perhaps it's time.
 
On 25/09/2011 14:28, William Sommerwerck wrote:
I'm looking for a likely solution from someone who's seen the same problem
and fixed it -- not theoretical speculations.

I expect to buy a new computer early next year, (presumably) eliminating the
problem. The obvious fix -- putting in a new drive and reinstalling
everything -- would easily take a week, time I don't have for an obsolescent
OS and hardware. (The thought of having to download and install 100+ OS
updates from the Microsoft site pretty much puts the kibosh on the whole
idea.)

Over the past few years (not weeks or months -- years), my W2K-based PC has
been running slower and slower. It started when the OS began appropriating
additional swap-file space, something that rarely, if ever, happened during
the first few years. Oddly, the more space it took, the slower it became.

This slowness manifested itself as "grinding to a near halt" when switching
among applications. Once the switch occurred, the computer appeared to run
normally.

In recent months, the slowdown has become what I can only call appalling.
When I move to another application -- particularly when moving among FireFox
tabs -- the drive light will come on and stay on for several /minutes/.
Again, once the move has occurred, the machine generally runs at a
reasonable speed -- for a while.

It sometimes slows noticeably when loading -- or even displaying -- e-mail.
It just took nearly a minute to download a 2K message -- but is now running
normally.

The problem doesn't appear to be caused by malware. Though that possibility
can't be ruled out, neither the Task Manager nor Process Explorer (which I
highly recommend) reveal anything "nasty".

The Performance and Processes displays don't show anything odd. CPU usage is
"normal", even when the drive light is on continuously.

The paging (swap) files are set to 128MB to 768MB on the boot drive (C:),
and to 768MB to 1280MB on drive F:, a partition that uses the drive space
left after C:, D:,and E: were partitioned to give the minimum cluster size.

In case you're wondering... I periodically empty out the trash bin, and run
C[rap]Cleaner (another highly recommended free product). Otherwise, the boot
drive would be quickly overrun.

Thoughts, anyone?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Defragment the disk.
Many free defraggers for W2K here:
http://lists.thedatalist.com/pages/Defragging_Tools.htm

--

Jeff
 
On Sep 25, 8:28 am, "William Sommerwerck" <grizzledgee...@comcast.net>
wrote:
I'm looking for a likely solution from someone who's seen the same problem
and fixed it -- not theoretical speculations.

I expect to buy a new computer early next year, (presumably) eliminating the
problem. The obvious fix -- putting in a new drive and reinstalling
everything -- would easily take a week, time I don't have for an obsolescent
OS and hardware. (The thought of having to download and install 100+ OS
updates from the Microsoft site pretty much puts the kibosh on the whole
idea.)

Over the past few years (not weeks or months -- years), my W2K-based PC has
been running slower and slower. It started when the OS began appropriating
additional swap-file space, something that rarely, if ever, happened during
the first few years. Oddly, the more space it took, the slower it became.

This slowness manifested itself as "grinding to a near halt" when switching
among applications. Once the switch occurred, the computer appeared to run
normally.

In recent months, the slowdown has become what I can only call appalling.
When I move to another application -- particularly when moving among FireFox
tabs -- the drive light will come on and stay on for several /minutes/.
Again, once the move has occurred, the machine generally runs at a
reasonable speed -- for a while.

It sometimes slows noticeably when loading -- or even displaying -- e-mail.
It just took nearly a minute to download a 2K message -- but is now running
normally.

The problem doesn't appear to be caused by malware. Though that possibility
can't be ruled out, neither the Task Manager nor Process Explorer (which I
highly recommend) reveal anything "nasty".

The Performance and Processes displays don't show anything odd. CPU usage is
"normal", even when the drive light is on continuously.

The paging (swap) files are set to 128MB to 768MB on the boot drive (C:),
and to 768MB to 1280MB on drive F:, a partition that uses the drive space
left after C:, D:,and E: were partitioned to give the minimum cluster size.

In case you're wondering... I periodically empty out the trash bin, and run
C[rap]Cleaner (another highly recommended free product). Otherwise, the boot
drive would be quickly overrun.

Thoughts, anyone?

Thanks in advance.

--
"We already know the answers -- we just haven't asked the right
questions." -- Edwin Land
Click to expand...
Could there be bad sectors on the disk so it is hunting to find good
ones????
 
On 09/25/2011 01:54 PM, William Sommerwerck wrote:
"Phil Hobbs"<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net
wrote in message news:4E7F69A2.10608@electrooptical.net...

Run defrag lately? Old PCs tend to get low on free space, which causes
fragmentation pretty rapidly.

Last time was about three months back. About 10% of the boot drive is free.
Click to expand...
That's very likely the problem. Going below about 20% free invites
problems. The defrag program won't even run if the free space is below
about 15%.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
 
On 09/25/2011 01:54 PM, William Sommerwerck wrote:
"Phil Hobbs"<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net
wrote in message news:4E7F69A2.10608@electrooptical.net...

Run defrag lately? Old PCs tend to get low on free space, which causes
fragmentation pretty rapidly.

Last time was about three months back. About 10% of the boot drive is free.
Click to expand...
That's very likely the problem. Going below about 20% free invites
problems. The defrag program won't even run if the free space is below
about 15%.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
 
William Sommerwerck wrote:
"Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terrell@earthlink.net
wrote in message news:zJ-dnVHiUZra9-LTnZ2dnUVZ_gGdnZ2d@earthlink.com...

How much RAM do you have? The computer needs a swap file when it
runs out of physical memory. Go to www.belarc.com/free_download.html
and download Belarc Advisor. It will tell you how much and what type of
RAM you have. The updates you've installed over the years, plus all the
other programs that load at startup use a lot of RAM. That slows down a
computer.

Half a gig. I'm reluctant to add RAM, as I will be getting a new computer (I
hope) sometime in January.
Click to expand...

Someone might have some used RAM that will help. Likely DDR or
older. There isn't much call for older RAM so a lot gets thrown into
the recycle bucket.


To clarify a point... The swap file is often used /before/ the computer runs
out of RAM. Contrary to the claims being made for "recent" Windows editions,
this has been true at least since W2K and possibly earlier. Basically,
programs load DLLs and other extensions into the swap file when the program
initially runs.
Click to expand...

If the file it needs won't fit in avalible RAM it defaults to the
swap file. A half gig isn't much when you consider that some of your
RAM is used by your video card, if you don't have a high end card with
it's own RAM.


I use Spybot S&D and AdAware to look for spyware. Spybot is from
Safer Networking and Adaware is from Lavasoft.

I have both, and agree with your recommendation. Haven't run them in a
while. Perhaps it's time.
Click to expand...

I run them every week. I defrag about every other week.


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.
 
On Sun, 25 Sep 2011 06:28:26 -0700, William Sommerwerck wrote:
I'm looking for a likely solution from someone who's seen the same problem
and fixed it -- not theoretical speculations.

Over the past few years (not weeks or months -- years), my W2K-based PC has
been running slower and slower. It started when the OS began appropriating
additional swap-file space, something that rarely, if ever, happened during
the first few years. Oddly, the more space it took, the slower it became.
Click to expand...
By now it is probably 0wn3d by several pieces of malware.
If that's the case, _those programs_ are running the computer
and you're just a tolerated guest user.
 
En el artículo <j5nq3l$2or$1@dont-email.me>, William Sommerwerck
<grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> escribió:

I have a half-gig of RAM.
Click to expand...
Would have been OK at first, but as service packs have been added the
memory requirement has increased. You really should give Win2kSP4 1 gig
of RAM for best performance. 512Mb is enough to load it, but once you
start running apps...

Stick some more memory in. It's dirt cheap now.

The confusing issue is that performance has been gradually deteriorating,
despite the fact that the configuration hasn't changed for years.
Click to expand...
a) you've added service packs and Windows updates, yes?

b) the registry will have grown in size over time - how big is it now?

c) have you ever defragged?

d) sizing partitions to achieve the minimum cluster size is unwise - it
makes the filesystem allocation tables very large, which gobbles up
memory. The problem will worsen the more files are stored on the disk.

e) are you using FAT32? if so, why? command prompt and "convert c:
/fs:ntfs"

I've never seen a clear explanation of how one selects an optimum swap-file
size.
Click to expand...
Don't. Click "System-managed page file" and be happy.

You mentioned Piriform's Crap Cleaner. I can also highly commend their
Defraggler software - give that a few runs; it'll need it on a badly
fragmented disk.

--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")
 
On Sun, 25 Sep 2011 13:51:47 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
<mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

William Sommerwerck wrote:

I'm looking for a likely solution from someone who's seen the same problem
and fixed it -- not theoretical speculations.

I expect to buy a new computer early next year, (presumably) eliminating the
problem. The obvious fix -- putting in a new drive and reinstalling
everything -- would easily take a week, time I don't have for an obsolescent
OS and hardware. (The thought of having to download and install 100+ OS
updates from the Microsoft site pretty much puts the kibosh on the whole
idea.)

Over the past few years (not weeks or months -- years), my W2K-based PC has
been running slower and slower. It started when the OS began appropriating
additional swap-file space, something that rarely, if ever, happened during
the first few years. Oddly, the more space it took, the slower it became.

This slowness manifested itself as "grinding to a near halt" when switching
among applications. Once the switch occurred, the computer appeared to run
normally.

In recent months, the slowdown has become what I can only call appalling.
When I move to another application -- particularly when moving among FireFox
tabs -- the drive light will come on and stay on for several /minutes/.
Again, once the move has occurred, the machine generally runs at a
reasonable speed -- for a while.

It sometimes slows noticeably when loading -- or even displaying -- e-mail.
It just took nearly a minute to download a 2K message -- but is now running
normally.

The problem doesn't appear to be caused by malware. Though that possibility
can't be ruled out, neither the Task Manager nor Process Explorer (which I
highly recommend) reveal anything "nasty".

The Performance and Processes displays don't show anything odd. CPU usage is
"normal", even when the drive light is on continuously.

The paging (swap) files are set to 128MB to 768MB on the boot drive (C:),
and to 768MB to 1280MB on drive F:, a partition that uses the drive space
left after C:, D:,and E: were partitioned to give the minimum cluster size.

In case you're wondering... I periodically empty out the trash bin, and run
C[rap]Cleaner (another highly recommended free product). Otherwise, the boot
drive would be quickly overrun.

Thoughts, anyone?


How much RAM do you have? The computer needs a swap file when it
runs out of physical memory. Go to www.belarc.com/free_download.html
and download Belarc Advisor. It will tell you how much and what type of
RAM you have. The updates you've installed over the years, plus all the
other programs that load at startup use a lot of RAM. That slows down a
computer.

I use Spybot S&D and AdAware to look for spyware. Spybot is from
Safer Networking and Adaware is from Lavasoft.


www.safer-networking.org/en/download/

www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php


Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Those are good tools. More recently, MBAM (Mega b? anti malware) and SAS
(super anti-spyware) have hade even more positive ratings. More RAM and
more disk are highly recommended.

?-)
 
I just got home, and found that the hard drive was running in circles due to
two hung processes.

At the moment, the system is behaving itself, but I have no idea why. It's
possible some "invisible" piece of malware is causing the problem, but it
doesn't seem likely.

I'll defrag the drives later today -- not so much because I think it's
needed, but because I need to back up everything, and degragging is a good
thing to do before backing up. (It's been several months since I last
defragged.)

I will also experiment with the swap-file settings. If I find something
Really Interesting, I'll report back.

It's time to let this drop. Thanks to everyone who contributed. .
 
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