Sarasota PC Monitor

Practicing the Black Art (12/02)

Why Is My System Soooo Sloooow?

by Vinny La Bash, vlabash@comcast.com
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.

Perhaps you can remember a time when your computer booted up like lightning. Windows snapped to attention whenever you clicked on anything. Booting your machine, running programs, and loading files took seconds, not minutes. Your hard drive was quiet, quick, and didn’t seem to spend time spinning aimlessly. No, it isn’t your imagination. That fully loaded power-house screamer of a PC you bought six months ago really is slower than it used to be.

System slowdowns are a natural part of PC ownership.

They have many causes. Here are a few:

We could list much more because almost any addition to your PC, software, hardware, or seemingly innocent newly created files, can cause or aggravate system slowdowns. We’ll review the most common areas where system slowdown afflictions can fester, and the easiest ways to rejuvenate your once lively machine. Unless otherwise stated, all of these remedies apply to both Windows Me and Windows XP.

Disk cleanup

Hard Drive Clutter: Because it involves moving parts, your hard drive is one of the slowest components on your PC. As new programs and files accumulate, the drive must work harder and longer to find and load them. Your best defense is to clean and defragment that hard drive on a regular basis. This involves several steps.

Use Windows’ Own Disk Cleanup Program. In the Programs or All Programs menu, go to Accessories, System Tools, and Disk Cleanup. Designate which drive you want analyzed,

 then click OK. The utility will itemize all of the temporary Internet and system files, items in the Recycle Bin, anything built up over time, and the amount of space they waste. If you are curious about what you are removing, reassure yourself by highlighting any item. This shows a more detailed description of each file type. Generally it is safe to check all of the boxes in this menu and then click OK to have Windows clean them out.

Manually Clean out Temporary Files. For reasons known only to Microsoft, the Disk Cleanup utility doesn’t clean out the temporary files in the WINDOWS\TEMP subfolder. Go to the TEMP folder and press CTRLA to highlight all of the files and subfolders. At the Edit menu or by rightclicking the highlighted files, press the SHIFT key while you press the DELETE key. This ensures that the files will be deleted, not simply moved to the Recycle Bin.

Manual cleanup

Note: Windows will not let you delete any temporary files it is currently using during your GUI session. To completely clear out the TEMP folder you need to reboot your machine to a command line, navigate your way to the C:\Windows\Temp folder, and delete the files. Some of them will reappear the next time you load the Desktop, but you won’t have any more files than Windows needs to operate. Literally hundreds of megabytes of temporary files can build up on your system, slowing down the hard drive.

 Use Windows’ Disk Cleanup utility to keep the decks clean.

Uninstall dopey programs

You probably have downloads and programs on your PC that you never or rarely use. Their effects on your system range from useless to deadly. From the Start menu go to Settings, then Control Panel, and call up the Add/Remove Programs utility. Highlight and uninstall only those programs you can identify and know you don’t need. In Windows XP you can access the Control Panel directly from an icon on your Start menu.

Defragment your harddrive

You can’t do anything to prevent fragmentation. It occurs naturally as you use your PC, and it can be the most common cause of system sluggishness. Once you have eliminated all unused and temporary files from your system, call up the Windows Disk Defragmenter. Bring it up from the System Tools Menu. The next window will ask you to designate which drive to defragment.

Click Analyze to bring up the Analysis Report. Notice that you have an option for retaining the report, printing it or saving it for future reference. This is useful for System Administrators collecting data for internal enterprise reports. At this point you can choose to defragment the hard drive or close the program. When you defragment, one of the major benefits is that the process will relocate frequently used programs and system files onto the fastest areas of your hard drive surface, which can noticeably speed up most Windows operations. Click the Defragment button on this dialog box to start the process. This can take hours, so go walk the dog, have a nice lunch or do something interesting for the rest of the afternoon.

Manage Memory:

The second most common reason for slowdown in Windows performance is caused by cluttered system memory. As less system memory is available to Windows, the OS (operating system) must start swapping programs in and out of virtual memory. Virtual memory is a portion of your hard drive that the operating system treats as if it were memory.

The problem with using virtual memory is that since it is in reality a portion of your hard drive, it is intrinsically several thousand times slower than real physical memory. The fastest hard drive speeds are measured in milliseconds, while even the slowest physical memory speeds are measured in nanoseconds.

Culprits:

The biggest sources of memory theft are unnecessary utilities, system monitors, and programs that many hardware or software add ons load whenever Windows starts. Some of these reveal themselves as icons on your taskbar. Others hide themselves and you have to root them out.

System Configuration Utility: From the Start menu, select Run. Type msconfig and then press Enter to load the System Configuration Utility. Select the Startup tab. All of the checked items in this window are programs that Windows loads into memory at startup. Removing the checkmark from any item will prevent it from loading next time you boot, but you need to be cautious about what you disable. Programs like Pointer, Scan Registry, System Tray, and Power Profile may be critical to maintaining basic monitoring and safety procedures. Uncheck only those programs that you can identify as unnecessary. The Command column on this screen tells you where the program is located on your hard drive, a nice feature.

Focus on programs that your audio or video card may be loading from their program subdirectories. Media players, game controllers, and instant messaging clients are notorious for inviting themselves into your taskbar. Microsoft Office, RealNetworks’ RealOne media player, and America Online, among others, all place quick startup routines into the Taskbar, yet most users don’t need them.

Finish clearing out checkmarks in the System Configuration Utility, click OK, and you’ll be prompted to reboot your system. When you reboot, a popup window will ask you to confirm that you have made changes manually to your startup routines, and it offers a checkbox that will prevent the confirmation message from appearing again. By eliminating unnecessary startup items, you’ll help Windows boot faster and have

 more room to handle multiple programs without resorting to drastic measures.

Crazy Drivers: If your system seems to slow down after you install new system hardware, such as audio, video or network adapters, you may be suffering from driver overload. The drivers for the old hardware may still be loading into Windows. Worse, they may be conflicting with the newer drivers. Before upgrading to new audio or video cards, always fully uninstall previous drivers. Replace them with one of Microsoft’s default VGA or SVGA video drivers before installing a new card or new drivers for the same graphics card. You still may be able to do this even if you have already installed the new addon.

  1. Go to Start, Control Panel, and Display.
  2. Click the Settings tab and then the Advanced button.
  3. Locate and click the Adapter tab. You should see the name of your current video card at the top.
  4. Click the Properties button and then the Driver tab.
  5. Select the Uninstall button.
  6. In the Confirm Removal dialog box, click OK.

After the Uninstall, reboot Windows at its lowest resolution and color depth. From here you can either shut down and replace the old video card or load new drivers.

Too Old to Drive: Outdated drivers can play havoc with your system by conflicting with newer hardware and software. Gamers need to be especially vigilant since current gaming software prefers to run under the most recent Windows DirectX drivers. DirectX is the software that controls 3D graphics, sound, and controllers in audio-visual applications which include most games. If you don’t know what version of DirectX is installed on your system, you can download the latest version from <microsoft.com/directx>. The current version of DirectX is 8.1. The upgrade will require a reboot of your system. If some graphics modes give trouble or take too long to load, try uninstalling and reinstalling your video card drivers or getting the latest version from the manufacturer’s Web site.

Owners of AMD processorbased systems that use the VIA chipset must keep their drivers current. VIA regularly updates a suite it calls 4in1 drivers, which helps video cards and disk drives communicate more efficiently with various versions of Windows. Windows XP has VIA support built in, but to make sure you have the latest 4in1 drivers, go to <www.viahardware.com>. If your video seems sluggish on a VIA system, especially after a new installation of DirectX or new video card drivers, try uninstalling and reinstalling the AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) driver from the VIA 4in1 suite.

Enable DMA:

DMA assists the processing of hard drive information across the PC’s data bus and considerably reduces the load on your processor. Driver updates and some mediaplaying software can turn the setting off and degrade performance. Setting DMA in WinXP requires rightclicking on Primary and Secondary IDE Channels under IDE/ATAPI Controllers in the Device Manager. Under the Advanced Settings tab and Transfer Mode menu item, select DMA If Available showing in both the Device 0 and Device 1 boxes.

Disable Unused Drivers:

A new hardware upgrade may have added more devices to your system than you need or want. Some newer audio and multimedia video cards have extra IEEE 1394 (FireWire) ports for connecting to digital video devices or to a network. Audio cards often add a driver into memory and reserve resources for DOS game sound support. These unnecessary background operations can slow down your system or introduce resource conflicts. You can disable this hardware in Device Manager. Right click the device and call up its Properties list. In the Device Usage area, select the Disable option from the drop-down list. Windows will ignore the device at startup, freeing up more resources.

Industrial Strength Windows Cleaning:

A drastic but very effective last resort to cleaning your system is to start over. Reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling Windows is sometimes the only sure way to restore a PC to its original speed. For those who use their system heavily and do a lot of experimentation, plan on doing this about twice yearly. A fresh install is always faster and less likely to crash. A format and a reinstall may seem like overkill, but the fact of the matter is that performance degradation is an inevitable blight for any PC, and overcoming it sometimes requires a clean slate.

Return to Vinny La Bash's Index

Return to Columnist's Index

Copyright 2002. This article is from the December 2002 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/

The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,300+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.

See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.