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    Insane harddrive thrashing on startup?!

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by sinnasmurfen, Sep 28, 2008.

  1. sinnasmurfen

    sinnasmurfen Notebook Guru

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    Every time I start my computer (Vista Home) I get some pretty hefty harddrive thrashing: that wee blue HD light goes crazy, and my computer is real slow for at least three mins. Its ok for running mozilla or some such, but forget about running a game or something right after startup. I like my computers to be up and running fast so I'm not a happy bunny.

    I've followed the tweakguide above and some other stuff- apart from being dang slow at startup my computer is savvy as they come. I tried to find which nasty little windows process that causes my slow startup, and hey presto: the Vista task manager only shows a dummy view with open programs, no tabs for viewing processes and memory usage for each! Where can I see which processes are running and how much memory they use?

    Man I'm thinking I should've stayed with XP. :D

    Any help would be hot fellas, cheers!


    Sys: Vista 32bit Home, dual core 2Ghz, 2gig RAM, Seagate 160GB HD 7200rpm (yep its a lappytop!)
     
    sinnasmurfen, Sep 28, 2008
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  2. Bog

    Bog Losing it...

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    Vista is not only slower at startup than XP was, it also tends to access the HD more frequently for A) indexing services and B) SuperFetch, a service that is part of Vista's much-improved memory management scheme. Basically SuperFetch caches unused RAM with program data and DLLs that the user is likely to use. This is meant to improve performance over time. What you're experiencing is quite normal and isn't really a problem.
     
    Bog, Sep 28, 2008
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  3. swarmer

    swarmer beep beep

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    You can turn off Superfetch if you don't like it. It does speed up program loads a little, but it also causes a lot of disk access at other times.
    You can turn it off temporarily in Task Manager, Services tab...
    or more permanently by running "services.msc" and disabling it and rebooting.
     
    swarmer, Sep 28, 2008
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  4. sinnasmurfen

    sinnasmurfen Notebook Guru

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    Thanks for the replies folks. Guess I'll just get used to it.

    How come my task manager is so basic? I'd really like to see memory usage for each process.
     
    sinnasmurfen, Sep 29, 2008
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  5. Pitabred

    Pitabred Linux geek con rat flail!

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    Have you defragged recently? I've had boot times speed up considerably after doing so, keeps the system from thrashing like you describe.
     
    Pitabred, Sep 29, 2008
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  6. swarmer

    swarmer beep beep

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    It should appear as a column in the Processes tab... if not, use View > Select columns... > Memory - Private working set
     
    swarmer, Sep 29, 2008
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