Vista 64 Speed And Defrag Issues

I've got an HP Pavilion running Vista 64 SP2, Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, 3 GB ram, FireFox 3.6 (pipelining tweaks) and a crappy 2MB DSL connection.

Lately the machine has gotten dreadfully slow, esp loading web pages. The only notable event to mention is that I dowloaded and installed BitTorrent recently, but haven't used it yet.

I generally maintain good web habits, run MSE, SuperAntiSpyware, etc. on a regular basis, with no malware found. I've also done about 75% of the Vista tweaks in the sticky, but the rest were "over my head" in terms of my skill and comfort level.

So my wife asks me how often I defrag. Being the computer 'tard I am, I thought Vista ran a scheduled defrag weekly. It even states "last run on such and such date". I shut my laptop down each night, so how does this work?

I tried to manually run the defrag app, came back 10 hrs later and it was either still working, or "locked up". Looked as if it never took off??

Any help appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

Did you run a disk check before you defraged?

EDIT : run free advanced system care on it and report back

http://download.cnet.com/Advanced-S...07614.html?part=dl-6271865&subj=dl&tag=button

 

I would download a trial of PerfectDisk 10 and run an online Smart defrag and an offline defrag, then one last online Smart defrag to really sort out the files properly.

This should give you an immense boost in how responsive the computer will feel.

 

I have Vista 64-bit SP2, with only 2 gb of RAM. The secret is, you don't need any tweaks. Not for Firefox 3.6, and not for Vista either. It wouldn't surprise me at all if some of your tweaks were messing stuff up.

And you don't need any 3rd-party defrag programs either. (Although I do like to check the fragmentation percentage occasionally. To do this, run a command prompt as admin, then run "defrag c: -a -v". This just analyzes, not defrags... takes 3 or 4 minutes on my system and it tells you how fragmented (or not) your disk is.)

But there are other things to check before messing with defrag. Check your memory and CPU usage when your web browser is running... run task manager and look at the Performance and Processes tabs. See how much CPU and memory are being used... and what's eating them up.

You may also want to check the disk for errors. Right-click the drive > Properties > Tools tab > Error checking: Check now...

Also I suggest leaving your computer on and idle for a few hours at a time at least once a week... that way background tasks (AV scan, defrag, etc.) have time to run.

 

Thanks for the replies.

Before I got home, my wife took it upon herself to install something called "Defraggler" that she uses, and said it completed the task.

I'll try and run a disk check and see why the internal defrag app refuses to run--just sits in lockup.

I'll see if I can find the task manager and eval things while pages are loading. Perhaps I'm expecting too much from the Vista/slow DSL connection combo??

 

Defraging just doesn't produce the kind of speed boost it use too.

 

That's happened to me before. Vista's defrag gets the disk defragged fine, but it can take forever. It seems designed to be more of a background task, to run on occasion, and "finishing" isn't a priority, as long as it doesn't get in the way of anything and leaves your disk less fragmented than it found it. Try it again sometime; it'll probably finish. But... I doubt your problems are defrag-related anyways.

Press ctrl-shift-Esc to bring up task manager.
Vista is not the problem... I'm using it now w/ less mem than you have.
Test your real-world DSL speed though: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=dsl+speed+test&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=435311d5ec9ae78f

Also FYI, some browsers (Chrome, Opera) are faster than Firefox. Still, I wouldn't call Firefox 3.6 slow.

Also, Vista performance does depend somewhat on disk speed... so when you have a chance download and run HD Tune (Googel it) and see how fast your drive is.

 

Disk check ran OK.

Acc to task mgr, when opening a web page I got up to 29% CPU usage and 45% physical memory used.

Acc to one of the speed checks, my line speed down was 1860 kbps, and 819 up.

 

Does this high CPU behavior show the same when opening IE?

Your speeds seem good enough - it is something else, maybe how you've configured FF? Also, what if you reboot, leave the computer on for an hour or so (don't let it go to sleep) will it still have high CPU usage?

Oh, and try simply uninstalling BitTorrent to eliminate that variable from your setup.

If IE shows similar symptoms, go to Tools, Internet Options, Advanced and click Reset at the bottom. Does this fix it?

Also, see what Tools, Internet Options, Programs, Manage Add ons shows - disable them all to see if CPU usage returns to normal. If it does, enable them one by one until the issue shows itself again and decide if you really need that add on.

Do the same in FF - but I don't know how to guide you with that browser.

 

That sounds pretty normal. I'm guessing that's total usage (Performance tab) and not just Firefox, right?

What is total CPU usage (typical range, not max spike) when Firefox is running but sitting idle, i.e. only one window which is on www.google.com and you're not opening a web page or doing anything?

 

If I'm answering your ques correctly, the CPU Usage is constantly jumping from 5% to 77% when idle! The HD light is constantly flickering, even when sitting idle with one browser tab open. Memory usage is usually around 1.44 GB.

I see only ONE application running (FireFox) but under services and processes there are TONS of things running. I of course have no clue what any of them are, just lots of .exe's. After the laptop has been on a few minutes, the CPU usage seems to level out at about 14% without the huge 77% spikes.

I may look around here and see what the latest appropriate tweaks to FireFox are, perhaps there's issues there as well?

 

sounds a typical new install. This is why I hate doing clean installs.

 

Your memory usage I think is normal for a 3gb system.

That's normal.

Oh yeah, don't check this right after booting up... it does all sorts of stuff for a while. But, after that... 14% sounds a bit high for idling. For comparison, mine's mostly in the 1%-5% range with occasional spikes to 25% or so.

In Task Manager, go to the Processes tab, and click the CPU column header to sort by CPU. Then click it again to reverse the order so the highest-cpu processes are on top. This'll help you see which processes are using CPU. You'll see that task manager itself eats a few percent... see what else you see too.

 

Oh yeah, maybe you have an add-on that's slowing down Firefox?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=455832

Also... have you tried any other browsers?