Vista Business- slow is normal?

I'm unfamiliar with Vista and was just curious about some slowness that seems odd. When I click on applications, sometimes it takes several seconds- like 10 or 15- to open. The circle thing just spins and spins. Is this normal?

The apps in question are things like Firefox, Thunderbird, Word, etc. When the programs finally open, they run fine. This happens even when no other apps are open.

I'm running Vista Business on a Lenovo R61 with T7100 Core2Duo and 3 gb of ram. I removed bloatware, defragmented and rebooted. There's almost nothing on the hard drive-- this is used for work, I basically access email and an online payroll/accounting program, that's it.

I realize that it's not the end of the world to wait 10 seconds, but I just thought I'd ask. Thanks for any on this.

 

No, it's not normal if it's from idle and it hasn't just started up.

How long has Vista been installed and do you know if there are other heavy processes running?

 

Hi JwY,


Thanks for the reply. I've had the laptop for about two weeks and as far as I know the laptop came installed with Vista.

No other heavy processes running that I'm aware of. I usually open one app at a time and I'd think that the processor and ram would be able to handle it

 

reformat and reinstall Windows... Even if you remove all bloatware from add/remove-programs, you still can't get rid of all crap that comes preinstalled. Always a good idea to install fresh off of Vista disk. Also, make sure all drivers are up-to-date.

Other than that, I have no further suggestions. Vista shouldn't be THAT slow... esp. with your hardware.

 

No need to go the "obvious way" immediately.
Some people say a clean instal isn't necessarily as optimized as the factory instal.

Anyway, you can do the following:
Clear out Temp file (using for example CCleaner)
Then use the windows utility to get rid of shadow copies and restore points
then defragment the drive
then defragment the Bootfiles - search for this here in the forum - Scuderia Conch.... did an extensive post on that.

Then, use the laptop reguarly, and applications will speed up.

 

What he said...allow the laptop to settle in. Leave it on overnight for a couple of Tuesdays when the default defrag runs.

I do find some of the thinkpad software slows things down, but after a couple of weeks of normal use Vista will optimize itself to some degree

 

Thanks everyone for all the great suggestions. I'll play around with it tonight and see if I can smooth things out. I really appreciate the help-- cheers!

 

It really does seem like something is bogging the system down.

Could you check the CPU usage and RAM usage at idle?

 

give us a screenshot of your taskmanager's precesses tab.

 

Hi again,

Well I cleared the temp file but could not find the Windows utility to remove shadow copies and restore points.

According to TaskManager (sorry, I don't even know how to do a screenshot, let alone embed the screenshot ), at idle the CPU usage was 4% and the Physical Memory was 47%. Under the Physical Memory (MB) it stated Total = 3061, Cached = 1910, and Free = 21. Processes = 87.

Does the memory usage seem high? 47% with no apps running?

Thanks for staying with this thread. And on a positive side note, I'm really loving the matte screen and the keyboard on this R61... ah, the simple things in life!

 

Screenshot?
Ctrl + Print
Ctrl + Alt + Print for active application only

Yout laptop:
4% idle, ther is alway somethin running here & theres, and 47% RAM usage - yepp, sounds like Vista.
RAM usage is a bit high, but you have 87 processes.

If you got CCleaner - you can modify autostart objects - disable (no need to dlete) all "things"like RealPlayer Update, Quicktime (that doesn't need to preload unless you use it very regularly) possibly other startup application that check for updates and preload too.
However, if you don't recognize something, leave it and ask here on NBR.

 

First thing I always do when I get a laptop is remove all the manufacturer's bloatware. Utterly *useless* programs that bog down the system with zero benefit of any kind. I like to run a lean system regardless of OS.

Second, disable unwanted/non-essential third party background processes from starting up. eg. Qttask, Java updater, Adobe updater etc etc. I also turned off superfetch after a few weeks in Vista when I had it..probably I should have done it at the beginning itself. It was causing me trouble with boot-up times, and disabling it actually improved things. Go figure!

Third, I always dump the 'trial version' anti-virus that ships with the laptop, and install a low-footprint alternative. I personally prefer AVG, but i am told Avast is great too.

Fourth, install all my must-have apps..Opera for fast browsing, VLC player, CDBurnerXP, etc etc.

Fifth, I do a disk cleanup to get rid of all the junk. Clears up some disk space.

Sixth, I temporarily delete all the system restore points (disable VSS), and run a comprehensive disk defrag. As always, my weapon of choice is Diskeeper, and currently, it is the very competent 2009 Professional version. After the defrag, I re-enable VSS and put Diskeeper in automatic mode.

This usually does the trick.

If all else fails, install XP
j/k

 

DetlevCM,

Thanks for the screenshot tips-- once again, I'm on the cutting edge of technology (I was the last person in California to get a computer, back in 99 I guess). I'll also check out CCleaner more thoroughly later.


Andromeda,

Thanks for the step by step instructions. I appreciate this and will try the suggestions later. Long day at work, I must find food.

 

The numbers you describe don't seem very bad. RAM usage is high in Vista because it tries to learn your usage pattern and fill up the RAM so it's faster in loading things. It shouldn't take 10 seconds to load up Firefox or Word though.

Do you notice if your hard drive is getting heavily worked (trashing)? I'm thinking that one of the reasons why it's slower now is because of the indexing because it's fairly new. After a week, I found that Vista got much faster.

If you really want to check if this is the problem, you could look up how to disable indexing and superfetch for the time being. In the long run, I do like the way superfetch works as the apps I use most often load up very quickly.

 

Another thing I remember doing - which in Vista is a good idea:
Leave your laptop on over night so it can "sort itself out".

(Or did I mention that already?)

 

Thanks for the helpful and interesting information. From what it sounds like, the symptoms I'm experiencing may just be Vista figuring things out. I actually haven't used the laptop much at all-- maybe 10-12 hours total so far.

JwY,

I'm not sure about the hard drive trashing or indexing. Maybe I'll try disabling a few things tomorrow.

DetlevCM,

I'll try leaving it on tomorrow night-- left the laptop at work today.

 

lol wow does that really work?

 

Once Vista idles it'll start indexing - one nuissance less.

If it idles ling enough, it'll start to optimize boot files.

Vista is built to use "unused time".

Scuderia Con-something (sorry, forgot how its spelled) posted about a bootfile optimization, and one of the comments was that unless you do it manually, it would in theory start once your computer idles long enough, the problem is laptops don't generally idle.