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way OT: thrashing swap file in W2K

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
Reply to
William Sommerwerck
Loading thread data ...

"William Sommerwanker the FUCKWIT TROLL "

** Whaaaaaaaaattttt !!!!!!

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

FFS what a classic example of :

" Do as I say, NOT as I do. "

Reply to
Phil Allison

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

Reply to
Ralph Wade Phillips

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Could there be bad sectors on the disk so it is hunting to find good ones????

Reply to
hrhofmann

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
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

How much RAM do you have? The computer needs a swap file when it runs out of physical memory. Go to

formatting link
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.

formatting link

formatting link 

--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Last time was about three months back. About 10% of the boot drive is free.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

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.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

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

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

Defragment the disk. Many free defraggers for W2K here:

formatting link 

--

Jeff
Reply to
Jeff Layman

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
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

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
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

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.

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

--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

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.

Reply to
Allodoxaphobia

En el artículo , William Sommerwerck escribió:

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.

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"

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.

--
(\__/)   
(='.'=) 
(")_(")
Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

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eliminating the

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FireFox

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the boot

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.

?-)

Reply to
josephkk

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. .

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

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