- Nov 5, 2010
- 75
- 1
- 18,635
For almost two years I was running Vista x64 on a dual core Pentium with only 2GB of 800MHz DDR2 RAM – not exactly an ideal combination, but I never had any serious performance issues and was able to do my work without major problems.
Two months ago things started to change. Vista seemed to get slower and slower each day, and my network connection also kept dropping. Although most of the time I was shown as being 'connected', the Tx throughput often went to 0.000 Kbps, while the Rx throughput was still showing some activity. Occasionally the network icon in the taskbar displayed 'limited connectivity', and sometimes I would get completely disconnected. The network status varied considerably, from 'weak' to 'excellent'. Sometimes it would help to disconnect and reconnect again, and other times I would have to reboot my computer to get the network connection back again. I also got a lot of 'not responding' messages from various applications, although that mostly happened when I was installing new software, or when I was running Photoshop, so I blamed it on not having enough memory.
Today I upgraded my memory by replacing it with 2x2GB 1,066MHz modules. The computer took ages to start, and after booting up even simple tasks such as opening a new Explorer window or displaying the task menu would take several minutes. Also Vista was using 1.3GB of memory without any applications running, whereas before it had only been around 800MB. I was also getting lots of 'not responding' messages from various applications, whenever I placed the focus on them. This was without any resource intensive applications such as Photoshop or Firefox running, and I don't use any of the Vista extras such as Aero either. I read the tips in the sticky on this forum ('Speed Up The Performance Of Vista'), and turned off indexing by disabling Windows Search in services.msc. All of a sudden everything worked better than it ever had before, and I thought it was the end of all my PC related problems.
Little did I know that my nightmare was only just about to begin!
I followed the next few tips as well – restricting TCP/IP auto tuning (hoping that it would help with my connectivity problems), turning off differential compression, and disabling automatic defragmentation. I also downloaded the recommended registry defrag program and ran it, after which I rebooted.
I was greeted by a CHKDSK screen advising me to run the test, which it did. After taking a long time to fix several errors, I arrived at a screen informaing me that Windows could not be started because of a kernel problem. I ran the repair utility from my Windows installation disk, after which Windows started up successfully. However it took ages, and after the logon screen it took me about twenty minutes before I was connected to the internet. Again I was facing the same performance issues, which I thought would probably be resolved after another reboot.
Again Windows ran CHKDSK, and this time I managed to write down some of the messages:
The next messages whizzed fast too quickly, so I only caught fragments of them:
This time things took even longer. After the POST screen and the Windows progress bar, I got a blank screen for about ten minutes, followed by a cursor over a black background for another twenty minutes. Everything took even longer than before, and the performance is worse than ever. Also it took me about fifteen minutes and two disconnects / reconnects after connecting to the internet before I had decent connectivity. It has taken me about three quarters of an hour to write this post.
I am very reluctant to reboot again without knowing whether it will help because the problems just seem to be getting worse and worse, but I am seriously at the end of my wits ...
Two months ago things started to change. Vista seemed to get slower and slower each day, and my network connection also kept dropping. Although most of the time I was shown as being 'connected', the Tx throughput often went to 0.000 Kbps, while the Rx throughput was still showing some activity. Occasionally the network icon in the taskbar displayed 'limited connectivity', and sometimes I would get completely disconnected. The network status varied considerably, from 'weak' to 'excellent'. Sometimes it would help to disconnect and reconnect again, and other times I would have to reboot my computer to get the network connection back again. I also got a lot of 'not responding' messages from various applications, although that mostly happened when I was installing new software, or when I was running Photoshop, so I blamed it on not having enough memory.
Today I upgraded my memory by replacing it with 2x2GB 1,066MHz modules. The computer took ages to start, and after booting up even simple tasks such as opening a new Explorer window or displaying the task menu would take several minutes. Also Vista was using 1.3GB of memory without any applications running, whereas before it had only been around 800MB. I was also getting lots of 'not responding' messages from various applications, whenever I placed the focus on them. This was without any resource intensive applications such as Photoshop or Firefox running, and I don't use any of the Vista extras such as Aero either. I read the tips in the sticky on this forum ('Speed Up The Performance Of Vista'), and turned off indexing by disabling Windows Search in services.msc. All of a sudden everything worked better than it ever had before, and I thought it was the end of all my PC related problems.
Little did I know that my nightmare was only just about to begin!
I followed the next few tips as well – restricting TCP/IP auto tuning (hoping that it would help with my connectivity problems), turning off differential compression, and disabling automatic defragmentation. I also downloaded the recommended registry defrag program and ran it, after which I rebooted.
I was greeted by a CHKDSK screen advising me to run the test, which it did. After taking a long time to fix several errors, I arrived at a screen informaing me that Windows could not be started because of a kernel problem. I ran the repair utility from my Windows installation disk, after which Windows started up successfully. However it took ages, and after the logon screen it took me about twenty minutes before I was connected to the internet. Again I was facing the same performance issues, which I thought would probably be resolved after another reboot.
Again Windows ran CHKDSK, and this time I managed to write down some of the messages:
The next messages whizzed fast too quickly, so I only caught fragments of them:
This time things took even longer. After the POST screen and the Windows progress bar, I got a blank screen for about ten minutes, followed by a cursor over a black background for another twenty minutes. Everything took even longer than before, and the performance is worse than ever. Also it took me about fifteen minutes and two disconnects / reconnects after connecting to the internet before I had decent connectivity. It has taken me about three quarters of an hour to write this post.
I am very reluctant to reboot again without knowing whether it will help because the problems just seem to be getting worse and worse, but I am seriously at the end of my wits ...
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