Vista Excessive Disk usage. Warning's

[CandymanCan]

So iv been trying to figure out how come my sound cuts in a out sometimes when playing games or just doing w/e and i knew it was my hdd doing it everytime its active i have issues with performance.

I checked my Event viewer which shows Vista problems logged and i have tons of warning's and critical error's and error's.

The ID's on them are

ID 100

ID 203

ID 201

ID 200


ID 100 is a warning for boot up time, the time is in MS but the average boot time is about 60-90 seconds from the Windows bar to the desktop. Not sure why my boot time is a little slow i can seem to find the problem its not telling me why its taking so long.

ID 200 is a warning for slow shutdown time sometimes it takes 20-100 seconds to shutdown. This doesnt bother me and i think thats normal.

Most of the warnings are boot up ones. The rest are Disk issues.

Basicly the error's im getting are saying:

"This process is doing excessive disk activities and is impacting the performance of windows."

It lists some process's and they are

Windows Explorer
Ntoskrnl.exe
Desktop Windows manager
Windows Sidebar


It seems to happen everyday i have logs from all the problems above from today down everyday from 3+ months ago. I notice the slowdowns too and i cant figure out why its happening.

Can anyone help me ?

Also if you want to check your event viewer.

Go to start control panel and click on system and maintenance, then click on use tool to imrpove performance under peformance information and tools, then click on advanced tools, then view performance in event log

[[XC] itznfb]

sounds like it's paging out to disk for some reason. could be memory issues?

[CandymanCan]

Maybe ? Im not sure if it is how do i stop it from doing that

[[XC] itznfb]

run memory tests, see if you get errors on your mems. it could be an issue with the OS install.

[CandymanCan]

itznfb;2976387']run memory tests, see if you get errors on your mems. it could be an issue with the OS install.



Memory isnt having problems.

Do me a favour go up and on the bottom off my post i tell you how to check the event logg tell me what your getting, maybe this is normal

[Frostbyte]

One other quick thing to try. By default Vista enables the sidebar, and there is a gadget for RSS Feeds. Try turning that off (or the entire sidebar) for an experiment and see if the issue goes away. I noticed the spike interfering with my wireless mouse movement. This has been a common problem.

It is possible that it is excessive paging, but if those are the only processes running I really don't see an application that would require huge paging.

[[XC] itznfb]

Memory isnt having problems.

Do me a favour go up and on the bottom off my post i tell you how to check the event logg tell me what your getting, maybe this is normal

i don't have vista installed right now, when i get home i'll install it on one of my machines.

are you on SP1? and what edition of Vista do you use? 32bit/64bit?

[CandymanCan]

32bit, SP1.

I noticed in the task manager, that for pagefile it says 770m/6048mb

I assume that mean 770mb is being used and i have 6gb avail problem is i have a pre-set limit on pagefile 4gb min/max Why is it showing my pagefile at 6gb.

I also check to see what my HDD is doing when i boot up cuss it takes like a minute or 2 before i can actually load up a game. Like say if i boot up get to the desktop go in a game like say wow and login when its on the loading screen it work start until my HDD is done working which takes 1-2 minutes, after that its fine.

So i decited to check what the hdd is doing and in the resource monitor under rea/write ect, its doing alot of writing to diff things i tend to use alot.

Wow for example i havent started any game or any program and the hdd seems to be doing something to diff games and programs, like wow, planetside, eveonline, COD4 alot of svchost are running probly 20-30 and the hdd is doing alot of reading. Im not sure but could this be the prefetch program that Vista has? putting things into the pagefile that i use alot so when i want to play or use them they will open right away ?


You probly wont see what im see'ing on a fresh install of Vista cuss you will have nothing on your computer

I wish there was a way to see what exactly is in the pagefile 800mb on startup seems like alot if you ask me

[cadaveca]

turn off search indexing, stop downlaoding.

[[XC] itznfb]

800mb page file seems fine, as for why its ignoring your custom limit i don't know. if you're waiting on disk IO on boot you're probably crushing the disk with superfetch. if you play a lot of games, or frequently use apps that load a lot of stuff to memory superfetch can cripple the most high end PC for hours. superfetch is the worst additional to an OS i've ever encountered.

[CandymanCan]

Yea i had a fealing it was superfetch im gonna try turning it off and see what happens.

Most games i play take up all my memory on my system so maybe that why and i play them everyday.

Oh i found the pagefile thing is just physicle and pagefile combined. I actually have only 500mb ram being used and 2-300 pagefile being used.

Anyway i played COD4 for about 10 min just now, had 1700mb ram used, and 600 pagefile for a totall of 2300mb being used. I quit the game jumped back the the desktop and my HDD started thrashing again, desktop loading slow,internet explorer taking forever to load up and anything i do would take like 10seconds to respond. I checked what my hdd was doing and i had about 30 SVCHOST running again all various things WOW,EVE,COD4, Explorer, and other things raping my hdd.

This is the superfetch running isnt it ?

[[XC] itznfb]

could be, disable superfetch, reboot, try everything again and see if you have the same symptoms

[jas420221]

Yes.. disable indexing and superfetch. Also a 6GB (max) page file is a monster. I have mine set @ 2GB. Its use when I get into Vista...300-400mb.

[CandymanCan]

Yea it was superfetch.

Disabled it, rebooted when the computer got to the desktop there was no HDD activity like there usually is i could load up anything i wanted without waiting. 1500mb of memory isnt cached anymore its all free.

Played COD4 for 10min then quit the game the desktop loaded instantly and there was no 2 minute wait for me to click on IE and get back on the forums.

I cant belive i didnt try to figure out this problem along time ago cuss its been doing this to me for like 5+ months. Feals like a whole new computer now.

Well the 6Gb is my 2gb and 4gb of actuall pagefile its just combining the total memory. Your soppose to set a pagefile 1.5-2x more then your memory if you have 2GB of ram.

[jas420221]

Since 98SE I set my page file to 2GB. No problems. Any bigger just wastes space. It certainly isnt a performance improvement.

[[XC] itznfb]

:up:

superfetch :down:

[[XC] itznfb]

Since 98SE I set my page file to 2GB. No problems. Any bigger just wastes space. It certainly isnt a performance improvement.

recommended minimum page file is 1.5x physical, with 3x max.
anything less than 1.5x is said to be harmful to performance.

edit: i should add, this really only applies to systems with 256mb - 2gb of RAM. obviously the more physical RAM you have the less you'll need to page to disk.

[cadaveca]

Yea it was superfetch.

Disabled it, rebooted when the computer got to the desktop there was no HDD activity like there usually is i could load up anything i wanted without waiting. 1500mb of memory isnt cached anymore its all free.


Superfetch is a plain pain in the arse. One of the first things to turn off in Vista!


Search indexing should go too tho. Do you ever use the "find" feature to locate a file? No? Then you don't need search indexing.

If you download lots, or spend a bit of time of the web, indexing will eat a good part of cpu time and HDD time as well.

I mean...it's handy, for some, but I think noone here needs this feature.


Turn off Aero...and low and behold..Vista's "new features" don't exist, just driver-OS interaction is different.


I'll third teh 1.5x pagefile stuff as well...I usually set 2x, min and max size to be the same.

[[XC] itznfb]

Search indexing should go too tho. Do you ever use the "find" feature to locate a file? No? Then you don't need search indexing.

If you download lots, or spend a bit of time of the web, indexing will eat a good part of cpu time and HDD time as well.

I mean...it's handy, for some, but I think noone here needs this feature.

i never understood the point of desktop searching/indexing. who the effing hell can't find something on their own computer? or searches their own file system so frequently that it needs indexes on mounts. wtf? who does this? if you work for a company, you should be searching a share or a web front end of a file server. if you have this much crap on your computer, you need to rethink what the you're doing.

[CandymanCan]

No i never use the search lol. Never have for years even on XP the only thing i do in that start/run bar is msconfig/regedit and services.

I'll turn that off too, but im keeping aero on i like it

[cadaveca]

Yeah, jsut an FYI on resource-stealing Vista "goodies"..Aero stays on here too.

INdexing is turned off from add/remove program page, on left side of page.

[jas420221]

itznfb;2977195']recommended minimum page file is 1.5x physical, with 3x max.
anything less than 1.5x is said to be harmful to performance.

edit: i should add, this really only applies to systems with 256mb - 2gb of RAM. obviously the more physical RAM you have the less you'll need to page to disk.Yeah, I have 2GB, my page file is on a seperate (storage) drive set at the begining of that drive as 2GB also. I have NEVER had any performance issues. Like I said, just my HO. Do what the books tell you though. Dont let one person's experience (mine) tell you otherwise. I just know it works fine for me in all I do (gaming/photo and video editing/music mixing etc). :)

[CandymanCan]

Yeah, jsut an FYI on resource-stealing Vista "goodies"..Aero stays on here too.

INdexing is turned off from add/remove program page, on left side of page.

Ya i know how to turn it off, just go into services and disable windows search.

Aero doesnt really take much to run im not that desperate lol.. My problem wasj ust the disk thrashing from superfetch it was so bad my PC littery felt like something from 4-5 years ago.

[[XC] itznfb]

page file optimization is really on for servers, everyday computing will be fine with defaults.

[CandymanCan]

Thanks for you help btw guys for helping me narrow this down, i had a fealing it was superfetch from the start i just wasnt sure

[jas420221]

itznfb;2977249']page file optimization is really on for servers, everyday computing will be fine with defaults.isnt default 2GB anyway or is it dynamic based on teh amount of ram in your system?

[CandymanCan]

isnt default 2GB anyway or is it dynamic based on teh amount of ram in your system?


Default is based on how much your system uses, Vista overtime if you have it on default will increase the pagefile if you need more.

The default "default" is 2GB Min pagefile "if you have 2gb of memory" +300 so 2.3gb, and the Max is 3GB. Like you said its predermined on the amount of ram you have installed

Your soppose to actually set 2x more then what you have memory wise, min/max need to be the same also. If you set the pagefile to say 2gb min and 3gb max, your just inviting the system to add 1gb onto your system whenever it wants causing slowdowns.

Your max is already set at 3GB, just change it to your prefrence and set the min/max to 3gb, the 2gb your see'ing is the min

[[XC] itznfb]

The default paging file size is equal to 1.5 times the total RAM.

from article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314482

edit:

for vista:
By default, the minimum size is 1.5 times the amount of physical RAM, and the maximum size is three times the amount of RAM (twice the minimum)
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/596fb57f-cc9d-4ac5-a813-5c0830e9156a1033.mspx

[CandymanCan]

Yea that 2GB your see'ing is the "MIN" value, your pagefile is actually 3GB on max "aka 1.5x", and its best to keep both min/max the same, so change your min to 3gb also this will keep the system from adding onto the min value

[jas420221]

I set it manually my min is 2gb and max 2gb. Again.. no issues. (you were talking to me right?)

[CandymanCan]

Yea i was, as long as you say you arent having issues good to you, were just saying what is "recomended" just dont go below how much memory you have

[alexanderhuzar]

I had a DLT3C (AMD 1700+ overclocked to 2.2 GHz), and that had 768 MB RAM, and for Windows XP SP2 it was awesome and I had no complaints, ever.

I did a system upgrade, Vista x64 Ultimate, E6600 Coure2Duo, quadrupled the system RAM (went to 2 GB DDR2), got a couple of very ovcerclocked vid cards in SLI (7900 GT), and doubled the rating on my power supply (from 250 Watt to 500 Watt).

Results:
-500 Watt crappy PSU is not enough to run a pair of overclocked power-hungry monsters coupled with a dual-core also overclocked to 3.6 GHz.

-I neglected to upgrade the hard drive. Boot time was at about 4 minutes with a 120 GB drive that does 55 MB/sec (maximum) with an average seek time of 14 seconds. The hard drive was so slow that many things took forever to load, and the fact that superfetch was on made it seem like my hard drive never stopped working. The hard drive light was on 99% of the time that I went to take a look at it. Disabling Superfetch helped the problem, but program load times suffered dramatically.

-The 2 GB of RAM which I thought was monsterously huge seemed to be used up more than 50% by windows alone. Loading up Bioshock for the first time, my applet on my G15 keyboard (LCDSirReal) showed physical memory usage at 100%, and then the system became really slow as the hard drive was going mental.

-At this point I was getting very frustrated and I was very upset.


The resulution:
-Enermax Galaxy 1000 Watt power supply: detected that plugging a molex into the motherboard's "EZ-Plug" auxilliary connector actually causes a short circuit (Asus P5N32-SLI Deluxe). I guess I won't be sticking things in there anymore.

- 4 GB RAM total: Superfetch began to spread it's wings and within a week was actually making my system noticeably faster than keeping it disabled.

-A pair of Seagate 7200.10 320 GB drives in RAID 0 mode via on-board. 129 MB/sec average transfer rate at 14 ms average access time (Sandra 2007 test I did on my RAID): from the time I press power button to turn computer on, to time Windows loads everything on the desktop, sidebar, and system tray (not counting Superfetch) is about 100 seconds. Superfetch will continue using the hard drive for another few minutes, but I can do whatever I want and I don't notice anything. After a week of use, Superfetch has learned my habits pretty well, and disabling it actually slows down Windows load time by about 10 seconds, and also program startups are slower by 25-50%.

From my experiences, and my friends have all confirmed this, Vista loves 2 things: lots of RAM and a fast hard drive. Everything else seems superficial. It doesen't even matter what kind of video card you have, unless you need more fps in games.

[CandymanCan]

I had a DLT3C (AMD 1700+ overclocked to 2.2 GHz), and that had 768 MB RAM, and for Windows XP SP2 it was awesome and I had no complaints, ever.

I did a system upgrade, Vista x64 Ultimate, E6600 Coure2Duo, quadrupled the system RAM (went to 2 GB DDR2), got a couple of very ovcerclocked vid cards in SLI (7900 GT), and doubled the rating on my power supply (from 250 Watt to 500 Watt).

Results:
-500 Watt crappy PSU is not enough to run a pair of overclocked power-hungry monsters coupled with a dual-core also overclocked to 3.6 GHz.

-I neglected to upgrade the hard drive. Boot time was at about 4 minutes with a 120 GB drive that does 55 MB/sec (maximum) with an average seek time of 14 seconds. The hard drive was so slow that many things took forever to load, and the fact that superfetch was on made it seem like my hard drive never stopped working. The hard drive light was on 99% of the time that I went to take a look at it. Disabling Superfetch helped the problem, but program load times suffered dramatically.

-The 2 GB of RAM which I thought was monsterously huge seemed to be used up more than 50% by windows alone. Loading up Bioshock for the first time, my applet on my G15 keyboard (LCDSirReal) showed physical memory usage at 100%, and then the system became really slow as the hard drive was going mental.

-At this point I was getting very frustrated and I was very upset.


The resulution:
-Enermax Galaxy 1000 Watt power supply: detected that plugging a molex into the motherboard's "EZ-Plug" auxilliary connector actually causes a short circuit (Asus P5N32-SLI Deluxe). I guess I won't be sticking things in there anymore.

- 4 GB RAM total: Superfetch began to spread it's wings and within a week was actually making my system noticeably faster than keeping it disabled.

-A pair of Seagate 7200.10 320 GB drives in RAID 0 mode via on-board. 129 MB/sec average transfer rate at 14 ms average access time (Sandra 2007 test I did on my RAID): from the time I press power button to turn computer on, to time Windows loads everything on the desktop, sidebar, and system tray (not counting Superfetch) is about 100 seconds. Superfetch will continue using the hard drive for another few minutes, but I can do whatever I want and I don't notice anything. After a week of use, Superfetch has learned my habits pretty well, and disabling it actually slows down Windows load time by about 10 seconds, and also program startups are slower by 25-50%.

From my experiences, and my friends have all confirmed this, Vista loves 2 things: lots of RAM and a fast hard drive. Everything else seems superficial. It doesen't even matter what kind of video card you have, unless you need more fps in games.



Ya i know 4GB, but with a 32bit OS that would be a waste id see only 3gb. Better then nothing i soppose. All my games i play now use just about all my memory. Even when i play old mmo's lik planetside my system memory usage comes to about 1700mb physical and 300 pagefile.

I tried an experiment yesturday to see how much i could actually use, i loaded up eve online had 4-5 windows open from IE. Turned on windows dream scene, did a virus and spyware scan at the same time, and i was listening to itunes.

My totall memory usage came to about 98% physical and 500mb pagefile with both core's on 100% load. I didnt have the sound scratch's that i did when superfetch was on my system was still very responsive, i could alt tab back to my game and windows, and search the internet and listen to music without any problems even tho i was dipping into alot of pagefile.

It might be because my system is highely optimised with tweaks and other things, and because superfetch and indexing is off now. I know i need more memory the problem is if i buy more memory id have to get the 64bit OS and try and find more HX stick with the same memory chips that mine have. The newer ones dont overclock very far like mine do. I had to resend mine in and get the ones from 05. I just dont have the money to buy 4 sticks of memory and get the 64bit version of vista.

Maybe i dont notice it but my programs load just the same as they did before, and my computer is actually 2x more responsive then it was with superfetch on.

My shutdown times are only 3 secondsn ow, and my boot times from the windows bar to the desktop take only 30 seconds. Beofre they only took 60 seconds if your experiancing 4 minute boot time there is probly something else wrong which is why the event logg is helpfull it shows you what causes the slow boot times. Some people on google have found it was there keyboard for example the USB port driver, or something else.

My harddrive is much slower then yours are in raid even alone i bet. Its only a 7200RPM 2mb cache 160gb drive and my boot times are half your's. Iv also had this Vista install for a year now almost superfetch knew exactly what i do everyday which is visit the internet and play video games sadly this is why is allocated every mb of free memory into cached, thus why on every bootup it takes 2-3 minutes before i can actually play a video game. My problem was when i start a game it would startup fine but when i go to the loading screen the loading wouldnt start the bar's were empty while my HDD was thrashing its way, once it was done my computer was responsive and the games loading bar started moving. If i exit the game's after playing for 10 minutes all the free'd up memory is once again cached leaving nothing for the OS thus causing the slow loading for the desktop to even apear and internet explorer or anything else to open.

Think of it like this. Windows XP with 512mb of ram play BF2 then go back to the desktop thats what i had to deal with

Once i turned superfetch off all my memory that was cached is free, so now when i exit a game windows and anything else i open, open up instantly without waits. Im sure if i had even 3gb of memory i wouldnt have this problem if my games take 2gb to run and then be cached right back i would still have 1gb free memory. Im still not sure tho this would solve the HDD thrashing the HDD will still be working extra hard to cache all that memory again i dont like this cuss it slows my computer down.


This reminds me have you guys tried that windows dream scene lol, its pretty cool, but damn takes up 100mb more memory, and uses 15% or so of 1 core of my cpu.

[alexanderhuzar]

I've honestly tried to measure the impact on performance of running DreamScene compared to simply having a static jpeg as a background, and I have to say that with my setup the difference is less than 1% CPU usage, and about the same amount of loss of points (about 50 CPU points) when running PC Mark. I honestly do not notice the difference. Besides...Vista can automatically scale down the visual bells and whistles.

Control Panel -> System -> Advanced System Settings -> Advanced tab -> Performance "Settings" -> Visual Effects tab -> "Let Windows choose what's best for my computer".

Can't afford parts? This is easy on your wallet:
-4 GB RAM - $119.99 canadian - http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=017451&cid=RAM.346.754
-500 GB / 32 MB buffer / random seek < 1msec: Seagate 7200.11 - $83.99 canadian - http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=014525&cid=HD.443.877

[CandymanCan]

cant use DDR2. Id have to upgrade my cpu and motherboard.

If i upgrade my pc Its gonna be everything but the video card and im gonna try to get the best.

Dreamscene after more use seems to only use resources when you dont any programs maximized like video games for example so i might as well keep that on if thats how it works, as long as it turns off during times i do things.

I like it cuss it looksl ike those eletronic picture frames you would see in stores or malls when walking around that have like waterfalls moving and stuff.

As for less than 1% cpu usage for you i dont see how thats possible ? The perfmonitor uses 1% cpu and that just monitor's your pc. Ae you using poor quality videos for dreamscene ?

[alexanderhuzar]

I'm using the dark green futuristic-looking abstract vid that comes as part of the DreamScene. I'm using a Core2Duo. That thing is a computing monster, so i guess that little things don't even register as using the CPU...

I remember that running Winamp on my 200 MHz Pentium 1 was a mission and it used 15-25% of the CPU. This was when MP3's were first created by those 3 guys when they got together in Germany. Now playing Winamp is an afterthought and uses as much CPU as opening "My Computer"...

[CandymanCan]

I'm using the dark green futuristic-looking abstract vid that comes as part of the DreamScene. I'm using a Core2Duo. That thing is a computing monster, so i guess that little things don't even register as using the CPU...

I remember that running Winamp on my 200 MHz Pentium 1 was a mission and it used 15-25% of the CPU. This was when MP3's were first created by those 3 guys when they got together in Germany. Now playing Winamp is an afterthought and uses as much CPU as opening "My Computer"...


Ah yea that green one im using only like 3% of my cpu. Try the one with the leaf driping water, or the one with the stream and green algea all over. Im sure your cpu use will go up.

Are you looking at both core's usage ? cuss i noticed it uses both core's 3% for one and like 10% for another