Strange Windows 7 slow-down

[cameo]

Here is the background:

My four-year-old HP notebook's Nvidia graphics chip fried about two
months ago and I was about to give up on the notebook, except its SATA
hard disk that seemed to be still OK to extract vital data from it and
copy it to another PC. To do that, I installed the drive in a 2.5" drive
enclosure, effectively converting it into an external USB drive, without
writing anything on it. The copying of data was mostly successful,
except the occasional warning msg about needing Administrator privilege
to copy some of the data. This was strange, because I was the admin on
both PCs, using the same user name, too. Anyway, the warning message
also gave me the option to continue, wich I did, and the data was
eventually copied over.

A couple weeks ago I discovered a source for new and newer version of
the same motherboard that was fried and I bought one. After reassembling
the old notebook with the new motherboard and the old hard disk, it came
to life just fine and everything seemed to work, except noticeably
slower than before. Interestingly, the virtual XP machine though seemed
to disappear and I had to reinstall it from MS.

I've ben wondering what could have caused this slow-down. Could
something have been changed on that HD despite of what I thought I was
only reading from it as a USB drive? Perhaps the indexing is gone or
corrupted on it? Or overriding that administrator permission warning did
something to it? Is there out there some easy-to-use profiling utility
to find out the source of the slow-down? Or should I try to re-index the
drive? I'm not even sure how to do it. I would hate to reload Win7 on it
because of one older app I need whose original install CD I no longer
have. Not to mention all the MS updates since the original install ...

I'd appreciate any ideas that might lead me to some solution here.

 

[Paul]

Here is the background:

My four-year-old HP notebook's Nvidia graphics chip fried about two
months ago and I was about to give up on the notebook, except its SATA
hard disk that seemed to be still OK to extract vital data from it and
copy it to another PC. To do that, I installed the drive in a 2.5" drive
enclosure, effectively converting it into an external USB drive, without
writing anything on it. The copying of data was mostly successful,
except the occasional warning msg about needing Administrator privilege
to copy some of the data. This was strange, because I was the admin on
both PCs, using the same user name, too. Anyway, the warning message
also gave me the option to continue, wich I did, and the data was
eventually copied over.

A couple weeks ago I discovered a source for new and newer version of
the same motherboard that was fried and I bought one. After reassembling
the old notebook with the new motherboard and the old hard disk, it came
to life just fine and everything seemed to work, except noticeably
slower than before. Interestingly, the virtual XP machine though seemed
to disappear and I had to reinstall it from MS.

I've ben wondering what could have caused this slow-down. Could
something have been changed on that HD despite of what I thought I was
only reading from it as a USB drive? Perhaps the indexing is gone or
corrupted on it? Or overriding that administrator permission warning did
something to it? Is there out there some easy-to-use profiling utility
to find out the source of the slow-down? Or should I try to re-index the
drive? I'm not even sure how to do it. I would hate to reload Win7 on it
because of one older app I need whose original install CD I no longer
have. Not to mention all the MS updates since the original install ...

I'd appreciate any ideas that might lead me to some solution here.

Is there an AV program installed ? Is it rescanning all the files, on demand ?

Check Task Manager, and see if something is keeping the CPU busy. Sort
the display in Task Manager, by %CPU.

*******

Did you benchmark with HDTune ? Did the curve look reasonable ?
(Do an image search and see if a copy of an HDTune screenshot is
available, for that drive model.)

If this program complains at all (error 5), try to Run As Administrator.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

*******

With a SATA drive, the UDMA mode is irrelevant. It doesn't control
the SATA cable at all.

But, if the drive slips into PIO mode, that is a polled transfer
done via the CPU, that raises the percentage of CPU used for operating
the disk drive. You can check via Device Manager for that, but
it's just as easy to catch it, via HDTune curve.

A proper result, should have a nice curve to it, and about
2:1 ratio between the beginning of the disk, and the end of the
disk. If you're stuck in PIO mode, the plot is a flat line,
with low (7MB/sec) transfer rate.

In this example, one of the disks in my desktop, is benchmarked
at SATA I rates and at SATA II rates, using the FORCE 150 jumper
on the back of the drive. This is to show what a "curve" looks like.
An SSD on the other hand, is relatively flat, as is any drive
that is jammed in PIO mode. An SSD could be running 500MB/sec,
whereas a drive in PIO might be 7MB/sec. So you can tell all
three graph types apart.

http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/842/500gb3500418ascomposite.gif

Paul

 

[Jason]

Here is the background:

- snip -

I'd appreciate any ideas that might lead me to some solution here.

Take a look at the Windows Logs in Event Viewer - particulary the System
log. There may be something obvious there.

Jason

 

[Ken1943]

I've ben wondering what could have caused this slow-down. Could
something have been changed on that HD despite of what I thought I was
only reading from it as a USB drive? Perhaps the indexing is gone or
corrupted on it? Or overriding that administrator permission warning did
something to it? Is there out there some easy-to-use profiling utility
to find out the source of the slow-down? Or should I try to re-index the
drive? I'm not even sure how to do it. I would hate to reload Win7 on it
because of one older app I need whose original install CD I no longer
have. Not to mention all the MS updates since the original install ...

I'd appreciate any ideas that might lead me to some solution here.

If the mobo is not the exact replacement , series or similar, there could
be a driver problem.


KenW

 

[BeeJ]

And don't forget that the new MB chipset may just be slower than the
old MB. e.g. I have two almost identical laptops and one is
considerable slower than the other due to the chipset etc.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

If the mobo is not the exact replacement , series or similar, there could
be a driver problem.

KenW

+1

 

[cameo]

If the mobo is not the exact replacement , series or similar, there could
be a driver problem.

The new one has the exact same OEM part # as the old one.

 

[Ken1943]

The new one has the exact same OEM part # as the old one.

One of my netbooks has two different drivers, forget what one, for the
same model and they don't tell anything about the exact model/series
number.

I had to change the hdd on my Toshiba netbook. Restored an image file.
It ran, but !!!

I ran chkdsk 2 or 3 times to let the OS clear up the order of the files.

Try running chkdsk on the thing.



KenW

 

[cameo]

Is there an AV program installed ? Is it rescanning all the files, on
demand ?

Check Task Manager, and see if something is keeping the CPU busy. Sort
the display in Task Manager, by %CPU.

*******

Did you benchmark with HDTune ? Did the curve look reasonable ?
(Do an image search and see if a copy of an HDTune screenshot is
available, for that drive model.)

If this program complains at all (error 5), try to Run As Administrator.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

*******

With a SATA drive, the UDMA mode is irrelevant. It doesn't control
the SATA cable at all.

But, if the drive slips into PIO mode, that is a polled transfer
done via the CPU, that raises the percentage of CPU used for operating
the disk drive. You can check via Device Manager for that, but
it's just as easy to catch it, via HDTune curve.

A proper result, should have a nice curve to it, and about
2:1 ratio between the beginning of the disk, and the end of the
disk. If you're stuck in PIO mode, the plot is a flat line,
with low (7MB/sec) transfer rate.

In this example, one of the disks in my desktop, is benchmarked
at SATA I rates and at SATA II rates, using the FORCE 150 jumper
on the back of the drive. This is to show what a "curve" looks like.
An SSD on the other hand, is relatively flat, as is any drive
that is jammed in PIO mode. An SSD could be running 500MB/sec,
whereas a drive in PIO might be 7MB/sec. So you can tell all
three graph types apart.

http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/842/500gb3500418ascomposite.gif

Paul

Well, I did not see anything standing out on the Task Manager and I
never used HDtune before.

What I did notice now and missed before is the physical memory size. It
was only 2 GB even though I had two 2GB RAM clips installed. So I
figured that either one of the clips was not seated well, or perhaps the
clips were seated in the wrong order. So I reseated them in the reverse
order and I could immeditely see the 4GB size on the BIOS screen. The
system feels much faster now, about the same before the old MoBo fried.

I also wonder if my Win-64 system somehow reverted to a Win-32 system
due to the low RAM. That would perhaps explain why I could no longer
find the virtual XP machine setup. As I recall Microsoft required more
than 2 GB for Win-64 when I upgraded from 32-bit Vista. That's when I
bought the extra 2 GB memory clip.

Anyway, as so many times, it appears that this time, too, the reason was
so simple that nobody thought about it. However, your thorough urging
for checking all kinds of things did lead me to also check the memory
size. So, thanks for the tips and I think I am going to look into that
HDtune software anyway.

 

[Paul]

Well, I did not see anything standing out on the Task Manager and I
never used HDtune before.

What I did notice now and missed before is the physical memory size. It
was only 2 GB even though I had two 2GB RAM clips installed. So I
figured that either one of the clips was not seated well, or perhaps the
clips were seated in the wrong order. So I reseated them in the reverse
order and I could immeditely see the 4GB size on the BIOS screen. The
system feels much faster now, about the same before the old MoBo fried.

I also wonder if my Win-64 system somehow reverted to a Win-32 system
due to the low RAM. That would perhaps explain why I could no longer
find the virtual XP machine setup. As I recall Microsoft required more
than 2 GB for Win-64 when I upgraded from 32-bit Vista. That's when I
bought the extra 2 GB memory clip.

Anyway, as so many times, it appears that this time, too, the reason was
so simple that nobody thought about it. However, your thorough urging
for checking all kinds of things did lead me to also check the memory
size. So, thanks for the tips and I think I am going to look into that
HDtune software anyway.

Checking the quantity of RAM, would not even have occurred to me.
I would never suspect a stick of RAM would come loose.

Paul

 

[Ken Blake]

I also wonder if my Win-64 system somehow reverted to a Win-32 system
due to the low RAM.

No, that's completely impossible. It couldn't do that even if you
wanted it to. You would have to do a clean Windows 64 installation
from scratch.

That would perhaps explain why I could no longer
find the virtual XP machine setup. As I recall Microsoft required more
than 2 GB for Win-64 when I upgraded from 32-bit Vista.

No, that's not correct either. Morethan 2GB would be recommended for
good performance, but it's certainly not "required."

 

[charlie]

What I did notice now and missed before is the physical memory size. It
was only 2 GB even though I had two 2GB RAM clips installed. So I
figured that either one of the clips was not seated well, or perhaps the
clips were seated in the wrong order. So I reseated them in the reverse
order and I could immediately see the 4GB size on the BIOS screen. The
system feels much faster now, about the same before the old MoBo fried.

The speed up is likely due to:
Laptop drives are usually a bit slower than the physically larger
drives used in desktops, and so - - -
There is the swap file, which is likely being used much more with 2G of
RAM than with 4G. I also suspect that some of the original windows
configuration was optimized when 4G was present.

 

[cameo]

No, that's completely impossible. It couldn't do that even if you
wanted it to. You would have to do a clean Windows 64 installation
from scratch.

So, I guess, 2 GB is the bare minimum for the 64-bit Win7, but since the
GPU also uses some of that memory, there is even less available for the
OS. Meaning a lot of use of virtual memory, slowing down things
considerably.

No, that's not correct either. Morethan 2GB would be recommended for
good performance, but it's certainly not "required."

So the disappearance of the Virtual XP remains a mistery. I should
probably also do a disk and file system integrity check and then a defrag.

 

[cameo]

Checking the quantity of RAM, would not even have occurred to me.
I would never suspect a stick of RAM would come loose.

Yes, that's why I missed it, too. On the other hand, the two RAM sticks
are of different brands and might also have slightly different speeds.
And as I recall from my years when I used to assemble my own desktops,
there was a rule about which slots should be populated with memories of
different speeds in order the BIOS recognize them all. So perhaps that's
what was the problem with my first RAM arrangement, not the loose
seating in the socket.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Cameo.

So, I guess, 2 GB is the bare minimum for the 64-bit Win7,...

Nope. But it is probably the practical limit for most of us. My netbook
came with just 1 GB of RAM (and 32-bit Win7) and I installed Win7 X64
Ultimate on it. But it worked a LOT better after I upgraded it to 2 GB. It
now has Win8 Pro w/Media Center (and 2 GB).

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (Build 16.4.3505.0912) in Win8 Pro


"cameo" wrote in message

No, that's completely impossible. It couldn't do that even if you
wanted it to. You would have to do a clean Windows 64 installation
from scratch.

So, I guess, 2 GB is the bare minimum for the 64-bit Win7, but since the
GPU also uses some of that memory, there is even less available for the
OS. Meaning a lot of use of virtual memory, slowing down things
considerably.

No, that's not correct either. Morethan 2GB would be recommended for
good performance, but it's certainly not "required."

So the disappearance of the Virtual XP remains a mistery. I should
probably also do a disk and file system integrity check and then a defrag.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Yes, that's why I missed it, too. On the other hand, the two RAM sticks
are of different brands and might also have slightly different speeds.
And as I recall from my years when I used to assemble my own desktops,
there was a rule about which slots should be populated with memories of
different speeds in order the BIOS recognize them all. So perhaps that's
what was the problem with my first RAM arrangement, not the loose
seating in the socket.

Years ago I had a laptop with two slots, and I bought a second stick of
a different brand for the second slot. The new memory worked only when I
moved the original card to the second slot and put the new one in the
first slot.

It took me a while (longer than it took you) to figure that out