A weird one.

I have an MSI P35 board with an E8400 Dual Core CPU. I'm running XP Pro SP3 on two machines the other one is a Foxcon 946 with an E2180 CPU. The both run Nod32 and on a Tuesday run an in depth scan overnight. When I come to use the P35 it is very sluggish the next morning after the scan but the 946 is fine. Also whenever I do any disk intensive work on the P35 like a backup or using a VMware machine the P35 becomes sluggish but CPU use is low about 3%.

Both machines have 2 Gb of memory (667 DDR2) and about 3 Gig of virtual memory. Any ideas why the P35 is sluggish after disk intensive operations?

TBH, it's sounds like a 'guess the problem' issue.

I'd start with a disk cleanup, check and defrag to just rule those out.

Then look to possible differences with the other system. Try:

Write caching - Device Manager / Properties of drive / Policies

Memory & swapfile in use

Indexing service in use or not

NOD32 settings etc.

Anything that differentiates one system from the other.

Also drive types, cache onboard, SATA vs SATA2 etc.

After all that, I'd be looking at which programs seem sluggish...e.g. if it's a browser, it might be the network cable, or if it's a specific game, I'd look at hardware and drivers.


I know I'm just throwing out ideas, but it all helps.

In reply to a post by Banger:

I have an MSI P35 board with an E8400 Dual Core CPU. I'm running XP Pro SP3 on two machines the other one is a Foxcon 946 with an E2180 CPU. The both run Nod32 and on a Tuesday run an in depth scan overnight. When I come to use the P35 it is very sluggish the next morning after the scan but the 946 is fine. Also whenever I do any disk intensive work on the P35 like a backup or using a VMware machine the P35 becomes sluggish but CPU use is low about 3%.

Both machines have 2 Gb of memory (667 DDR2) and about 3 Gig of virtual memory. Any ideas why the P35 is sluggish after disk intensive operations?

Checked you have the latest sata and or chipset drivers for the p35....

In reply to a post by Banger:

I have an MSI P35 board with an E8400 Dual Core CPU. I'm running XP Pro SP3 on two machines the other one is a Foxcon 946 with an E2180 CPU. The both run Nod32 and on a Tuesday run an in depth scan overnight. When I come to use the P35 it is very sluggish the next morning after the scan but the 946 is fine. Also whenever I do any disk intensive work on the P35 like a backup or using a VMware machine the P35 becomes sluggish but CPU use is low about 3%.

Both machines have 2 Gb of memory (667 DDR2) and about 3 Gig of virtual memory. Any ideas why the P35 is sluggish after disk intensive operations?

Sounds most likely software related, if that makes you feel any better . I think camie's things would be the first to check out!

Also take the oppertunity to uninstall everything you don't actually need (toolbars, things which run in the background, etc).

Edited by Pipexer (Thu 19-Mar-09 18:02:42)

That's the weird thing Camie I defrag every week but after a defrag all programs are slow to start, they are fine once they get going. I've set up the two machine almost identically both using the same page file size, the only real difference is the sluggish one has VMware on it. Recently after upgrading VMware I couldn't access the machine so I did a re-install, but no difference.

Any big file operations like a Nod32 scan, defrag, a backup cause all programs to be slow to open. Once they get going they are fine. It's not a big deal but was wondering why a more recent motherboard would be like this compared to a cheaper older chipset.

Checked you have the latest sata and or chipset drivers for the p35....

I downloaded the latest Chipset drivers from Intel when I did a re-install, V9.

Sounds most likely software related, if that makes you feel any better smile. I think camie's things would be the first to check out!

Also take the oppertunity to uninstall everything you don't actually need (toolbars, things which run in the background, etc).

I steer clear of toolbars etc. Both machines are running virtually the same software except for VMWare on the E8400. Keep drivers up to date using PC Pitstop Driver Scanner. Only seems sluggish after intensive disk activity like a Virus Scan, Defrag or backup. Eg. like now everything is running really fast, but if I do a whole disk virus scan things will be slow to open again but eventually after a while will become really fast again. Told you it was a weird one

After installing VMWare on my machine I noticed bootup took a fair bit longer, VMWare has a fair few background processes and services running even when VMware isn't open- perhaps thats one to check?

How would I check that, you mean uninstall and compare ?

In reply to a post by Banger:

How would I check that, you mean uninstall and compare ?

I am no VMware expert but that would be the route I would probably take

You could disable all its startup processes in msconfig but i'm not sure whether that will get rid of the network services it runs in the background - you could always check first then uninstall if it isn't too much trouble for you.

It probably won't be the cause but I definately have noticed three times now after installing VMware bootup time increases more than it should be doing