Where to look when Vista machine is slow

[MarcLodge]

Hi,
I have a Vista machine that has recently started to exhibit poor performance. In order to rectify this, I have increased the memory to 3Gb, used msconfig to remove any unnecessary startup programs, and made sure that all windows updates are present. I've also run malwarebytes, a full virus scan and a full defender scan.

It still appears to me to be quite slow in response compared to other machines that I've come across of similar spec etc.

Are there other areas that I should be investigating, and is there in Vista any sort of trace or logs that I can examine in order to see what it's up to when it's hanging. I've had a look in task manager and the CPU usuage seems fine as does the now improved memory.

Many thanks in advance for any tips.

Marc

 

[Diancecht]

Did you take a look at the reliability monitor?

Cheers,
Dian

 

[MarcLodge]

Thanks Dian, I shall have a look at that, although on the surface of it, this tool looks like it's for PCs that are crashing and as far as I am aware, it's not crashing. Nevertheless. I shall have a look and see if it produces any useful info.

Thanks again.
Marc

 

[linney]

The last article on this page mentions "System Diagnostics: Generate a system health report", see if you can run that and gain any insight to your problems.

Finding Vista's Advanced Tools

http://www.besttechie.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=11747&hl=

How does the machine perform from Safe Mode? What is it like from Normal Mode but with a different user?

How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/929135

Autoruns for Windows v9.57

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

Process Monitor v2.8

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

Try running ChkDsk to check your drive for errors. Right-click your Drive icon/ Properties/ Tools/ Error Checking. Try it first by not checking either box (this will run it in a Read-only mode) to see if it flags any hard drive or file problems. If it does, restart it by ticking both boxes, and rerun it to allow it to attempt to fix any found problems.

What is going on in the Event Viewer, are there any constantly repeating errors?

How to repair the operating system and how to restore the operating system configuration to an earlier point in time in Windows Vista

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936212/#appliesto

Besides Defender, what other "realtime" scanners are running on the machine?

 

[MarcLodge]

Hi linney,
Many thanks for you post. I shall work through those links, but in answer to your question, the machine runs Kaspersky 2009, which is always kept up to date.
Marc

 

[linney]

I am not familiar with Kapersky, but Defender, and I assume Kapersky, are probably double dipping on every file you open in order to check for malware. I'd be inclined to disable Defender's realtime scanning and just use it as a manual scanner?

 

[goombawaho]

http://mostlysavingmoney.com/top-10-windows-vista-speed-tweaks/