Everything's delayed quite often

[LonelyPixel]

Hi,

not sure if this has been addressed before, I have no idea what to search for. This is a very generic problem that I have with my system. But it was the reason for the last 2 re-installations of Windows, so it seems to be a common aging effect.

Well, what's up? Everything's delayed quite often. When I click on a web link in Thunderbird, sometimes I have to wait up to half a minute before Firefox activates and opens the URL. When I want to open new files in Winamp, it can take infinitely to open the file dialogue. Currently I have two instances of Winamp running (which is denied by configuration but somehow possible) because the first instance is dead but cannot be terminated. I can try to terminate the process in Sysinternals' Process Explorer but it won't leave. Debugging with VS2005 fails ("not supported"). (And the old instance still has the global hotkeys and the remote control... I see, I need to restart again now. It's the second time in two days due to system failure of that type!) When opening VMware, it sometimes takes a minute until I see the window. I recently deleted the Windows Vista beta2 VMware image because it became unusable: it freezed my system for 2 time units to give it back to me for one time unit, about a quarter minute or so. The Windows XP Pro image still works fine, although with a ton more software tested and installed. The list goes on. Mainly the system stops for a while every now and then, mostly before opening a new application or window. It wasn't there a few weeks or months ago. And I have absolutely no idea where to search for the cause. In the past, I'd just say "Windows sucks, what can I do" and went re-installing the whole thing from scratch. But it took me weeks alone to make Media Center to not crash while scanning my DVB-S TV channels and I don't want to do that again if there's another way.

I have Windows XP SP2, latest patch level. The rest of my system should be somewhere in my user profile. If you need to know about any software that's installed, please ask.

I read somewhere that Vista has a new system feature called "cancellable I/O" which was identified as the problem responsible for most system failures and crashes. Is that what I see, too? Winamp freezed while I was trying to load tracks from an audio CD. (But the next Winamp instance could do it immediately.) VMware stops and only shows the main window after spinning up the second hard drive - for whatever use, it's only a data mirror and backup drive.

But what's bugging me a lot is that there are processes that I cannot kill. On Linux, when I say kill -9, the process is gone. For sure. (At least I've never seen something else.) It should be widely known that Windows' own task manager isn't capable of a lot, but that even Sysinternals' Process Explorer cannot throw out the process makes me believe this is a serious kernel level issue.

Will Windows Vista be more stable in these regards?

Ehm, sorry, some annotations:

The tray icon of both Winamps is still there, so Explorer hasn't recognised the first instance as ended.

And while waiting, the system load is zero, there's no process that especially does something.

And that Kaspersky IS 6 occasionally uses 100% CPU for a short time, blocking all network communication and most application activity, is their problem, I guess.

SpeedFan also has some problems on my machine, it freezes for a few seconds every once in a while and shows "privileged instruction" after resume from hibernate, sometimes.

Mounting a TrueCrypt volume also takes a while until it's accessible.

[cozofdeath]

Check out this topic that just started in the Windows Support thread - Boot Time

Pat Willener has some good tips on there.

Oh also when you kill a process and it still has its icon in the system tray, did you actually look in the process list to make sure its still running or did you just go by the icon? I ask because the icon will disappear when the cursor touches it or the screen is refreshed.

[LonelyPixel]

Ups, no e-mail notification here?

I was going to defragment the disk soon, but I can clearly hear fragmentation when it doesn't stop scratching the disk. When I have to wait again, it's quiet, so it can't be disk fragmentation.

CCleaner: what use does it have to remove stuff that is unused anyway?

I don't have problems at boot time. I get to the login screen quite fast. And the time afterwards has only increased right after I setup the Media Center TV stuff, it seems to be loading a lot of background services. That doesn't bother me since I usually don't need to restart often. I go to hibernate every evening.

When I "kill a process", I do that in Process Explorer. Select the line, press "Del" and see the line disappearing. I know that the tray icons only go away after hovering them. But that Winamp icon didn't go away. It even held the global hotkeys and the window class so that remote controlling was impossible. The process was there, with all its resources, but dead. It even survived a logoff in that state... Well, a reboot helped. But this dead process is another effect, actually, it's not the general delay I experience every now and then.

[~Root~]

same problem i had with this system. Processor or Video card is cooked, or almost.

Causes system instability after ahwhile, then you get like me. a 20inch box fan blowing 24/7 in side the case with your wallet pryed close to you hopeing the system wont completly go lol.

try switching out video cards and processor. thats what i do, its obviously not a software issue.