Performance - Limiting Factors?

Julio Cortez · 12 Jan 2011

sygnus21 said:

Programs "not responding" IS NOT indicative of a slow hard drive, but more of an OS/software issue!

Well, it was just experience of mine while trying to load/save big amounts of data (like wave files of 1GB each) on my poor old WD Caviar that had many bad sectors: Nero Wave Editor often hanged being unresponsive for minutes, and it happened many a time.
Then, maybe the two things (Nero WE not responding and the disk being damaged) were not related each other, but I came to the conclusion that they were as with my new HD it never happened anymore (well, I only have this new HD since the 4th of January anyway so it may be too soon to judge).
That's why I suggested that it could be a disk issue.. Nothing is "sure" without a bit of testing though :)

sygnus21 · 12 Jan 2011

Julio, I do agree that it could be a hardware issue (failing hard drive) and should have stated that as well. I just don't buy into the slow drive compared to an SSD drive thing.

Programs not responding are just as likely to happen on a spinner as they are on SSD drives. It makes no difference.

The point of my post is to find out what's ailing the system before paying the expense of an SSD drive, you could be moving the problem over to the new drive and thus solve nothing.

And you're right, testing the hard drive for errors would help pin point the issue.

Peace

jamiedolan · 12 Jan 2011

soho1 said:

i am going to go out on a limb and say it's not your system. You have a dang nice hd there. I didn't see your experience numbers, only that you reported the hd being lowest. In this case, you might want to indicate the hard numbers. I you are at least 4 you should be fine for windows 7.

How old is your cable modem? Wth? Yeah, how old? Isps like comcast are upgrading. You can get 100gb transfer rates now. Not on those old modems however, and some old modems are causing problems with services as they struggle to stay online at high data speeds. All your web apps transfer data and office occasionally talks to the web so you should at least monitor to see if you are having any modem communication issues.

Performance - Limiting Factors?-fullscreen-capture-1122011-20456-pm.jpg

I'm at 5.9 for the hard drive.

My DSL model is fairly old, but the router is brand new. I'd love to have a faster connection, the fastest connection that is available here is cable that is stated at 15 /1 MB. I really dislike the cable company here, and am not confident that it would really be as fast as they state. The DSL has been fairly reliable.

Do you know that the Net Monitor program is compatible with Windows 7? I had a Net Monitor program installed that was on the free programs list on this site, and it ended up being the cause of the BSOD I was getting.

I'm not ruling out a problem with the Internet connection, I'm not a huge fan of Att.

Jamie

jamiedolan · 12 Jan 2011

sygnus21 said:

Programs "not responding" IS NOT indicative of a slow hard drive, but more of an OS/software issue! In short, unless you fix the software issues, all you're going to do is move those issues to the SSD drive!!!

Is there a program that can record my system resource use. Right now for example, I have open:

14 Firefox windows, 1 running Netflix
Picasa 3
Thunderbird

and I am having no performance issues at all. Once I get Chrome open, and start running an upload, then, likely, I'll start seeing things hang / pause some more.

Something that can record my system use seems like it would be helpful in determining if I am actually maxing out any of my system resources.

I did run a full chkdsk (where I rebooted and let it run for several hours) and the drive showed as being fine.

I'm not opposed to doing the system repair install, but wonder if I should, according to the link it says:
"Do a Repair installation if:
A System Restore did not help fix your Windows 7.
There is no other easier option left that can fix your Windows 7."

I didn't do a system restore, though, maybe this doesn't apply, since this performance issue didn't start at any determinable point in time.

Thanks,

Jamie

jamiedolan · 12 Jan 2011

sygnus21 said:

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post is that in order to help diagnose "performance" issues we need "full" system specs, otherwise we're searching in the dark.

Are these the specs your looking for?

Performance - Limiting Factors?-fullscreen-capture-1122011-23717-pm.jpg

jamiedolan · 12 Jan 2011

[QUOTE=Julio Cortez;1178550]

sygnus21 said:

That's why I suggested that it could be a disk issue.. Nothing is "sure" without a bit of testing though :)

HD Test results:
https://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-d...ml#post1178226

sygnus21 · 12 Jan 2011

jamiedolan said:

Is there a program that can record my system resource use.

You can use - Resource Monitor - Control Panel, Performance Information and Tools, Advanced Tools, Open Resource Monitor.

Performance - Limiting Factors?-resource-monitor.jpg

This will tell you what your system is doing and what resources are being used.

You can also Generate a system health report which will point out any errors found - Control Panel, Performance Information and Tools, Advanced Tools, Generate a system health report

jamiedolan said:

I'm not opposed to doing the system repair install, but wonder if I should, according to the link it says:
"Do a Repair installation if:
A System Restore did not help fix your Windows 7.
There is no other easier option left that can fix your Windows 7."

Doing a repair install will fix any corrupt, broken, or missing files on Windows 7 without removing or deleting your other programs. But as usual, always backup you critical data just in case.

The other thing is if you do the the repair install, you "might" have to reinstall some programs. The repair install will tell you which ones.

I've done a repair install and had no issues, and I have a ton of stuff installed. I did however have to reinstall one or two programs, but it was well worth it.

jamiedolan said:

HD Test results:
https://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-d...ml#post1178226

Well it looks like your hard drive isn't the issue :)

Hope this helps.

profdlp · 12 Jan 2011

I like this as a test of my Internet speed:

DSLReports Home : Broadband ISP Reviews News Tools and Forums

EDIT: Should have added "Go to Tools>>Speed Test" for clarity.

GeneO · 12 Jan 2011

Use the windows 7 performance information and tools -> advanced tools and post any performance issues if any.

Then look at the -> view performance details in event log

try -> generate system health report

look at

view reliability history

finally look at the system event log and filter on error, warning, and critical

See if these turn up anything

**cluberti** · 13 Jan 2011

Note for people serious about performance collection and analysis (and it seems the OP may be, as well as some others of you on this thread), I strongly suggest looking into (and using) tools from the Windows Performance Toolkit to gather and analyze data.