Advices in how analize and find which software is slowing windows down

cesm23 · 26 Nov 2011

I am currently using windows 7 sp1 ultimate 64bits, and even having 8gb ram and a computer with the kind of specs i have i notice that sometimes after a few days windows starts getting REAL slow, i mean, starting to use a lot of virtual memory, i also notice that Windows7 start taking longer to draw windows graphics on screen and opening programs (even when not using virtual memory). Of course that when restarting windows fixes all these problems, but eventually the problem comes back. By the way i use windows's default swap file management, so i have a single 8191mb swap file, and the drives are defragmented.

Also unfortunately i need several programs installed everytime i re-install windows (it's always the same "pack" of software) so getting rid of them is not an option UNLESS i am able to find out exactly which ones are slowing things down and this is the problem, how to know which one is.

The problem is that i need the computer 24/7 turned on, and doing a daily restart is real boring (mostly because i can't afford SSD drives so please don't bother advising to go SSD) because with all these programs i get around 1 minute to have windows ready to be used after a restart, and i want to avoid restarts since apparently the HHD's get power cyles (i am not sure about this, doing a soft reset does make a power cycle on the HHDs just like when we turn off and on the computer?) and in other computers i had i definetly noticed that in a computer with the same model of harddrives, the harddrive got worned out a lot faster than in my computer which is always turned on, but let's not discuss this.

I also noticed that just having all these programs installed don't cause much slowdowns, it appears that it's when i run certain programs windows starts to get slow, and this is what i need, i would like to know if there is any software that is able to directly measure Windows7 response time or measure slowdowns by virtual memory without i having to do it visually ? I would prefer watching actual numbers of the milliseconds to be able to judge more accuratly which program does slowdown more the pc when open, because like this it can just be any program, and there's way too many programs to be closing or uninstalling one by one to try to find the "culprit".

I already checked the windows resource manager but i found nothing unusual (altough i don't have much experience analizyng it therefore the reason of this post as well), the amount of memory used by each program is more or less the same than it was after a restart, so i suspect that probably this is a problem of cache that is slowly "eating" up memory and doesn't get cleared. (i usually move large video files between harddrives i am not sure if the cache could be causing problems).

Also some kind of tool to be able to "optimize" memory or clear any cache or resources that aren't used anymore would be great, all of this to avoid doing soft resets in a daily basis. Unless doing a log-off/in solves the problem ? I haven't tried it yet but in case it doesn't i would appreciate some advices.

Also could downgrading from ultimate to premium improve this ?

Now, i am aware that i should be saying a lot more details about my situation, but there is so much to tell that i prefer that you people do the questions instead, just check out my profile before since i just updated it with my current hardware specs.

Oh one more thing i am aware of the more basic "tricks" to speed up windows, even tough i already deactivated search service most of the others i prefer to avoid (like turning off aero) because i dont' think that is the problem since in the first hours of use the computer is quite fast even when using aero (besides turning off aero only improves speed noticeably when that problem starts happening).

Corazon · 26 Nov 2011

To me, that sounds suspiciously like a memory leak slowly eating up all your available RAM until Windows is forced to start paging continuously.

What we'll need is a detailed list of all your installed software. Can you open Programs and Features from your Control Panel, maximize the window and take a screenshot of it?

Which antivirus software do you have installed?

cesm23 · 26 Nov 2011

To me, that sounds suspiciously like a memory leak slowly eating up all your available RAM until Windows is forced to start paging continuously.

Yeah now that you mention it yes, i am starting to think it's indeed a memory leak because i think that the computer does get slower and slower even when not doing anything at all, but is it normal that doesn't show up in the resouce manager ? If not is there a way to detect this ?

What we'll need is a detailed list of all your installed software. Can you open Programs and Features from your Control Panel, maximize the window and take a screenshot of it?

Well... it's really a ton of software, there's going to take a long time troubleshooting all this i hope you or anyone else have patience to go on with me on this :)

Which antivirus software do you have installed?

Kaspersky internet security 2010. There's no way to replace this, not even with the more recent versions, also this is the only firewall / antivirus i trust, i already tried many others but always had worse problems. Also i tried the 2011 version a few months ago and it was even slower than this one (100% cpu usage in the first core very frequently), altough i might try it again soon if i found that the culprit is this 2010 suite.

cesm23 · 26 Nov 2011

Wait a minute... i have found this application "Advanced System Optimizer" from systweak and it has a module specifically suited for memory optimizer and even recover memory leaks maybe it's perfect for the problem i have...

Maybe it's best to postpone this here and let me test the software for a week and then i give the feedback here, in case it's not enought to solve the problem i reply back here and then we continue this.

Update : it seems its supposed to temporarly clear the memory leaks and optimize memory, so even if this works, i will be only treating the symptons of the problem and not it's root cause so i guess it's best continue this thread, since i don't see how this program can help tracing the root of the problem it's mostly to temporarly "delay" the problem i think :)

cesm23 · 01 Dec 2011

Finally i think i know which was the problem : the problem is Adobe audition 3.0 it "eats" almost 4gb of memory just by opening a 44m audio file after applying some filters, this seems to be caused by it's undo system. Anyway so now i know how to avoid the problem from happening, so i guess this can be marked as solved :)