Almost no response from windows 7..angry wife

[masplin]

Hope this is right thing

Pressed F12 to get into Dell Diagnostics which ran a test that included hard drive. Said DST Short Test passed.
Then carried on into some other device test which includes various SATA confidence testing. No errors reported

 

[sheppitydawg]

i have looked through this post and one or two things come to light.

initially i had exactly the same errors generated by bonjour ,i did not have a performance issue but had a few random blues screen hard resets.
repaired the install of bonjour (touch wood ) no problems since.

one other issue i have seen in the past and experienced myself that has caused huge performance issues is internet and virus security programs.
i have performed fresh installs loaded my internet security and found the default setting for windows firewall(on) has not been switched off resulting in a conflict with the 3rd party firewall.this is not uncommon and can sit there undetected until it is checked or internet access is performed.

whilst i accept some of the hardware investigations are valid the software issues should be examined prior to the hardware diagnostics.
the fact that safe mode without network seemed to improve performance ,..then the issues appear to creep back with network seem to point at maybe other avenues to explore first.


my gut feeling is this is related to bonjour (which is network based software) as stated a corrupt update gave me many severe problems and a repair install resolved all issues.

 

[masplin]

So should I uninstall bonjour and get a fresh download from Apple?

I'm a bit unclear about the security issue. I use Kapersky Internet Security. I looked at my Windows firewall and it just says it is not using the recommended settings not whether it is on or off. I'm guessing this means it's off as it should be.

 

[sheppitydawg]

with the bonjour go into the control panel select programs ..uninstal progams find bonjour click on it and select repair in the options on the task bar.

worked for me and as i say i had exactly the same errors as you although the symptoms were very different.

fingers crossed.

 

[masplin]

ok done that so see if things improve.

 

[gregrocker]

I would uninstall Bonjour using Revo Uninstaller in Advanced Mode - do not restart when prompted after Revo runs uninstaller, instead click Next to delete leftover registry keys and files Revo cues up.

I believe ITunes will work without it, as it has on several where I yanked it to improve performance. If not, reinstall a clean copy.

Look in Device Manager to see what brand HD you have so you can run maker's diag/repair full CD scan on it, as Deacon suggests: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

Run also a http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html

 

[Barman58]

With the Bonjour service I would advise that you decide if you need it at all.

The service provides network discovery services especially printer for OSX s and related operating systems - win7 provides most if not all these services natively, so it may be that the duplication of these services can cause slowdowns of the system - that is certainly what the reports that are on the net would suggest.

I personally do not find Apple software to be well written for the windows platform, and so do not install it if at all possible on systems that I manage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonjour_(software)

 

[masplin]

Hi Greg. Unhelpfully the Device Manager lists the HD as ARRAY0. Going to theDell web site it lists the components on my build as

HARD DRIVE 640GB SERIAL ATA2 RAID 0 STRI

Any way to find out manufacturer without opening the pc?

 

[TVeblen]

Dell PCs usually ship with a Service Tag number. You can usually find this on the back of the machine or on your invoice.

Go to the Dell website, enter your service tag number and you can get full specs for your machine (as far as Dell goes in giving out this info).

 

[masplin]

OK have used Revo to uninstall Bonjour and wil lnot reinstall and see how it runs

Disk Check didn't show any issues.

 

[masplin]

that what i did on the Dell web site and the description of my components is what I put. Sounds like I need to power off and open it. One for tomorrow.

 

[gregrocker]

Just be sure not to touch the electronics without discharging any static electricity first by touching the case.

You may have done this hundreds of times for all I know but we can't assume that here.

 

[masplin]

Have installed Sea Tools for Windows as they are Seagate drives in the array.

Various tests say unavailable. Only ones I can run are Generic tests and both short and long are passed.

 

[archie123]

Just a quick one.......how much virtual memory is available?

right click computer , properties , advanced system settings ,advanced tab then under performance select settings then select advanced

under the change tab make sure its set to automatic

 

[MoInSTL]

Looks like a clean install with just raid, chipset drivers, Windows and Kaspersky would have been faster. I do know that for my Studio 1558 laptop, there are several drivers that are listed under my service tag that are not to be installed. So that cannot be relied on. You can cross reference the Dell listed hardware with Everest or PC Wizard. There is a System Reliability Test included in Everest.

 

[sheppitydawg]

has the bonjour repair had any affect?

 

[gregrocker]

Win7 can be allergic to RAID. You might want to try reinstalling to a single HD to test the difference.

 

[MoInSTL]

Win7 can be allergic to RAID. You might want to try reinstalling to a single HD to test the difference.

I have been running RAID0 on my desktop (Ultimate x86) since the 7 RC days and never had a problem. I suggest a clean install before breaking his RAID.

EDIT: If the OP has an extra HDD, could try using that after disconnecting the other drives, would accomplish the same thing.

 

[masplin]

As a bit of history I bought this pc for myself and ran it with the a same configuration and using pretty much identical software under Vista 32 bit. I upgraded (downgraded!) it to Win7 64 bit (format and clean install) and since then it has had problems. I dont believe my wife uses any software that i didn't use although does uses itunes.

I'm ok at following instructions, but my eyes glaze over a bit at the thought of reinstalling OS and changing hardware configuration!!! I was going to let it run without bonjour for a bit and see if that makes a diference before trying another step (otherwise we wont learn anything). Unfortunately my daughter just failed her exams so we are panicing looking for a new school so my wife won't be on her computer much at the moment.

I thnk the next step is a repair install as Greg suggested since what i have is the original Dell Vista 32 bit OS plus a Win7 64bit upgrade disc. I am asusming a complete install involves reinstalling Vista and then doing the upgrade again as the upgrade needs to find a genuine exisiting OS to upgrade.

 

[masplin]

Not sure if this is important. In checking the virtual memory as requested it says 4029Mb. However I notice that there is no paging file. i thikn i might have removed this when I defraged the drive so that I could partition it and forgot to turn it back on. Could this be a contributor to slow performance?