OS + apps "pushed" to cache

[nzsmarty]

Hi

Whenever my XP Pro SP1 (+ all critical updates) system is asked to do something with a big file (write a CD, copy a 500MB+ file, convert WAV to MP3, watch a movie, etc), it pushes all of the existing apps and a lot of the OS to the disk cache.

Just to Alt-TAB to another app takes 30-60 seconds (I have a pentium 4 4GHz notebook). And just to bring up a print dialog or right click on the desktop menu can take 20-30 seconds to come up.

It's insane and it's driving me nuts.

I tried setting the cache for a server and for a workstation - no difference.

It used to run fine, so it's something I have done. I've Googled my *** off, I have been all over MS, IRC and all over the place, and so far I am still to run into someone who's even HEARD about this problem at all, let alone knows how to go about fixing it.

Is there anyone here who is able and willing? I'd be SO grateful.

[prathapml]

How much RAM do you have?

Try disabling all the visual effects from (System Properties >> Advanced >> Visual Effects). Also, run "msconfig" and uncheck all the unnecessary startup items.

Look through your entire C:\ drive and your user profile (temp, appdata, TIF, etc.) for files to delete. Download and run regclean. Set a constant swap-file. Defragment all your drives.

Yup, that should do it - your system should now run much faster.

BTW, You must have surely got that 4 GHz laptop of yours tele-ported from the Sirian galaxy or from Pluto ('coz we earthlings haven't heard of such a laptop yet) - LMAO

[DarkPhoenix]

Download and run regclean.

I just figured I'd give it a try... and I did.. and then I just looked at the date.. "Modified December 30, 1997" and the regedit signature is "REGEDIT4"... yo.. I don't dare let that happen to my PC, lol.. undo!

[prathapml]

Despite what those things seem to suggest, and inspite of the fact that it is a pretty old tool (unsupported by MS, as always) - it works well enough.

It's more likely that the tool will save your machine from problems, than create a few. As for the "regedit 4" signature, you know what to change that to. Besides, it was released back in the days when win98 was just a glint in the eyes of beta-testers - so the signature is self-explanatory/obvious. I can assure you I've been using this tool since a lot of time on win2k/xp and it hasn't created any problems.

[nzsmarty]

Ok.

I have 512MB ram on a 3Ghz notebook w 40GB HD / 12 GB free.

I have:

Defragmented (daily)

Reg cleaned (just now)

All visual effects are disabled (have been from day 1 ;-)

Disk cleanup (just now)

Swap file - constant (for many months)

Swap file is even defragmented

What you may not have noticed is that I am not complaining about XP being slow. I'm complaining about a disk intensive app pushing all other apps and the OS into the cache.

For example, burning a CD. Instead of allocating a buffer and reusing it, the app seems to be getting a new buffer allocated for every track. Result: after 1 burned CD (640MB), nearly all my physical memory is taken up by the CD burning app and buffer (with some non-swappable OS stuff), and the rest (other application and all swappable OS) is sitting in the disk cache.

Somehow I don't see how disabling visual effects, etc is relevant to this.

However, I am desperate, and I have carried out all your suggestions. I'm sad to report no change.

This one's a real ********

[prathapml]

Well there is a registry tweak which will give "high" priority to the process in the foreground, and give it as much memory/processor-time as it wants (sub-ordinating all other running processes). This can be done for the kernel alone, or for apps alone - so you got the place to start looking from, google is your friend.

All the best.

[Weed]

have u installed the ide,chipset driver or u using the standard from windows?

[nzsmarty]

I'm using the standard IDE driver from XP, but it's running UltraDMA5 and I can't see how that's getting in the way.

I did find a solution however.

A program called CachemanXP 1.1.

Outer Technologies

My system is now behaving itself - smart cache and paging file management appears to be this utility's forte.

How does it work?

RAM-Recovery functionality is already included in Windows. You may ask yourself why there are so many programs that offer this feature. There is no magic behind this function. Inactive or crashed programs are simply moved from your physical memory (RAM) to a space on your Hard Drive called the Paging File (=Swap File).

If Windows does recover RAM already, why bother?

As an example imagine a computer with 512 MBytes of RAM. After booting up you have 300 MBytes free RAM left. You launch several applications, work with them and free RAM goes constantly down. After 3 hours there is only 10 MBytes of free memory left. Then you start loading a data file that needs 30 MBytes of RAM. Now the Windows recovery feature becomes active, programs that have not been used for a longer time are moved out to the Paging File in order to make room for 30 MBytes of data. This process consumes both CPU time and causes disk activity - it creates a slow down. Preferably you would like to work with the data immediately, not wait until Windows makes room for it. Instead your cursor becomes a hourglass and you have to wait.

What does CachemanXP differently?

CachemanXP will not wait with the recovery until your system runs completely out of RAM. You can configure at which state (below value) CachemanXP should perform the recovery process. The postpone recovery on high system activity option ensures that no recovery happens if you are working on an important task and do not want to be disturbed. CachemanXP will wait until the job is done and perform the recovery thereafter. Since the recovery happens earlier as usual your system will have free RAM left for a much longer time.

How does this CachemanXP feature differ from RAM-Recovery in other programs?

Almost all RAM-Recovery programs do more harm than good. Usually the recovery is done too often (constant disk activity), too much data gets moved to the Paging File (so when the user switches programs there are major slow downs) and often the recovery is executed in times where the user does something important and CPU consuming, slowing down all system operations.

The above describes the problem I was having. MAJOR slowdown due to disk trashing/thrashing.

I'm posting this here so others might find the solution too.

[prathapml]

Its so nice of you to post back with what the solution was!

I'm sure it would be helpful to other who have the same problem.

[xolox]

I use CachemanXP as well. It's a VERY nice utility. Also has an "Auto-Optimize" option that sets some very useful Windows features (some of which I didn't even know!) to the recommended level for your hardware configuration.

The settings it tweaks:

* Large System Cache

* Icon Cache

* DNS Cache

* Internet Explorer Cache

* Dormant File Limit

* Unused File Cache

* Cache File timeout

* AVI scanning

* Balloon tips

* Beep on errors

* Creation of short filenames

* Executive paging

* Explorer network crawling

* Filename completion

* Font smoothing (ClearType)

* Indexing

* Low disk space checks

* Messenger

* NTFS last access update

* Scheduled Tasks network search

* System Restore

* Windows key

* WMI logging

* Additional worker threads

* Additional delayed worker threads

* Hung application timeout

* Limit reserve bandwith

* Max IE connections per server

* Show menu delay

* Wait to kill application timeout

* Wait to kill service timeout

* Autoend tasks

* Defragment hard disk when idle

* Reserve more space for the master file table

* Run folder windows as a seperate process

* Run taskbar as a seperate process

* Unload Dlls from memory

Few, that took a while to type over. Short to say, I'd recommend it to anyone using XP.

--------

Greetz Peter