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[Mr Skrunts]

I havent really been into the computer scene for the last 2 or 3 years.

I used to have a lovly little collection of test and check utils for the PC.

My Favourites back in the Dos days were PCTools and XTGold.

With all the problems I have been having recently I am after a new collection of software.

The main stuff I am after is moitoring software.  My hard drive seems start working in the back ground for no reason at all, I want some sort of logging utility that willl help me find out why.

Plus something to monitor the ports on my network to see if I am being accessed.  allthough there is a firewall in my modem and in windows, I am allways of the understanding if someone can write the program, someone else will hack it.

Any speed test, monitor, checkup utils would be welcome, just PM me or post me a link.

Many thanks in Advance for any possible help.  

[JamesV6CDX]

If the HDD is constantly in use, have you got enough Ram? Maybe it's using the swap file instead?

[Mr Skrunts]

Have checked as soon as there are issues.  Windows task manger showing only 40/55% in use.  Was the 1st think I thought about.

But 2 GB of ram has allways been enough, very rare for much of it being put to a lot of use.

My problems all seem to the maxing the CPU use, which is a 3.0GHz single core 64bit.

Thhe machine is well and trully redy to be formatted though.  But I found out last ight my key has run out on my Windows disk am hanging on before I do anything with my main PC.

[JamesV6CDX]

Are there any applications / processes (listed or otherwise) that are using up the resources?

I was asked to look at this problem with a corporate web server once, it turned out it was being used to distribute a load of German porn

[Mr Skrunts]

The 2 main things that are listed in the resourses list are Ieplore and system idel.  Same as normal.

All I ever seem to do these days is have IE7 open with about 6 tabs for various web pages.

[Mr Skrunts]

I know when I have had a couple of hours plating C&C Kane Edition my PC allways seems to have slowitus.  Allthough it shows normal memory useage afterwards it seems a bit glitchy.  As I would have said from the win95 days, A TSR program.  But a reboot solves that.

it's just the last couple of weeks, flipping thing has just been a complete pain.

[JamesV6CDX]

The 2 main things that are listed in the resourses list are Ieplore and system idel.  Same as normal.

All I ever seem to do these days is have IE7 open with about 6 tabs for various web pages.

Funny you say that - once I upgraded to IE7 on my works laptop and started doing that, it goes to a standstill!

[seprim]

Hi
 R U on xp pro ?  if so 2Gb is fine but latter OS require more
firstly - scandisk and defrag - thats your first port of call - if you have recurring/increasing bad sectors from the scandisk - u need to think about new hdd, then how many processes have you got running ? - if its more than 30 you need to cull some
secondly - James is right - hard-set swap drive to another hdd on a different bus - eg if your system disk is on primary - set it to secondary hdd somewhere eg swap = 320mb - 760 mb (set it to 760 as both max and min) it saves the expanding and contracing allocation of hdd space if they are both the same
thirdly - start run msconfig startup tab and turn everything orff (except the vitals) google anything you are not sure of
fourthly - SiSoft Sandra will help at optimising your PC
fifthly- ensure your fans are running ok inside the PC, and consider a liquid cooling system (they can lower noise too - which is nice)
sickly - mozilla firefox is the browser of choice and if you look at its footprint compared to ieX you will understand.
sevenly - are u on router or adslmodem - cos if u are using an adsl modem then chuck it in the bin and get a router/switch arrangement such as the netgear DG834PN and turn off the wireless and run fixed cables and turn on NAT
eightly  - which pc based firewall are you using cos you could ininstall it, install the latest high ranking product eg ESET security suite and do a complete hardware scan . . .
....................well thats what i would do for a start anyways  8-)
gl and hf  

[Mr Skrunts]

Hi
R U on xp pro ?  if so 2Gb is fine but latter OS require more

XP Pro


firstly - scandisk and defrag - thats your first port of call - if you have recurring/increasing bad sectors from the scandisk - u need to think about new hdd, then how many processes have you got running ? - if its more than 30 you need to cull some

Boot drive is a 200GB on IDE, Allthough I understand your point on Defrag, I believe it to be a waste of time as rebooting windows alone will undo a lot of it.  The Drive has been Scandisks and there are no errors.  If you picked up on my thread, you will see it's only IE7 that I normally have running with 6 tabs open

secondly - James is right - hard-set swap drive to another hdd on a different bus - eg if your system disk is on primary - set it to secondary hdd somewhere eg swap = 320mb - 760 mb (set it to 760 as both max and min) it saves the expanding and contracing allocation of hdd space if they are both the same
thirdly - start run msconfig startup tab and turn everything orff (except the vitals) google anything you are not sure of

Forgive me but I dont see where James has posted any of the above in this thread.


fourthly - SiSoft Sandra will help at optimising your PC

Maybe


fifthly- ensure your fans are running ok inside the PC, and consider a liquid cooling system (they can lower noise too - which is nice)

Dont believe there are issues there the Machine has adequate cooling, the problem I believe is software related.


sickly - mozilla firefox is the browser of choice and if you look at its footprint compared to ieX you will understand.

Fair point, but I dont think that is the full problem solver.

sevenly - are u on router or adslmodem - cos if u are using an adsl modem then chuck it in the bin and get a router/switch arrangement such as the netgear DG834PN and turn off the wireless and run fixed cables and turn on NAT

Wont touch wireless with a berge pole, modem and options are still a consideration, am about to move home so will upgrade then.  I still come back to feeling it's just a cse of flatening the machine  and formatting etc, tis way overdue, and probably clogged with all sorts of crap from old programs.  By far the longest I have used a macine with out reformatting.  Just looked, My documents folder is dated 4th Nov 2--7.  Thats 9 months cotinous use.  Normally build myself a new machine every 6 to 9 months.


eightly  - which pc based firewall are you using cos you could ininstall it, install the latest high ranking product eg ESET security suite and do a complete hardware scan . . .
....................well thats what i would do for a start anyways  
gl and hf


All good points matey and thanks.

Have had a new board and CPU sat here with 4GB (2 x 2GB) ready to build for about six months, I think it's about time it got assembled.

Will take some time out and do that first, back up the old machine to it and then go fault finding.

Cheers for all your help.

[master-sambo]

Skruntie,

With all due respect, you shouldn't disregard defrag like that.  Last week (I am a network admin) I saw a £2million SAN system grind to a halt because of the high fragmentation on its disks.

You ought to defrag on a regular basis.  A reboot will not do this.

[Bandit127]

Registry Mechanic also works for me. It clears out the dead links, file extensions, references to missing DLLs etc. from the Registry.
It's not cheap (about £15).

It found over 400 errors on two different XP systems on the first pass.

Defrag is definately worth doing every month or so IMO.

[TheBoy]

Defrag is less important on modern filesystems as it was on FAT style.  True multitasking/multiuser systems make it even less important. In fact, filesystems like ext3 don't have any defrag utilities available.

NTFS v5 as used on XP only shows, on average, small improvements after defrag.

[TheBoy]

If you're in the realms of clearing registry, far better to go down rebuild route.

On my day to day XP machines, I tend to rebuild every 6 - 12 weeks.  On Vista, I haven't had to do planned rebuild, as I've always blown it up spectacularly.  Current laptop gone since November on original build (not seen that sort of desktop stability since NT4!)

For XP users, get a decent basebuild with drivers, Office suite, all configured, then use a decent clone tool

[Mr Skrunts]

Skruntie,

With all due respect, you shouldn't disregard defrag like that.  Last week (I am a network admin) I saw a £2million SAN system grind to a halt because of the high fragmentation on its disks.

You ought to defrag on a regular basis.  A reboot will not do this.

Used to defrag on a daily basis with various operating system.

After proving to myself after a defrag and a reboot by defraging again, I just believe it to be a waste of time on a system/boot disk.  But no I do not disregard the benrfits of Defrag

I actually think I would get better results from some sort of registry cleaner.

Not wanting to call anyone's abilitys on here as I am a complete novice by comparioson to a lot of you.  I am allways willing to learn.

But I know the way I abuse my systems installing and uninstalling software, I normally format and reinstall on a reasonable basis, with this install being well overdue.

I tend to have different uses for my machines, but recently have been doing everthing through just the one hence the mess.

Mainly I was just looking for monitoring, test and evaluation software utilites to see what I could suss out about my system.

There is no need to spend money on it, but there is a need to find out why a 5 day old 500GB hard drive died on me.  I thinl it was the lack of heat disipation as the hard drive is fitted via plastic rails inside the chassis, rather than being screwed into the metal part of the metal chassis of the case llowing some heat to be drawn away.  Ectra fans should not be an issue for hard drives, especially when there a 2 spaces above and below, and the side panel of the case is never ever fitted.

[Mr Skrunts]

Defrag is less important on modern filesystems as it was on FAT style.  True multitasking/multiuser systems make it even less important. In fact, filesystems like ext3 don't have any defrag utilities available.

NTFS v5 as used on XP only shows, on average, small improvements after defrag.

Hadnt read this when I replied to the above, but I reckon my past findings have just been confirmed (to a degree) as I say, there are reasons to back up the benefits of defrag as well.  I would say there is more benifit for data storage and speeding up file searches.