BenB
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| posted on 21/2/11 at 03:13 PM |
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Arse / blooming computers
My wifes new laptop is seriously playing silly buggers... Any ideas?
It's a dell m150r which is a AMD dual core processor with 4Gb running Win7 home edition.
It's not been maxed out with extra software (and didn't come with much to begin with). We're using Microsoft Security Essentials
(which on my computer doesn't cause any problems at least).
Trouble is every minute or so the whole thing freezes with the blue-circle-of-patience doing its swirly swirly thing and the HD light going ape. After
about a minute or so it wakes up and carries on where it left off.
When I've looked at the resources manager it quite clearly shows the hard disk going crazy and lots of "page faults". I've
tried switching off superfetch (no difference), I've tried uninstalling FF (in case it was the memory leak problem). Wierd thing is when the HD
goes ape it's the "system" accessing the HD not an individual program. It's as if it thinks it hasn't got 4Gb (most of
which is unused when it's fragging the HD).
Any idea? It makes the system virtually useless. It's under warranty so we can send it back but I'm just trying to find any ideas before
we do.
It "feels" like it's suddenly deciding to do some swap file swapping on a massive scale but I can't see why!
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britishtrident
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| posted on 21/2/11 at 03:31 PM |
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Could be a hard disk problem system is trying to read bad sectors, needs a hard disk check run
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Check-a-drive-for-errors
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BenB
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| posted on 21/2/11 at 03:33 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by britishtrident
Could be a hard disk problem system is trying to read bad sectors, needs a hard disk check run
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Check-a-drive-for-errors
That's what I thought but I did a defrag and a scandisk and it call came back 100% fine and defragmented.
I'm wondering if it could be the indexing service as it's a new(ish) computer but you think the indexing service wouldn't have such
a high priority as to freeze the whole computer....
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britishtrident
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| posted on 21/2/11 at 03:35 PM |
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Indexing is a nuisance and best turned off altogether but not that much of a pain in the butt.
[I] “ What use our work, Bennet, if we cannot care for those we love? .”
― From BBC TV/Amazon's Ripper Street.
[/I]
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BenB
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| posted on 21/2/11 at 03:38 PM |
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I know- usually I just turn it off when a computer is getting long in the tooth to eek a few more months of usable speed out of it! But I'm
stuck for things to try 
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Rod Ends
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 posted on 21/2/11 at 03:59 PM |
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Is it connected to the interweb and downloading updates?
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BenB
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| posted on 21/2/11 at 04:06 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by Rod Ends
Is it connected to the interweb and downloading updates?
Nope. Tried switching off the wireless and makes no difference.....
Just having a play with resource manager on top so I can try and see what is happening when it goes funky...
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r1_pete
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| posted on 21/2/11 at 04:14 PM |
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Check th esize of your windows page file, some programmes are designed to use it, with 4GB RAM only such programmes really use it, size wise should be
4 - 6Gb i.e. 1 - 1.5 x installed RAM.
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BenB
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| posted on 21/2/11 at 04:39 PM |
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Page file is 4Gb. Which is strange when the RAM isn't being used fully....
Although I have to say so far this afternoon the bloody thing has worked fine....
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Macbeast
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| posted on 21/2/11 at 06:45 PM |
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Sheduled virus sweep ? There have been a lot of updates recently. Maybe it does a search each time after an update install.
I'm addicted to brake fluid, but I can stop anytime.
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mcerd1
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| posted on 21/2/11 at 08:14 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by Macbeast
Sheduled virus sweep ? There have been a lot of updates recently. Maybe it does a search each time after an update install.
^^ what anti-vurus has it got ?
some of them are really bad at soaking up resorces
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BenB
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| posted on 21/2/11 at 10:36 PM |
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I'm using microsoft security essentials which usually isn't too bad. Certainly on my other dell (about the same vintage) it's not
causing a problem. I wonder whether it could be a flash problem on a 64 bit computer because it seems to happen most when using flash based websites
like bbc iplayer. Resources manager shows the cPU isn't being maxed out....
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