Windows 7 Windows 7 System Lag Issues.

[Jonofthefunk]

Hello there. About 2 months ago, my computer has gotten some strange issues lately. When I'm just minding my own business, wither it'd be chatting with some buds on MSN or browsing Youtube, basically anything that I can possibly do internet wise, suddenly, from out of nowhere, the system lags completely, it makes every single action, from closing programs, too opening programs, to open the start menu, to close it, and basically everything else you can possibly do lag too a crippled crawl unless you restart the computer. However, if I am ever on MSN, the IM window seem to be just fine, cept for switching tabs though. Lately, the lag's gotten worse too the point where I've resorted too force restarts. (5 out of 8 days I resorted to force restarts BTW) So, if anyone can help me figure out what the problem is, please let me know as soon as possible. I'd be embarrassed if this was a hardware issue.

System Name: JON
[System Summary]

Item Value
OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name JON
System Manufacturer TOSHIBA
System Model Satellite A135
System Type X86-based PC
Processor Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2080 @ 1.73GHz, 1733 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date TOSHIBA V1.20, 3/6/2007
SMBIOS Version 2.4
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name JON\Laptop
Time Zone Central Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 2.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 1.99 GB
Available Physical Memory 1.09 GB
Total Virtual Memory 4.98 GB
Available Virtual Memory 3.75 GB
Page File Space 2.99 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

 

[Mike]

Hi and welcome to the forums,

Have you considered checking system temps? If your CPU is getting too hot, it may be throttling you down and forcing problems. The same issue could be said if there is motherboard or graphics overheating.

You can get a 30-day trial of Downloads | AIDA64 to get some rather lengthy diagnostics, but most importantly, sensor output readings from most of your hardware.

Since there are a number of issues that could be causing this problem, you may want to check Resource Monitor.

Go to Start -> Search -> Resource Monitor

Look for high activity in Disk I/O or CPU utilization. If you can manage to understand this information correctly, you can find out if there are programs or applications using an enormous amount of processor, memory or disk activity. You can then terminate these applications from starting by default, or isolate them until you can find a solution.

These are some basic checks to look for. I hope these suggestions may help.

By the way, it looks like you are a bit low on RAM with only 2GB. And depending on whether or not that is DDR2 or DDR3 memory, you really want to check Resource Monitor to find out how much RAM is being used. Chances are this is your problem.

Kind Regards,
Mike

 

[Jonofthefunk]

Hey there again. I got a little update for you. Since I didn't exactly know what too search for in Resource Monitor completely, I decided too follow the first tip and make sure the labtop didn't overheat. Sure enough, it lasted 11 hours plus without the system lag triggering. Before I went to bed last night though, it acted up again despite the lack of heat. So, any new things I should know now that overheating aint the issue?

 

[Mike]

Right before you went to bed, what were you doing, how many programs were running, etc. I suspect its a memory issue, because you only have 2GB, and many programs can cause you to start using it all. At that point, the system will start paging/caching hard disk space, which will slow down your system.

To find out more, it would be best for you to determine what programs you have open when it happens. Even checking Task Manager (Ctrl-Shift-Esc) for processes using up 100% CPU and "Performance" can give you a good idea of what is going on.

So I recommend making an inventory of the applications that are open when your system begins to lag. At that moment, you should check the Resource Monitor. In Resource Monitor, you are looking for CPU utilization above 60-75%. You want to look at the memory tab and see if you have very little memory available. Anything under 128MB of free memory left and I would think you have a chance to start seeing a massive slow down.

I am in Windows 7 64-bit with Adobe Reader, Word, and a few programs open here and there, and my memory usage is 4.2GB. If I only had 2GB of RAM on my computer, this would start slowing me down. That amount of RAM will make it very difficult for you to multi-task and have multiple applications (and even browser tabs) running at the same time.

You should consider a memory upgrade, if it is possible.

But first you must determine the issue. Examine the Resource Monitor to see. In the area of disk utilization, if your computer is constantly reading/writing over 1MB/s, you may run into trouble. On average, you should not see much more than 0-500KB/s of Disk I/O on most systems.

So with my technique, you are trying to determine if processor utilization, memory utilization, or hard disk utilization is causing a slow down. In your case, I am telling you that it would most likely be memory consumption that is causing intermittent lag.

Without reviewing logs or monitoring system resources, it would become difficult for you to determine the cause and thereby come to a solution. For example, if you determined memory was a determinate factor, you could upgrade your memory, or reduce the number of programs that open on system startup and remain in the systray.

If I were simply to go by procedure and assumption, and I am being told by an end-user that their system is intermittently lagging, that they are running Windows 7, and that they have a maximum of 2GB of RAM available, the answer is, almost definately, that more memory is required. Windows 7 only requires 1GB of RAM in 32-bit, and 2GB in 64-bit, but these are the minimum requirements for the operating system to run at all. You want to have at least some room for multiple applications. If you cannot conduct an assessment when the system slows down, I would hypothesize that it is being caused by a lack of RAM.

 

[Jonofthefunk]

I did as requested. Despite the lack of RAM, thanks too Mz RAM booster, which I installed a week ago, my computer has been constantly having at least 1.1 to 0.9 RAM free at all times. So, RAM I think is not the issue. Also, every time it lagged, the RAM and CPU usage had been the same as it if were not lagging in the first place. So that lead too only one thing left, Disk utilization. Sure enough, not only was it past 1MB, but it switched from 1-2 MBs the first minute I examined it, and that's just from a reboot of the computer as I was forced to force shutdown prior too this comment. So, now that I've narrowed down the suspects, what should I do too treat this disk utilizations errors? Anything I should look for next, things I should look into, treatments, etc etc. And BTW, thanks for your help so far. I want to become a computer technician and mechanic someday so this is good practice.

 

[Mike]

Under the Disk tab in Resource Monitor, open up Disk Activity. Click on Total (B/sec) so that the arrow is pointing down. This should now list what is using the most disk activity (read/write). Look at the "Image" list for the name of the program as well as the "File" PATH of the program if it comes up as "System". Find out whats doing all the reading/writing and lets go from there. Primarily, you're probably going to want to adjust the settings on whatever is doing this or terminate it altogether.

 

[Jonofthefunk]

MsMpEng.exe and Svchost.exe are two programs I see that have a bunch of copies on the monitor. I've heard of chost but never MsMp. Got anything else too say now that I got the potential problem located?