computer lags after high usage?

[slinky2004]

i was just wondering what causes this. often times after my computer has been on all night or for several consecutive hours- downloading a large file, running a bot that does diablo 2 runs for me, or just on and doing nothing, it will be very laggy when i go to use it and i have to restart for it to speed up again. i was wondering what causes this, anybody know? and is it possible that my comp might be being harmed somehow? i'm running a windows xp home and my box is a pentium 2.4 ghz with 512mb ddr ram.

[guardian alpha]

There could be a few things slowing your computer down over time, so let's ask a few questions first:

1. What is the name of your diablo II bot? It might be leaking memory due to bad programming

2. Downloading large files eats up RAM, but it is released again very quickly. Are you using a peer to peer program to download these files, or normal windows? Peer to peer programs like azuerus eat up RAM like no tomorrow, and rarley give it all back.

3. Have you ran a scan for spyware to see if there are things eating up your ram behind the scenes? Download and install spybot search and destroy, as it is an incredibly scanner for spyware/adware programs that is also free and dependable: http://security.kolla.de/ Give it a good scan, use the immunize feature, and clean everything it finds. Reboot into safe mode (I assume you know how, if not, ask), and scan it again. Clean everything, and then boot back into normal windows. Also look into running adaware as well, it's another very dependable spyware checking that can find things spybot can't. Granted spybot can finds things adaware can't, but that's why it's best to use them together.

4.When is the last time you've run a virus scan? do so now. this one is online based, and requires activeX. http://housecall.antivirus.com It is also free and has incredible reliablity.

After you've solved those basic questions, we can further look into background services and processes on your system (even systray programs) that may be silenting eating up RAM. Because a properly configured and maintained Windows machine (especially XP) is capable of MONTHS upon months of uptime without need for a reboot.

[XTC46]

could be a number of things. The post above is a very good start. you may also want to defra your harddrive. after writing large files that can slow it down to fragmentation. so do a defrag. checking for adware/spyware is a good Idea also as well as a virus scans. Also check the size of your page file (virtual memory) you may want to increase the allowed space a bit. and if you are running alot of memory intensive programs then you may want to consider upgradding to a bit more ram.

[Falcon21]

It is good to defrag your hard disk and ensure your system is spyware/adware/virus free. You should have some free space (a few hundred megabytes) on your hard disk for the virtual memory.

[BrainStop]

Hey slinky,

Some of the slowing could also be due to the programs you run over time, i.e. those that you start and close again. They don't always release all memory cleanly, so you end up "losing" virtual memory over time.

For example, I run the United Devices agent (grid computing, in use with UD Monitor) and I've noticed that over time, my crunching performance will go down, due to my normal computer usage plus the agent itself stopping and starting as I crunch through units.

The more often you start applications and close them again, the more you will notice a drop in performance over time.

Cheers,

BrainStop

[nihil]

Hmmm,

Some good suggestions so far, and a memory leak is a prime suspect. When it happens give it ctrl +alt + del and check out the performance monitor. That will tell you used and free resources (physical & virtual) If you look at your running processes you should see which is using what resources as well.

If it is not a memory leak then it sounds like some sort of conflict. Check your scheduled tasks and background processes. Try killing ones you don't want before your marathon sessions and see if it makes any difference.

The only other thing I can suggest is to go into setup and then Windows and turn off all power saving, sleep/snooze/hibernate options so the machine is "on" all the time and set the screensaver to "none" see if that makes any difference.

Hope that helps

[slinky2004]

i run virus/trojan/spyware scans, etc. regularly and i dont think i have any malware, and since it speeds back up after a restart i think it's the memory leak, i just had thought that windows xp fixed the whole memory memory leak and system resources thing, they claim to right?

[nihil]

Slinky~

I believe you may be thinking of WinME and NT4.0? which did tend to do it.

If you have applications that leak memory your OS will not help you much.

I have had problems with the power management features on some XP installations, so that might still be worth looking at?

Cheers