Disk thrashing in Win Me!

[Ovi]

Hi everyone
As part of my continuing observations about Win Me,here's another. A few days back, I installed a demo of Deus Ex. Due to the game not running well,I uninstalled it. The uninstall finished in a few seconds,but the HDD kept on thrashing continuously. I waited for 7-8 min and when it didn't stop,I had to restart the comp to stop it. Now yesterday, I installed Corel Draw,and the same thing happened. After the installation had finished,the HDD still kept getting accessed continuously. This time I waited for 10 min,but the thrashing didn't stop.Again I had to restart the system to stop it.
Another thing,this thrashing stopped whenever I brought up the close program dialog box,only to resume when I closed the box. What's going on????
Thanks
Cheers
Ovi

[nehalmistry]

Ovi, hi, can u post ur specs here..... i suggest that for Win ME u should have at least 128megs ram... otherwise performance wont be optimum.... also u should have a fairly fast HD... Win ME is much more demanding than 98...

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P5A-B AMD K6-266@300
Matrox Milleniumm G200 AGP (oh, lets party)
Creative SB Awe32 (a classic, superb card)
Realtek 8029A NIC Card
64meg Ram
Ali V agp chipset
ICQ UIN: 24730025

[Jammrock]

Can't be certain, but it could be one of three things. A scattered dynamic virtual memory page file, a badly fragged hard drive and/or problems with the uninstallers. I would suggest doing the following:

1) Right-click My Computer, select Properties.

2) Open the Performance tab and select the Virtual Memory button.

3) Select the button that allows you to operate VM by yourself. Then check the box that disables it. OK everything until it asks you to reboot. Say Yes.

4) When the system comes back up, run a normal Scandisk (Not the Thurough) then Defragment the drive (accessed through Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools).

5) Open the Virtual Memory option again (step 1) and uncheck the 'disable virtual memory' box. Manually set the Maximum and Minimum virtual memory file size to the same number, following this chart:

64 MB RAM = 150 MB Max/Min VM (200 MB if you get low VM errors)
128 MB RAM = 300 MB Max/Min VM
256 MB RAM = 400 MB Max/Min VM

OK out of it all and let it reboot.

By doing this you will enable what is called a 'contiguous page file'. That basically means your virtual memory size and space is locked down on the hard drive and will cause the least amount of disk thrashing possible.

This may not solve it, but this is my best guess. In the future please post your system specs when you ask a hardware question so people can help you better.

Jammrock

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Athlon 650, Biostar board, 128 MB PC133 (Crucial), G400 32 MB DH, SB Live! w/ Digital I/O, 10/100 NIC, lots of case fans, etc...

[Kosh Naranek]

Sounds/Looks like SystemRestore is in play here.Nothing much you can do about it except remove SystemRestore(PCHealth).

[Rags]

Kosh nailed it IMO.

Rags

[DentyCracker]

Note to self
Get rid of System Restore tonite, and actually do it this time dammit. Forgetful bastard.

[Jorden]

How does one go about to remove the system restore? Not that I have the problem Ovi has, but it's useful knowledge

Jord.

P.S: Ovi, all disk-activity quits when you open up the close program dialog box. That's very MS-Windows like
Don't leave it open when Seti runs, for ... seti won't run either

[Kosh Naranek]

1. Disable System Restore.
Open Control Panel -> System -> Performance Tab -> File System - >
Troubleshooting area -> Disable System Restore
(While you are in this window click on the Floppy Disk tab and uncheck the box so the system doesn't check for a NEW floppy drive every time it starts.)

2. Uninstall Pc Health.
Start/Run "\windows\pchealth\support\pchsetup /uninstall"
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I didn't do it this way but used a more difficult method...didn't know the above way at the time.
Just be warned, that windoze will now and again write some strange messages when it boots, something like : "cannot replace system file %1 with %2 bla bla. " but thats ok it's just because you've removed system restore.

[Jammrock]

Oh usre, make it all easy and crap. Don't make things difficult and hard to understand. Some people...

You should still run my little optimization, too. It will help on system performance quite a bit.

Jammrock

[Ovi]

Thanks everyone for the info
To start with, here are my system specs
P-3@450
i440zx M/B
64 MB SDRAM
Samsung 4.3 GB ATA33 HDD
Mill G200 (8 MB SDRAM)
Creative Ensoniq Audio PCI 64
Creative Infra 48x CDROM
etc...
The reason I didn't post my system's specs before was that it seemed to be a software problem,unrelated to hardware (I suspected PCHealth to be at work too )
Jammrock: I am already implementing your suggestions thru Norton SpeedDisk, and yes, this method does increase performance.
I think I'll disable System restore,though I'm not too sure about uninstalling it due to the problems mentioned by Kosh (I believe uninstalling PCHealth removes the help system also) Right now I've disabled system restore from starting up thru Msconfig. Anyway, only the above mentioned programs have exhibited this behaviour,and which too,apart from this annoyance,didn't cause any harm
But I wonder,even if PCHealth is restoring something,why does it keep on going on & on & on &....... (you get the point!!!!) and cause no problems if the system is restarted while it is doing this?
Thanks
Cheers
Ovi

[Brian R.]

I'll bet it's your 64 MB RAM is causing the problem, along with a fragmented page file. Getting more RAM will boost your performance.

Jammrock, I never understood why having more memory would cause you to need more virtual memory. For example, seems like 512 MB memory would make everthing but a trivial page file size unnecessary for WinME (under normal circumstances). Your logic make the page file size huge for this quantity of memory. Just for the record, I always recommend a decreasing page file size for computers with more memory capacity.

[This message has been edited by Brian R. (edited 30 November 2000).]

[Guru]

Ovi have a look over here http://www.3dspotlight.com/tweaking.shtml

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Join the MURC SETI team! | SETI @ MURC

Bad dog. BAD DOG! I SAID BAD DOG!!! Go HUMP SOMEONE ELSES LEG GODDAMNIT!!!

[Kosh Naranek]

JammRock
I have 320 Mb of ram and i'm using Win Me and this Tweak "ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1" under the [386enh] section ( it has to be the last entry and there must be a blank line before this entry and nothing after in [386enh] ) since i started using this tweak my swapfile is never used not even when i play many different games in a row.So i would have to agree with Brian R.

[Jammrock]

It boils down to this...the more RAM you have the more Windows is going to load into it, thus requiring you to have a larger swap to push graphics and data. It usually uses a little more than half your RAM up to 256 MB (check out the system monitor if you don't believe me). At 320 MB you have the entire OS loaded in RAM and still have about 192 MB free, which is more than enough to run any game.

Anything less than 256 MB and your going to run into VM playing most new game. The more graphically intense the game is, the more VM it uses. Baldur's gate (2) requires a 250-500 MB cache file on the hard drive to load graphics dumps on to, and that's in addition to your VM.

Another reason behind the theory is that the more RAM you have, the more intense apps you are going to run. Thus the more VM you'll need to push data because apps are filling up your physical RAM.

If none of you believe me, pop open your system monitor (or Task Manager in Win2k) and check out RAM and VM usage. It's astronomical unless you have a very fine tuned PC.

Jammrock

[Brian R.]

Jammrock - I agree with your generalization about user's requirements being reflected in their installed RAM. This is not what I meant. I was addressing VM requirements when RAM is increased with no change in user's application or data need.

There is no point in trying to estimate the VM needs of a graphic artist. It must vary by a factor of 2 or 3 from day to day, depending on the work being done. I was talking about a general case where a user has upgraded the installed memory without changing his usage, and not the worst case scenario.

In your discussion, you have made my point in part:

"It usually uses a little more than half your RAM up to 256 MB (check out the system monitor if you don't believe me). At 320 MB you have the entire OS loaded in RAM and still have about 192 MB free, which is more than enough to run any game."

So, using your data, lets assume your total memory requirements (not including Windows) remain the same at 400 MB (for example so that you have to use the VM).

In the first case (256 MB installed RAM) Windows uses a little more than half the available RAM (say 140 MB). The 400 MB of applications and data are loaded into RAM (256-140 = 116 MB available) and the remainder into VM (400-116 = 284 MB). Your VM requirement is 284 MB.

In the second case (320 MB installed RAM), you have 192 MB installed RAM free after Windows is loaded (Windows uses 128 MB) and for the same 400 MB application + data need, the required VM is only 400-192 = 208 MB. The VM required has decreased by 284-208 = 76 MB by increasing the installed memory by 64 MB.

Since the numbers are a little screwy, I'm assuming that the two cases you mentioned were not under exactly the same conditions. If so, then I would assume that the VM requirements between 256 MB installed RAM and 320 MB installed RAM have changed approximately by the ammount of RAM added. This is contrary to your assertion that Windows increased its RAM usage when the installed RAM is increased. You are correct about the RAM usage by Windows when the physical RAM is low (less than 128 MB), but at 256 MB installed RAM and above, I don't think Windows installs a significantly greater amount of itself in RAM when installed RAM is increased.

Maybe I'm missing the boat, but it still seems to hold that the greater the installed memory, the less the VM required by a user under constant memory requirements.

[This message has been edited by Brian R. (edited 01 December 2000).]