Vista - General performance issues

Hi there,

I am using Vista since it was released and never got into whats the big
thing that hits my performance like hell.
Whatever I do, I do not get rid of some evil stuttering, mainly caused by
hard disk activity. When playing games even the less demanding ones stutter
and do not "feel smooth". But not at a frame rate point, it could be smooth
(I know about frame rates very good, believe me ) if there would not be
something that hits my system multiple times mostly each second.

I checked several things, but didn't find the "big deal" yet, so maybe
here's someone who can help me with this.

This is what I did before, including system specs:

- Athlon64 4000+, 3GB DDR400 CL2.5, Geforce 7800GTX (drivers all ok)
- Vista performance rating is about 4.2 caused by only having DDR400, but
every single other rating part is rated over 5, including hard disk
- No hardware issues found - CPU at full speed, hard disk has DMA activated
and things like that
- Checked swap file (other partition, other drive, Windows managed against
different manual sizes and so on)
- Defrag runs regularly once a week
- Checked with and without antivirus software
- Throttled down Windows Defender to not scan zip files on the fly and
things like that
- Throttled down Windows Indexer on a large scale
- Closed every process that hits the CPU (Task Manager -> View as admin,
Process Explorer too)

And what else came to my mind, I don't really know any more. But it's the
same every session: Playing games is a nuisance and also surfing-only
sessions become unresponsive (slow) very quickly.

The most interesting is (imho), that many people complain about Vista's
performance, but not only one has the same issues like me if he's got a
likely system (like mine). I don't say it's high rated, but it should do the
Windows IDLE job a lot better than it does, that's for sure. And it's a
shame I cannot even play something like Titan Quest or things like that
without hopping and stuttering and flopping around, even though the frame
rates itself are generally fine, from a graphics only view.

Well, I am going this far to say it could be a hardware problem with my
system, but _what_ could cause such stuttering thats almost every time bound
to hard disk activity? I don't have 512MB of RAM, I think my amount of 3
gigs should be used a bit more than it seems to be used :-/

So as you may already assume I'd appreciate every single input about this to
get some more joy out of Vista. I'm feeling a bit like running Win95 on a
386 with 4 megs :-/

Best regards,

Arne

This may be of interest http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm

"Arne-Kolja Bachstein" <a_k_b@web.de> wrote in message
news:C417CA40-01D1-4A7D-87F7-B93CE8000C68@microsoft.com...
> Hi there,
>
> I am using Vista since it was released and never got into whats the big
> thing that hits my performance like hell.
> Whatever I do, I do not get rid of some evil stuttering, mainly caused by
> hard disk activity. When playing games even the less demanding ones
> stutter and do not "feel smooth". But not at a frame rate point, it could
> be smooth (I know about frame rates very good, believe me ) if there
> would not be something that hits my system multiple times mostly each
> second.
>
> I checked several things, but didn't find the "big deal" yet, so maybe
> here's someone who can help me with this.
>
> This is what I did before, including system specs:
>
> - Athlon64 4000+, 3GB DDR400 CL2.5, Geforce 7800GTX (drivers all ok)
> - Vista performance rating is about 4.2 caused by only having DDR400, but
> every single other rating part is rated over 5, including hard disk
> - No hardware issues found - CPU at full speed, hard disk has DMA
> activated and things like that
> - Checked swap file (other partition, other drive, Windows managed against
> different manual sizes and so on)
> - Defrag runs regularly once a week
> - Checked with and without antivirus software
> - Throttled down Windows Defender to not scan zip files on the fly and
> things like that
> - Throttled down Windows Indexer on a large scale
> - Closed every process that hits the CPU (Task Manager -> View as admin,
> Process Explorer too)
>
> And what else came to my mind, I don't really know any more. But it's the
> same every session: Playing games is a nuisance and also surfing-only
> sessions become unresponsive (slow) very quickly.
>
> The most interesting is (imho), that many people complain about Vista's
> performance, but not only one has the same issues like me if he's got a
> likely system (like mine). I don't say it's high rated, but it should do
> the Windows IDLE job a lot better than it does, that's for sure. And it's
> a shame I cannot even play something like Titan Quest or things like that
> without hopping and stuttering and flopping around, even though the frame
> rates itself are generally fine, from a graphics only view.
>
> Well, I am going this far to say it could be a hardware problem with my
> system, but _what_ could cause such stuttering thats almost every time
> bound to hard disk activity? I don't have 512MB of RAM, I think my amount
> of 3 gigs should be used a bit more than it seems to be used :-/
>
> So as you may already assume I'd appreciate every single input about this
> to get some more joy out of Vista. I'm feeling a bit like running Win95 on
> a 386 with 4 megs :-/
>
> Best regards,
>
> Arne

Did you actually disable the Windows Search service, or "throttle it down"?

Dana Cline - MCE MVP

"Arne-Kolja Bachstein" <a_k_b@web.de> wrote in message
news:C417CA40-01D1-4A7D-87F7-B93CE8000C68@microsoft.com...
> Hi there,
>
> I am using Vista since it was released and never got into whats the big
> thing that hits my performance like hell.
> Whatever I do, I do not get rid of some evil stuttering, mainly caused by
> hard disk activity. When playing games even the less demanding ones
> stutter and do not "feel smooth". But not at a frame rate point, it could
> be smooth (I know about frame rates very good, believe me ) if there
> would not be something that hits my system multiple times mostly each
> second.
>
> I checked several things, but didn't find the "big deal" yet, so maybe
> here's someone who can help me with this.
>
> This is what I did before, including system specs:
>
> - Athlon64 4000+, 3GB DDR400 CL2.5, Geforce 7800GTX (drivers all ok)
> - Vista performance rating is about 4.2 caused by only having DDR400, but
> every single other rating part is rated over 5, including hard disk
> - No hardware issues found - CPU at full speed, hard disk has DMA
> activated and things like that
> - Checked swap file (other partition, other drive, Windows managed against
> different manual sizes and so on)
> - Defrag runs regularly once a week
> - Checked with and without antivirus software
> - Throttled down Windows Defender to not scan zip files on the fly and
> things like that
> - Throttled down Windows Indexer on a large scale
> - Closed every process that hits the CPU (Task Manager -> View as admin,
> Process Explorer too)
>
> And what else came to my mind, I don't really know any more. But it's the
> same every session: Playing games is a nuisance and also surfing-only
> sessions become unresponsive (slow) very quickly.
>
> The most interesting is (imho), that many people complain about Vista's
> performance, but not only one has the same issues like me if he's got a
> likely system (like mine). I don't say it's high rated, but it should do
> the Windows IDLE job a lot better than it does, that's for sure. And it's
> a shame I cannot even play something like Titan Quest or things like that
> without hopping and stuttering and flopping around, even though the frame
> rates itself are generally fine, from a graphics only view.
>
> Well, I am going this far to say it could be a hardware problem with my
> system, but _what_ could cause such stuttering thats almost every time
> bound to hard disk activity? I don't have 512MB of RAM, I think my amount
> of 3 gigs should be used a bit more than it seems to be used :-/
>
> So as you may already assume I'd appreciate every single input about this
> to get some more joy out of Vista. I'm feeling a bit like running Win95 on
> a 386 with 4 megs :-/
>
> Best regards,
>
> Arne