[Quilla]

One of our office computers using XP has been running a fairly sophisticated engineering program for about eight months now. At first there were no problems; however, as each day goes by, the performance gets slower and slower. I have disabled all unnecessary applications running in the background, have checked for viruses, drafraged, the whole nine yards. Even with the virus software disabled, we still have poor, poor performance. Microsoft's knowledge base and free support options offer no additional suggestions. Can y'all help?

[ShadowAce]

From here, it sounds like a memory leak. The occasional reboot will probably fix it.

[Publius6961]

Microsoft's knowledge base and free support options offer no additional suggestions. Can y'all help?

Yeah.
Try to replace it with Win2000 or switch Operating Systems.

:]

[Billy_bob_bob]

You are experiencing the famous "creeping death" syndrome on your PC. The only fix for it that I know of is to carefully archive all of your critical data and reformat your hard drive. If you have a system with pre-installed software then it gets a little tougher, you'll probably end up needing to load a new copy of the OS.

I got tired of going through all of these issues, which is why I switched over to Apple computers. They really do "just work".

[snooker]

Probably need to re-install the whole thing, including the OS. I think the technical name for the problem is rot. It usually manifests itself in the behavior you report. Usually due to the program or OS getting corrupted and leaving behind a bad memory leak or some other problem. Sometimes Norton system doctor can fix it, sometimes not.

Run norton, if it doesn't fix it, rebuild the whole system with a blank hd. What I often do is just replace the disk with a fresh one and re-build. Then the original disk is there in case more problems arise. Especially if it is some serious program being used, like you have. Safest way to go.

Not a joke, BTW.

snooker.

[js1138]

as each day goes by, the performance gets slower and slower.

I've seen that in a Gateway PC. It was fixed by reformatting and reinstalling the OS. I don't know what causes it but I have a theory based on experience with my sister's PC. It could be "soft" errors on the hard drive, causing multiple retries. the data is eventually read correctly, but performance tanks. You could get the disk manufacturer's repair program, which re-does the low-level format and maps out the bad spots, but in a professional setting, I'd replace the drive.

[Abcdefg]

My limited understanding of programming, memory leaks are caused by applications and not the operating system. MS created "managed code" in the .NET development languages to handle that very problem. Has something to do with "garbage collection" I think.
My company had some progammers contracted to develop some custom software and they came up with some stuff that had bad memory leaks and would crash the system after about an hour or two.

[Darth Hillary]

Try De-Fragmenting your HD. Also clear any Cache you have in IE, Next try a couple of little programs 1) Ad-Aware, and 2) SpyBot search and destroy. It is very easy to un-intentionally install SpyWare with many share-ware programs.

I have made quite a few PC's run essentially as fast as they ran new by using these simple techniques.

[gura]

This is why all _real_ operating systems put the swap in it's own partition.

[Mr_Magoo]

It is caused by Double secret hidden files eating up your resources.

[snooker]

I didn't mean to imply the hd needs replacing. It's the software that rots. when I said put in a new disk and start over, I meant to preserve the original disk so you could go back.

If your back-up scheme is rigorous enough and you feel comfy with re-formatting the disk, then go for it.

Usually takes a few months for the rot to get you.

Make sure you have an ups with shutdown software on the system, power glitches can be the source of the rot.

But hey it's windows, and it's cheap right.

If were me I would switch to the penguin. Especially for heavy use apps. I use RH8. Data and programs are kept in separate partitions and you can re-load/update the entire OS if you want to, without touching the data. You can also reload the apps and leave the OS and data alone. Much more user friendly. Doesn't rot. The penguin also has a journaling fs to rollback any bad errors.

snooker

[MeekOneGOP]

The replies to you so far are FAR more help than I could ever offer ...

[buffer]

Have you tried bootvis?

Check here. http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/platform/performance/fastboot/default.asp

[buffer]

This site has everything you need to know on how to secure and optimize Windows XP.

http://www.blkviper.com/

[Bush2000]

Check out http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,554793,00.asp for Windows XP optimization tips.

[RightOnline]

What are you running? How much memory do you have?

[RightOnline]

Also........I suspect you're dealing with larger and larger files as time goes on.....perfectly natural in CAD / CAE environments. The longer a project goes on, the larger and more sophisticated the model(s) get. What processor(s) are you running? What graphics adapter are you using? Are you running on a workstation-class system (i.e. IntelliStation from IBM or a Dell equivalent, for example?).

[Crusher138]

XP has a "feature" that allows you to "go back" to a previous state in case of emergency. It basically records all changes made to your computer so you can undo them.

This can cause a large file to bloat onto your hard drive and/or cause slow downs when trying to keep up with the latest changes to your computer after 6 months or so.

Since I won't put XP on any of my machines, I can't walk you through turning this feature off, but I am sure one of our XP lovers can. As you turn it off it will tell you that you will loose all of your history files. GREAT! Kill the sucker and reboot.

If you really want to, you can turn it back on after you reboot, but you will have to repeat the above every six months or so.