Vista's Long pauses

I have been in here many times but it was when I had XP. I guess I have been in here a few times since I upgraded to Vista (64)

First my computer config:

• Intel Core i7 (2.67GHz)
• 6GB RAM
• 2 internal 500 GB drives
• External USB Western Digital My Book (500GB)
• Trend Micro Virus and Internet protection (always updated)

Drives are defraged every week (windows defrag)

So here is the problem I have been experiencing lately. The computer just pauses for long periods of time, say 10-60 seconds for no apparent reason. I am not sure what makes it longer times than others but is is extremely frustrating. There is nothing going on as per the PERFORMANCE tab in Task Manager CPU usage stays below 10% and memory usage is 50%. I kow when Outlook goes out to check mail everything seems to come to a crawl, especially if I am typing a new message, I notice that even if I am typing, nothing is happening and then when it catches up, all the text I typed appears. probably an outlook thing.

Where I really notice it is in Phoshop Llightroom when I am poking around in a newly imported folder it takes forever to view an image. Now I know you might think this is a LR thing and I would agree but this seems to happen with other programs as well. Once LR has been up and running for a while, things speed up tremendously. Perhaps a caching thing, who knows. I have been on the LR forum and asked around in there and have done all the things to make sure I am all good there but still I get the dreaded "ring worm" (vistas version of the hour glass) Up at the top of the said program I get the "Program not responding" and if I keep clicking, which I often do out of frustration because I know it wont do anything, the screen will go semi transparent and then will eventually come back. This happens quite often in Outlook. Something that I have been trying to do and have to be be able to is copy a large amount of images (160G worth) to an external drive (My Book). I have tried "Allway Sync" and just plain ol' Explore but they both fail and the computer locks up after 50-100 images. I get no response form any mouse clicks for a while and then I get the "Program not responding" crap. I am forced to press the reset button.

Anyways, I could go on and on about how it happens in various programs but I am about to drag this computer behind my car on the way to the Apple store.

Any ideas or suggestions on how to start to figure out this delima would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,
Houston

 

Hi Houston, the above could all be related to antivirus activity; scanning email, scanning on access, etc., try testing some local activities (file moving/copying) without the A/V active.

 

The problems seems to be a drive going bad. I pulled that suspected drive (it is not the OS drive) and all works blinding fast now. Now all i have to do is get the data off it. Money is just flying out the window.

Is there any software out that could help me out before I bring it to someone and pay them to run it with their software?

 

Most drive makers have free cloning apps so you should be just fine.