General Performance Question

[Rick Partain]

I have a computer running an Asus Z87 Deluxe motherboard with an Intel i7 4790 3.6 GHz processor and with 32 GB of RAM. Though I will occasionally do video editing on this computer I would say that 95% of the time it is JUST used for internet purposes.

Yet pretty much daily I well find incredible slowness and computer lag. I do understand that internet speed is a different issue. I do have high-end AT&T internet, but I am not talking about access speed. I mean that while I do have a browser open, I can go to Microsoft Word or other local programs and I will have VERY NOTICEABLE lag in typing characters. I mean like being able to count 5-10 seconds between typing and having characters appear and often having characters that I type be skipped totally.

I can pull up task manager and processes and my physical memory usage virtually NEVER exceeds 22% and my CPU usage may spike to 11% or so, but still I have this lag.

I am guilty of having 20+ tabs open in Firefox at times and I will note that the issue does seem to be tied to Firefox and Flashplayer. I would say 95% of the time I have this issue if I kill Firefox and Flashplayer, response goes back to normal. However, even at peaks Firefox is rarely taking up more than possibly 1.5 GB of RAM or exceeding 3% CPU usage and Flashplayer is fairly comparable to that as well. I do keep both of these totally up to date (though I would have to say about half of my time on the computer is dedicated to just running all the absurd updates to these products). The only other occasional resource hog that I see being reported is gzserv which is part of BitDefender.

The computer has been scanned with multiple programs for viruses and malware, nothing found. I am a retired computer science professor and I am almost paranoid about such things so I do not go to sites or click on links and emails that might cause these to be a problem. I have run hard drive tests, all passed.

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit with Service Pack 1.

Does anyone have any ideas why I would be having response issues if my RAM usage and CPU usage are never particularly high?

 

[DelJo63]

Go to browser settings, usually under advanced, and REDUCE cache size to 100mb. Sounds counter intuitive but with a very large cache, the browser spends more time I/o processing the cache and still finding nothing it wants anyway. With today's 100Mb & 1Gb internet equipment, it's better to reduce cache size.

 

[Rick Partain]

Ok I have changed the setting as you suggested. I will see if that improves things thanks for the suggestion. Any comparable suggestions for FlashPlayer?

 

[DelJo63]

"I will have VERY NOTICEABLE lag in typing characters. I mean like being able to count 5-10 seconds between typing and having characters appear and often having characters that I type be skipped totally."

I found that (browser) ADD-ONS were a major contributor to this.

Another possibility (more general) is more than one antivirus program running at the same time. You can HAVE several, but only run one at a time AND only have one autostart.

 

[Rick Partain]

I found that (browser) ADD-ONS were a major contributor to this.

Another possibility (more general) is more than one antivirus program running at the same time. You can HAVE several, but only run one at a time AND only have one autostart.

 

[Rick Partain]

Add-ons could be an issue, but where I have run more than one anti virus program to see if I had an issue, I never have more than one running at a time. BitDefender is what I normally run.

 

[DelJo63]

Disable ALL, reboot & retest - - just to be sure.

 

[Rick Partain]

Ok I have done all of that. Still having the same issues and stats that I gave before are pretty much the same. Any other ideas?

 

[Rick Partain]

I suppose my primary question is this. If, indeed, my CPU utilization is no more than like 10-15%, and my RAM utilization is more like 20-22% where it should not be necessary to be swapping to virtual memory, why would my computer be reacting so slowly that I even get keyboard lag. I do not recall having keyboard lag since standard RAM went to even 4 GB.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

In your shoes, I would try a couple of things:
1. get a benchmark which works in different OS (Win7, Ubuntu, DOS, FreeDOS, etc)
2. run the benchmark on at least one other OS

If I see a largish difference between my installed OS and the temporary one, I would suspect a rootkit or corrupted dll/driver which is sucking cycles in a hidden manner. In that instance, I would make thorough backup and clean install.

If I saw no difference between OSs, I would then compare benchmark to published user results. If a large difference there, I would pull my system apart and do a bench top rebuild, test benchmark as I restore the system to its fully accessorized state.

 

[DelJo63]

I suppose my primary question is this. If, indeed, my CPU utilization is no more than like 10-15%, and my RAM utilization is more like 20-22% where it should not be necessary to be swapping to virtual memory, why would my computer be reacting so slowly that I even get keyboard lag. I do not recall having keyboard lag since standard RAM went to even 4 GB.

Perfectly good question. I suspect an infection is keystroke logging. I know you ran some scans, but SOMETHING is active that should not be. Can you run a System Restore?

 

[bazz2004]

I was struggling recently with the blue screen of death in W10 which was being flagged as due to an nVidia graphics issue. This led me to check how things were looking in Task Manager. Two things did catch my attention as resource hogs - Firefox and Bitdefender Free. Both are now gone and although this didn't solve my graphics card issue the desktop runs far better. We all tend to get over fond of software that may not be the best for our systems. I decided on the Opera browser plus Panda free and am pleased with how much more responsive the computer is now.

Having over 20 tabs open in a browser sounds like you are after a mention in the Guinness Book of Records.