Machine is Dell Studio XPS 8100. Per Speccy:

Summary
Operating System
MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i5 650 @ 3.20GHz 94 �F
Clarkdale 32nm Technology
RAM
8.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 664MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
Dell Inc. 0G3HR7 (CPU 1) 74 �F
Graphics
W2252 (1680x1050@60Hz)
512MB GeForce 310 (Unknown) 123 �F
Hard Drives
932GB Seagate ST31000528AS (RAID) 96 �F
932GB Western Digital WDC WD10EZEX-08WN4A0 (SATA) 96 �
F Optical Drives
TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-H653A
HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GH50N
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

Over the last few months, it's become intollerably slow to launch apps,
such as Windows Live Mail, Firefox, Excel, etc. Many times, when working
with the app, the app will freeze for up to a minute, with the words,
"Firefox is not responding", "Windows Live Mail is no responding", etc.,
appearing in the app's ribbon (not as an error message that pops up in
it's own little window). And, sometimes the when this happens, the app
will fade as if it's thinly covered with fog. Task manager sometimes
lets me end task, sometimes not. Most of the time, if I wait long
enough, the app comes back to life.

I've done all the common hardware and OS testing, all seems fine.

I'd like to see if there's any clues in the Event Viewer, but my gosh,
there's so many places to look there. Where would you look?

TIA

On 5/5/2022 4:41 PM, Boris wrote:
> Machine is Dell Studio XPS 8100. Per Speccy:
>
> Summary
> Operating System
> MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
> CPU
> Intel Core i5 650 @ 3.20GHz 94 °F
> Clarkdale 32nm Technology
> RAM
> 8.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 664MHz (9-9-9-24)
> Motherboard
> Dell Inc. 0G3HR7 (CPU 1) 74 °F
> Graphics
> W2252 (1680x1050@60Hz)
> 512MB GeForce 310 (Unknown) 123 °F
> Hard Drives
> 932GB Seagate ST31000528AS (RAID) 96 °F
> 932GB Western Digital WDC WD10EZEX-08WN4A0 (SATA) 96 °
> F
> Optical Drives
> TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-H653A
> HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GH50N
> Audio
> Realtek High Definition Audio
>
> Over the last few months, it's become intollerably slow to launch apps,
> such as Windows Live Mail, Firefox, Excel, etc. Many times, when working
> with the app, the app will freeze for up to a minute, with the words,
> "Firefox is not responding", "Windows Live Mail is no responding", etc.,
> appearing in the app's ribbon (not as an error message that pops up in
> it's own little window). And, sometimes the when this happens, the app
> will fade as if it's thinly covered with fog. Task manager sometimes
> lets me end task, sometimes not. Most of the time, if I wait long
> enough, the app comes back to life.
>
> I've done all the common hardware and OS testing, all seems fine.
>
> I'd like to see if there's any clues in the Event Viewer, but my gosh,
> there's so many places to look there. Where would you look?
>
> TIA
>

There is no reason for an entry to be in Event Viewer anyway.

This is not a malfunction - it is a performance (or lack of it) issue.

You can try disabling SuperFetch (SysMain), reboot, and see if the
behavior has changed at all. They may have used different names
for this, over the OS versions, but I don't know the exact history
of it.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/what-is-superfetch/

It could be an AV problem. But then it could involve
a branded third party one that you paid for. Versus one of the
various Microsoft creations. Microsoft has both spyware
and malware applications, and they don't help you to
the same extent.

When I look with ProcMon at a system, and I see the
*strangest* scanning behaviors, like a whole bunch of
shit being checked before an application loads, what
can I conclude from that ? Analysis of Loader problems,
assumes you even know how it works :-) The OS is doing
things like this for "some" reason, but what could that
reason be ? Normally, you expect DLLs to be loaded in
short order, not a metric ton of faffing about, little
of which has to do with what the user wants.

An OS scanning behavior could be "Robust File System" implementation,
but because I've never seen anything even remotely like
documentation, I cannot equate the two just yet. You might
have noticed, when you go to use CHKDSK from Properties,
that the dialog claims "the OS hasn't seen a problem but
knock yourself out scanning it, OK?". That dialog is a
result of some claimed "background scan" activity that
verifies NTFS is OK. Some manager at Microsoft made some
comments about it, in a puff piece, but I've not seen
any details since then.

*******

I've mentioned the following, in the last couple days.

On my Windows 7, if I try to start Seamonkey, it might
take 30 seconds to a minute to start. Yes, it is slowwww.

Say, instead, I boot, then I open a Command Prompt
and run this three times (using control-C to halt it
each time, after around 5 seconds has passed and it's stuck).
I might typically have 8500 MB of RAM free at the time.
The reason to run it three times, is to make sure as much
free memory is released as is possible.

testlimit64.exe -d 1 -c 8500

( https://live.sysinternals.com/ ) [Bought by Microsoft]

What that does, is asks for memory, a megabyte at a time.
This is something Russinovich wrote, to test the Windows
memory allocation methods.

By making it squeeze all the memory, such that every bit
of memory is returned to the Free Pool (when testlimit exits
via control-C), this also happens to purge all the stuff
that SuperFetch has put in the memory. The memory is
not charged. The user can say "gimme my memory back!"
by using TestLimit, and SysMain gives up the memory.

If I then try to run Seamonkey now, it loads faster.

Since SysMain is the only thing I know of, that kinda
fits the symptoms, it's all I really have to offer. And
the behavior starts at T=0, and is not a "ripe session"
effect, where the memory has been tied in knots by the
user usage pattern. Back in WinXP days, the pagefile
could have internal fragmentation (as a memory allocator),
and the unwinding of the pagefile was a major performance
issue. This is *not* the same. The bad Pagefile behavior,
stopped after WinXP era.

Paul

On Fri, 6 May 2022 at 23:43:32, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote (my
responses usually FOLLOW):
>On 5/5/2022 4:41 PM, Boris wrote:
>> Machine is Dell Studio XPS 8100. Per Speccy:
>> Summary
>> Operating System
>> MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
Mine's 7SP1-32
>> CPU
>> Intel Core i5 650 @ 3.20GHz 94 °F
>> Clarkdale 32nm Technology
Mine's an i3
>> RAM
>> 8.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 664MHz (9-9-9-24)
Mine's 3G (I think all the laptop can take; 7-32 can only use about 4
anyway)
[rest I don't think is the problem - mobo, HDs, etc.]

>> Over the last few months, it's become intollerably slow to launch
>>apps,
>> such as Windows Live Mail, Firefox, Excel, etc. Many times, when working
>> with the app, the app will freeze for up to a minute, with the words,
>> "Firefox is not responding", "Windows Live Mail is no responding", etc.,
>> appearing in the app's ribbon (not as an error message that pops up in

Ditto.

>> it's own little window). And, sometimes the when this happens, the app
>> will fade as if it's thinly covered with fog. Task manager sometimes

That came in - I think - with Windows 7. Basically, it happens when you
try to click (or similar) in an app. that's already frozen. (I think it
reduces the chance of things crashing.)

>> lets me end task, sometimes not. Most of the time, if I wait long
>> enough, the app comes back to life.

Same here.

>> I've done all the common hardware and OS testing, all seems fine.

I usually have Task Manager running (right-click empty part of taskbar
to get to it), and sort by CPU usage in the Processes tab.

Is your hard disc light on a lot? If so, bring up Resource Monitor
(there's a button for it in the Performance tab of Task Manager); that
has a Disk tab.

These days, I usually find it's a browser that is the culprit; partly
that I tend to leave more tabs open in browsers than I once did, but
mainly, web pages are now more (and lazily-coded, because their
"creators" mostly don't know how to do otherwise) major pieces of
software than just information presenters.

If you find that is the cause of your problem, it's worth getting an
add-on for a browser that suspends tabs (stops them doing anything)
after a given period of you not doing anything on them; I use Chrome
with the The Great Suspender Original add-on, but I'm sure there are
plenty of others. It lets me set how long before it puts a tab to sleep
(and also adds "open in a suspended tab" to the right-click menu, which
I use a lot on YouTube - selecting lots of videos I'm going to look at,
but not wanting each to open immediately)). [A tab comes back to life if
you switch to it then click in it.]
[]
>This is not a malfunction - it is a performance (or lack of it) issue.

As Boris has said, its got worse in recent months or years. I found it
with XP too though - when I started, I had 1G - I'd got a 2G stick as
everyone said 1G wasn't really enough for XP, but I never seemed to get
anywhere near it (though I eventually fitted it anyway); towards the end
of my XP time, though, it was struggling, and I wouldn't say I'd been
doing much that was different - just web pages getting bigger. Same
after the switch to 7: a few years ago I rarely got close to the 3G, now
I think I do.
>
>You can try disabling SuperFetch (SysMain), reboot, and see if the
>behavior has changed at all. They may have used different names
>for this, over the OS versions, but I don't know the exact history
>of it.
>
> https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/what-is-superfetch/
>
(Thanks; trying it. [Above article is mainly for W10, but does say it's
been there since Vista. In 7, it's actually called SuperFetch, not
SysMain, or it is on my system.])

>It could be an AV problem. But then it could involve
>a branded third party one that you paid for. Versus one of the
>various Microsoft creations. Microsoft has both spyware
>and malware applications, and they don't help you to
>the same extent.

(I have AVG; I recently tried MSE, but that did noticeably impact
performance. Everyone's MWV, though.)
>
>When I look with ProcMon at a system, and I see the
>*strangest* scanning behaviors, like a whole bunch of
>shit being checked before an application loads, what
>can I conclude from that ? Analysis of Loader problems,
>assumes you even know how it works :-) The OS is doing
>things like this for "some" reason, but what could that
>reason be ? Normally, you expect DLLs to be loaded in
>short order, not a metric ton of faffing about, little
>of which has to do with what the user wants.

That's the infuriating thing: I won't profess to be much of an expert at
ProcMon, but Task Manager and Resource Monitor often show me that
"stuff" is going on, which seems little to do with what I'm actually
_doing_. As I say, I get the _feeling_ it's often related to browser
tabs I have open (even if I'm not actually looking at them at the moment
[I like to leave them open for convenience and because some of them are
slow to open]), but I couldn't _swear_ to that always being the cause.
[]

Another thing: things hide (-:. You can call me paranoid! My usual
indication that something is eating CPU time is the internal fan speeds
up (its doing it now!). But just as I alt-tab to Task Manager to see
what's doing it, it stops, and the fan goes back to normal, so I can't
find out what the cause was! Could just be coincidence, of course, but
I've had it happen often enough that I'm suspicious! I've even wondered
if it was malware, that somehow detects I've switched focus to Task
Manager and hides, but that _would_ be being paranoid ... (-:
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Now, don't worry. We'll be right behind you. Hiding. (First series, fit the
sixth.)

On 5/7/2022 10:00 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

> Another thing: things hide (-:. You can call me paranoid! My usual indication that something is eating CPU time is the internal fan speeds up (its doing it now!). But just as I alt-tab to Task Manager to see what's doing it, it stops, and the fan goes back to normal, so I can't find out what the cause was! Could just be coincidence, of course, but I've had it happen often enough that I'm suspicious! I've even wondered if it was malware, that somehow detects I've switched focus to Task Manager and hides, but that _would_ be being paranoid ... (-:

This could be the SearchIndexer.

On Pro, there is gpedit.msc and you can "disable" the backoff policy
of the Search Indexer.

Normally, if you move the mouse, the Search Indexer backs off.

Whereas, with the policy set to disable backoff on SearchIndexer,
when you move the mouse and launch Task Manager, the SearchIndexer
will continue to suck cycles.

The OS has a number of backoff behaviors and hidden activities,
but no hints are available at the moment for those. It's not
always the SearchIndexer...

If you are paranoid, your paranoia is well-placed. The later
OSes only make this worse. For example, on Windows 11, there
seem to be four Services tasked with scraping your machine
for email addresses. Is this sort of behavior *that* important ?
FFS. It's like I'm running a whorehouse for Services here.
You would think the SearchIndexer could do that on the side
so no one would notice. Like a Kaspersky looking for "Top Secret"
or something :-) Yeah, all the behavior is as ethical as hell.

Paul

On 5/5/2022 1:41 PM, Boris scribbled:
> Machine is Dell Studio XPS 8100. Per Speccy:
>
> Summary
> Operating System
> MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
> CPU
> Intel Core i5 650 @ 3.20GHz 94 °F
> Clarkdale 32nm Technology
> RAM
> 8.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 664MHz (9-9-9-24)
> Motherboard
> Dell Inc. 0G3HR7 (CPU 1) 74 °F
> Graphics
> W2252 (1680x1050@60Hz)
> 512MB GeForce 310 (Unknown) 123 °F
> Hard Drives
> 932GB Seagate ST31000528AS (RAID) 96 °F
> 932GB Western Digital WDC WD10EZEX-08WN4A0 (SATA) 96 °
> F
> Optical Drives
> TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-H653A
> HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GH50N
> Audio
> Realtek High Definition Audio
>
> Over the last few months, it's become intollerably slow to launch apps,
> such as Windows Live Mail, Firefox, Excel, etc. Many times, when working
> with the app, the app will freeze for up to a minute, with the words,
> "Firefox is not responding", "Windows Live Mail is no responding", etc.,
> appearing in the app's ribbon (not as an error message that pops up in
> it's own little window). And, sometimes the when this happens, the app
> will fade as if it's thinly covered with fog. Task manager sometimes
> lets me end task, sometimes not. Most of the time, if I wait long
> enough, the app comes back to life.
>
> I've done all the common hardware and OS testing, all seems fine.
>
> I'd like to see if there's any clues in the Event Viewer, but my gosh,
> there's so many places to look there. Where would you look?
>
> TIA

you cannot fix something that has 2 or 3 identifications for the same
function. The computer is a machine. It does not know what to do. You
can so thank Microsoft for it. They are the ones that programed it.
Why did Bill Gates wife trash him. This is why. He chose to sell it,
instead of fix it. Now, everyone pays for it. I will not, i did not do
it.