Last week I couldn't delete a file. Had to go with SafeMode then delete.
It scared me.
So I bought Norton SystemWorks for the utils (and stuff <wink>). Ran SpeedDisk. It ran to 67% complete then stuck there.
For eight hours.
EIGHT HOURS!
So I abandoned Norton, kicking myself for not checking them and instead assuming Norton = Good. Bad assumption. Got PerfectDisk from Raxco. Optimized my disk. Ran for ten hours but finished okay.
My issue now is stutter. This is new from last week. What has changed since then:
- Microsoft XP security update applied
- I increased my page file size from 250M to 583M
- installed Norton SystemWorks
- ran and aborted SpeedDisk
- ran Perfect Disk to completion
Now my issue is stutter. When I am playing music or just moving my mouse around, I get audio and mouse stutter when reading from disk. I used the WinXP Perf Monitor to see what was happening and while I didn't monitor everythig, it is clear that opening apps and hence reading disk causes this stutter. Opening the same program time after time (like ten Words) doesn't cause it, only when opening an app that ain't been open before. I look in Task Manager and watch the CPU and memory but see nothing out of the ordinary. For about three months I have been seeing Low Memory warnings from XP, as if maybe memory is failing.
Anyway, this is what there is:
IBM Netvista 6825
2Gig processor
384M RAM
Cable modem, network card, blah blah blah
Windows XP
latest NVIDIA drivers
70Gig drive is 50% free
Norton Anti-Virus running (and has been for two years with no issues)
Tried to get the latest BIOS from IBM but their download has a CONFIG.SYS that is screwed up (won't flash from there). Sheesh.
Excepting BIOS I have done everything i can find out there in Usenet Land. Well not really - after submitting this i am going to open the box up and check all wires and connections to see if some loose wire is interrupting me.
Can anyone help me here?
I'd be mightily obliged.
Regards all,
John
