Slow system

My XP Home has been running very slowly for about a week now. Not sure if
it's Firefox (52.0.1) (likely) or XP. Firefox has a speed up offering but
I've never tried it. Supposed to clear out unneeded stuff. Little reluctant
to let it mess with my system but I guess I have little choice.

Suggestions?

Maybe I need to go elsewhere (where?) for Firefox support?

TIA


--
I love a good meal! That's why I don't cook.

KenK wrote:
My XP Home has been running very slowly for about a week now. Not sure if
it's Firefox (52.0.1) (likely) or XP. Firefox has a speed up offering but
I've never tried it. Supposed to clear out unneeded stuff. Little reluctant
to let it mess with my system but I guess I have little choice.

Suggestions?

Maybe I need to go elsewhere (where?) for Firefox support?

TIA

Look at Task Manager, to see if Windows Update is railed.

Use a copy of HDTune, and benchmark the hard drive. I had
a drive here, that "slipped into PIO mode". I eventually
ended up changing the port it connects to, to stop that
behavior. In PIO mode, the disk will only do about
4MB/sec or so.

Yes, you can "Reset" Firefox if you want. But I wouldn't
jump to conclusions just yet.

Paul

KenK wrote:
My XP Home has been running very slowly for about a week now. Not sure if
it's Firefox (52.0.1) (likely) or XP. Firefox has a speed up offering but
I've never tried it. Supposed to clear out unneeded stuff. Little
reluctant
to let it mess with my system but I guess I have little choice.

Suggestions?

Maybe I need to go elsewhere (where?) for Firefox support?

TIA

In addition to what Paul has said, you could always make an image backup of
your system and then uninstall Firefox to see if that was the problem. If
not, simply restore the image (this is assuming you don't want to simply
uninstall and reinstall Firefox to test out you suspicions).

Also, if it is Firefox as you seem to suspect, you might consider using an
older version. I generally find the older versions of most software better
because they are less bloated and resource heavy. For example, I've stayed
with Firefox version 36, partly due to the aforementioned reasons, and
partly due to the add-on compatibility issues which get more problematic
with each version update.

KenK wrote:
My XP Home has been running very slowly for about a week now. Not sure if
it's Firefox (52.0.1) (likely) or XP. Firefox has a speed up offering but
I've never tried it. Supposed to clear out unneeded stuff. Little reluctant
to let it mess with my system but I guess I have little choice.

Suggestions?

Maybe I need to go elsewhere (where?) for Firefox support?

TIA

How does it run with FF turned off?
This is the FF group:
mozilla.support.firefox

In message , Paul in Houston TX
writes:
KenK wrote:
My XP Home has been running very slowly for about a week now. Not sure if
it's Firefox (52.0.1) (likely) or XP. Firefox has a speed up offering but
I've never tried it. Supposed to clear out unneeded stuff. Little reluctant
to let it mess with my system but I guess I have little choice.

Suggestions?

Maybe I need to go elsewhere (where?) for Firefox support?

TIA

How does it run with FF turned off?
This is the FF group:
mozilla.support.firefox

But you have to register with the Mozilla newsserver (free); you won't
find it on the usual servers.


--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

.... "Peter and out." ... "Kevin and out." (Link episode)

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Paul in Houston TX writes:
KenK wrote:
My XP Home has been running very slowly for about a week now. Not sure if
it's Firefox (52.0.1) (likely) or XP. Firefox has a speed up offering but
I've never tried it. Supposed to clear out unneeded stuff. Little reluctant
to let it mess with my system but I guess I have little choice.

Suggestions?

Maybe I need to go elsewhere (where?) for Firefox support?

TIA

How does it run with FF turned off?
This is the FF group:
mozilla.support.firefox

But you have to register with the Mozilla newsserver (free); you won't find it on the
usual servers.

Yes. I forgot to add that.

"KenK" wrote in message
...

My XP Home has been running very slowly for about a week now. Not sure if
it's Firefox (52.0.1) (likely) or XP.

Before adjusting software, it would be wise to verify free
space on the C:/ drive. Most users find C:/ needs 10 per
cent free space for maximum speed.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

On 20 Mar 2017 17:51:10 GMT, KenK wrote:

My XP Home has been running very slowly for about a week now. Not sure if
it's Firefox (52.0.1) (likely) or XP. Firefox has a speed up offering but
I've never tried it. Supposed to clear out unneeded stuff. Little reluctant
to let it mess with my system but I guess I have little choice.

Suggestions?

Maybe I need to go elsewhere (where?) for Firefox support?

CTRL-ALT-DEL and look at processes. See what's using your CPU
and RAM.

Look at startups, remove any Glugle, Java, Adobe etc
updaters/dataminers.

It could be just a corrupt driver. Try reinstalling, specially
video.
Have you defragged the HD recently ?

How's your swapfile ?

Work on the above, and give us some feedback.
[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012

Paul wrote in news
KenK wrote:
My XP Home has been running very slowly for about a week now. Not
sure if it's Firefox (52.0.1) (likely) or XP. Firefox has a speed up
offering but I've never tried it. Supposed to clear out unneeded
stuff. Little reluctant to let it mess with my system but I guess I
have little choice.

Suggestions?

Maybe I need to go elsewhere (where?) for Firefox support?

TIA

Look at Task Manager, to see if Windows Update is railed.

Sorry, 'railed' is not in my vocabulary. If you mean using a very large
number of cycles, that's System Idle Process, which seems normal. Around
70. Avp.exe is usually also active. But I've not been on much yet today and
the system may not be running slow today.

Use a copy of HDTune,

I'll look for this later. I don't have a copy that I'm aware of.

and benchmark the hard drive. I had
a drive here, that "slipped into PIO mode".

Will HDTune tell me that?

I eventually
ended up changing the port it connects to, to stop that
behavior. In PIO mode, the disk will only do about
4MB/sec or so.

Yes, you can "Reset" Firefox if you want. But I wouldn't
jump to conclusions just yet.

Paul





--
I love a good meal! That's why I don't cook.

Paul in Houston TX wrote in
news
KenK wrote:
My XP Home has been running very slowly for about a week now. Not
sure if it's Firefox (52.0.1) (likely) or XP. Firefox has a speed up
offering but I've never tried it. Supposed to clear out unneeded
stuff. Little reluctant to let it mess with my system but I guess I
have little choice.

Suggestions?

Maybe I need to go elsewhere (where?) for Firefox support?

TIA

How does it run with FF turned off?

Can't get MS IE to work. I'd need another browser, but don't know which
to choose. I suppose I could DL a new version of IE, but would rather not
use IE.

This is the FF group:
mozilla.support.firefox







--
I love a good meal! That's why I don't cook.

"Don Phillipson" wrote in
news
"KenK" wrote in message
...

My XP Home has been running very slowly for about a week now. Not
sure if it's Firefox (52.0.1) (likely) or XP.

Before adjusting software, it would be wise to verify free
space on the C:/ drive.

About 33 percent free.

Most users find C:/ needs 10 per
cent free space for maximum speed.



--
I love a good meal! That's why I don't cook.

Shadow wrote in
:

On 20 Mar 2017 17:51:10 GMT, KenK wrote:

My XP Home has been running very slowly for about a week now. Not sure
if it's Firefox (52.0.1) (likely) or XP. Firefox has a speed up
offering but I've never tried it. Supposed to clear out unneeded
stuff. Little reluctant to let it mess with my system but I guess I
have little choice.

Suggestions?

Maybe I need to go elsewhere (where?) for Firefox support?

CTRL-ALT-DEL and look at processes. See what's using your CPU
and RAM.

I thought that restarted the computer?

Look at startups, remove any Glugle, Java, Adobe etc
updaters/dataminers.

It could be just a corrupt driver. Try reinstalling, specially
video.
Have you defragged the HD recently ?

How's your swapfile ?

Work on the above, and give us some feedback.
[]'s



--
I love a good meal! That's why I don't cook.

KenK wrote:
Paul wrote in news
KenK wrote:
My XP Home has been running very slowly for about a week now. Not
sure if it's Firefox (52.0.1) (likely) or XP. Firefox has a speed up
offering but I've never tried it. Supposed to clear out unneeded
stuff. Little reluctant to let it mess with my system but I guess I
have little choice.

Suggestions?

Maybe I need to go elsewhere (where?) for Firefox support?

TIA
Look at Task Manager, to see if Windows Update is railed.

Sorry, 'railed' is not in my vocabulary. If you mean using a very large
number of cycles, that's System Idle Process, which seems normal. Around
70. Avp.exe is usually also active. But I've not been on much yet today and
the system may not be running slow today.
Use a copy of HDTune,

I'll look for this later. I don't have a copy that I'm aware of.

and benchmark the hard drive. I had
a drive here, that "slipped into PIO mode".

Will HDTune tell me that?

I eventually
ended up changing the port it connects to, to stop that
behavior. In PIO mode, the disk will only do about
4MB/sec or so.

Yes, you can "Reset" Firefox if you want. But I wouldn't
jump to conclusions just yet.

Paul

HDTune is easier to use than using Device Manager, and checking
the tab in the Properties of each IDE entry. At least, I find
it easier, because I frequently cannot figure out which drive
is which.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

The HDTune graph for a hard drive, should be a gently declining curve.
Starting at 100MB/sec on the left, and stopping at 50MB/sec on the
right. Some modern drives can do twice those numbers.

Whereas, if a cable is forced to PIO mode, the processor moves
each byte manually (i.e. no DMA). The transfer rate in HDTUne
drops all the way down to a flat line at 4MB/sec. You cannot
miss this in a benchmark run. Just a few seconds of benchmark
drawn on the screen, and you can spot it.

*******

In Task Manager, System Idle keeps track of all the CPU that
isn't getting used. Whereas other named items (SVCHost containing
Windows Update in this case), may register as a percentage
corresponding to the number of cores on the CPU. If you have a
4C 4T CPU, Windows Update is using one core all for itself
(as SVCHOST), you would see "SVCHOST 25%" in Task Manager.
Because your whole four core CPU would be 100%, and a
single core all used up is 25%.

The OS kernel scheduler is allowed to migrate tasks from one core
to another, many times a second. The scheduler considers the
"cost" of moving a process. Moving a process between cores
requires some cache coherency traffic, and that is considered
a "cost of doing business". More modern OSes will keep the task
running on a certain core for longer, to avoid excessive migration
costs.

So the graphs don't stand still. The wiggling moves from one
graph to another. But the percentage used, of a railed SVCHOST,
should remain constant at (1/n_cores)*100%.

If you have a 4C 8T processor, that's a four core processor
with Hyperthreading. You can have eight threads of execution.
If SVCHOST rails on one of those, it's (1/8)*100% = 12.5% CPU.
So railing a single virtual core in that case, is 12.5%.

Railing a core, means the runaway task uses all the clock cycles.
If you had a 3GHz processor, you use Process Explorer, and
drilled into the task in question, you would see

Naughty_Thread Cycles = 3,000,000,000
Sleepy_Thread Cycles = 0
Dopey_Thread Cycles = 0

indicating that the Naughty one is using everything that one
core has to offer. The process isn't all that aware it
is moving from silo to silo while this is happening. For
example, to suck up all the cycles, you could write
code like this.

1: Do_something
GoTo 1

And a tight loop like that might use all 3,000,000,000 cycles
available in that one second interval.

System_Idle is the left over residue. It is defined as a
low priority task. If no other task is eligible to run
(not "ready to run"), then System_Idle runs. System_Idle
doesn't actually waste cycles. It does a sleep(), and
the next clock tick "wakes things up". So on the one
hand, System_Idle captures the left-overs for accounting
purposes, yet, doesn't use any electricity. By entering
sleep() for a time slice, the ACPI power state can drop
if it wants to.

Note that it is possible to "hijack" System Idle. I had
a subscription to Kaspersky AV do this. Kaspersky installs
its own System Idle task. How could I tell ? I held my hand
near the power supply one day, and it occurred to me
"you know, it never used to be this hot". And I discovered
the *******s had installed their own System Idle task. The
purpose of doing this, is to prevent malware from doing
it first. So occasionally, the accounting system is
screwed up by "monkey business". In retaliation, I kept
using Kaspersky, but "stole back" System Idle by using
yet another System Idle task provided by RMClock. And
then the power supply cooled off again.

Paul

KenK wrote:
Paul in Houston TX wrote in
news
KenK wrote:
My XP Home has been running very slowly for about a week now. Not
sure if it's Firefox (52.0.1) (likely) or XP. Firefox has a speed up
offering but I've never tried it. Supposed to clear out unneeded
stuff. Little reluctant to let it mess with my system but I guess I
have little choice.

Suggestions?

Maybe I need to go elsewhere (where?) for Firefox support?

TIA
How does it run with FF turned off?

Can't get MS IE to work. I'd need another browser, but don't know which
to choose. I suppose I could DL a new version of IE, but would rather not
use IE.

This is the FF group:
mozilla.support.firefox

There is Seamonkey Suite.

http://www.seamonkey-project.org

I'm using 2.40 at the moment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaMonkey

*******

There is a Chromium-based browser called SRWare Iron.

http://www.srware.net/en/software_sr...n_download.php

It needs its own special flavor of Flash.

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/

Select Operating system = 7/Vista/XP
Version = PPAPI [a.k.a Pepperflash for Chromium]
Note: in the middle pane, disable the "free offer"

The nice thing about that browser - I don't use it for
everything, but I use it for "difficult" video sites.

If you visit http://www.youtube.com/html5, all the
boxes for capability there will be green. And Flash
also works in it.

*******

I used browsers in this order:

IE - never
Firefox - old version, not much tracking capability. No video works.
Seamonkey - For sites with Flash, some Flash now no longer works, even
though Flash is up to date.
SRWareIron - Reserved for video playback situations, where the others
failed to deliver the video.

*******

To scan the "prefs.js" on each of your Mozilla browsers,
you can use Adwcleaner. It searches for adware or toolbars.
It has a "scan" option and a "clean" option. You can use
"Scan" for a look around.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/

Consider whether some add-on is broken on Firefox.

Watch your Task Manager for evidence.

Web pages with looping Javascript language scripts, they
can cause the browser to appear to freeze. If you're lucky, the
browser uses a timer to detect the browser interface is not
responding, and will put up a dialog indicating "a script is looping"
or similar. Sometimes this can be fixed, by "moving down one entry"
in the list of above browsers. Some scripts loop, because the
tracking feature they seek to abuse, is not on your browser. So
to beat some sense into you, they freeze the browser.

*******

Both Firefox, some modern versions of Internet Explorer, and
Adobe Flash, use GPU hardware acceleration. Sometimes browser
instability is caused by this feature. Disabling hardware
acceleration, can provide relief for people with really
old video cards (that's me). Or people who don't
have the right video driver installed, or maybe the
manufacturer stopped making driver update a hundred
years ago. Sometimes, that one manifests as graphical
glitches, but if forced to do emulation, the software
render path can chew up a lot of CPU.

HTH,
Paul

In message , Paul
writes:
KenK wrote:
[]
Sorry, 'railed' is not in my vocabulary. If you mean using a very
large number of cycles, that's System Idle Process, which seems
normal. Around 70. Avp.exe is usually also active. But I've not been
on much yet today and the system may not be running slow today.
[]
Railing a core, means the runaway task uses all the clock cycles.
[]
I think the expression comes from analogue electronics, where a
sufficiently large signal at the input of an amplifier causes the output
signal to hit the maximum, usually close to the "power rails".
(Otherwise known as "clipping"; if the signal is seen on an
oscilloscope, the reason is clear.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

A good pun is its own reword.