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Question

win xp laptop, frequent intermittent pauses, HD lite steady

Apr 17, 2014 11:49AM PDT

My Laptop is having some issues. In pretty good shape, but for 5 months now it has an intermittent pausing problem.

In happens 30-40 times in an 8 hour day. (4-5 times a hour)

Symptom: The system stops working for between 10 and 25 seconds. When it pauses like this - the mouse usually is movable (though not always) - the CPU is near zero - the hard drive light goes nearly steady on - and everything basically stops. Then after it's done whatever it was doing, it all resumes normal. If during the pause I click on something more than once, it will put (Not Responding) in the title bar of that app or window.

The pause problem typically happens when I'm switching between windows, but it also happens just as often within an application. Even just right clicking to get a pop up menu often causes a 10-15 second wait. The pause can happen when I'm scrolling down a web page (and often the mouse freezes then too). It doesn't seem to matter if I have one application open or 5. It's especially bad with Outlook - is happens a lot when accessing PST folders within Outlook, moving around in Outlook, opening emails, etc. But if I'm typing within an application like Outlook or Word and just type - the problem doesn't happen. So it's mostly connected to me doing something - like moving around, opening things, right clicking, switching windows.

Dell D630 Latitude laptop
Windowx XP SP3
4GB ram
500GB drive WD5000BPKX SATA III 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache
Drive is partitioned:
C: winwows XP. 70GB Free 25GB
D: my docs and data 380GB Free 120GB
E: page file 8G. PF size managed by windows

High speed FioS internet (problem happens both wired or wireless)

All windows and Dell drivers are up to date per websites
All XP updates loaded

Cleaned out dust and fan, everything runs cool
System is malware clean (as far as I know) AVG 2013 up to date and scanned none found/no rootkits
Also ran ESET online scan overnight and found nothing
Drive is defrag (doesn't seem to make a difference)
No failied hardware in hdwr manager
Ran Memtest overnight for 8 hours - no errors

No special hardware attached.

It's maddening. I'll dig into anything to try to solve this if anyone has some ideas.

Discussion is locked

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Clarification Request
Let's focus on right click.
Apr 17, 2014 12:15PM PDT

"Even just right clicking to get a pop up menu often causes a 10-15 second wait"

That's the context handlers. It's not unusual for me to discover something there. But let's hear more about you. Are you a Windows aficionado? Would you know what tools to use?
Bob

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Let's focus on right click.
Apr 17, 2014 1:08PM PDT

I'm fairly capable Windows person - much more experienced than the average bear, but not an hacker (in the positive sense) or

The right click problem is frequent, but not 100% consistent.

I would add that in addition to right clicks, it happens pretty regularly when clicking the desktop bottom (to minimize all windows). That can be a pretty good pause. Clicking it again to restore all windows does not have the pause. It feels to me like a memory swap problem, which is why I checked the PF and set it up on a separate drive, etc to see if that might have been the issue. But no difference. Also I thought maybe the memory, but it checks out ok. -T

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I'd research all my right click handlers.
Apr 18, 2014 1:58AM PDT
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Clarification Request
A wild guess maybe
Apr 17, 2014 8:19PM PDT

I have seen this happen with desktops. It will happen when a drive temporarily becomes unavailable. The reasons for this vary but I had this happen with an external drive that had some power saving feature of going to sleep when not in use for some period of time. I am wondering if you have an external drive connected to the laptop or even one in a second bay. I have also had this happen with multiple drives in a PC when the power connection to the drive became intermittent. Fixing that connection fixed my problem. Sorry but I cannot say definitively what's going on. I suppose you could consult the event log for clues but these don't always offer human readable information.

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I would say
Apr 17, 2014 10:55PM PDT

I would say you're onto something here. The OP could and should check the power settings plan and may have to drill down into the specifics to figure out how long it is before the HDD is set to spin down to save power.

This is also a symptom I would expect of a drive in early stage failure. So the OP could and should go to the Dell site to download a copy of their diagnostic program or now they have an online one. The OP should make sure to run the full surface scan test on the HDD. SMART and DST (Drive Short Test) will miss a lot of errors. I think in a couple years as a hardware technician I only replaced like 2-3 drives because of SMART failures out of probably a few hundred HDD replacements. The rates are ridiculously low to the point where SMART is just this side of useless.

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The only SMART failures I've seen have happened
Apr 18, 2014 3:07AM PDT

in fairly new drives such as those only in service a few weeks. My exposure is primarily as a volunteer in a school environment and I see premature failure more often than drives that are between 1 and 5 years old. Our school units will pop up a SMART trigger on boot so that teachers can alert me before it's too late to capture an image of the drive. In my case, I've found it useful. I'd say, however, that the fallout has been in less than 5% of new drives. I've seen more problems with poor drive connections than that. I've also found a number of drives that were working just fine but tested as having media integrity issues. I suspect this happens with space that has yet to be used.

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Follow up
Apr 18, 2014 5:38AM PDT

Gents - Thank you for your replies and thoughts. Let me add the following:

- the WD harddrive was bought brand new and is 6 months old
- about a month ago, I downloaded the WD drive test software and did a surface scan (took forever on 500GB drive) and it found no errors
- there are no external drives or multiple drives connected to this laptop. In fact, nothing additional is connected to it
- the pausing usually happens while I'm actively using the computer, and I'm fairly confident the hard drive doesn't have a chance to spin down. Nevertheless, I changed the drive sleep setting from 3 minutes 3 hours. It may not be relevant, however I'll monitor to see if there is a difference.
- Over the past couple months, I've disabled a handful of services hoping to find a culprit. No difference. I've left them disabled.
- there are some errors in the event log - Application events as well as System events - but they do not correspond to the time the pausing happens. Following a pause occurrence, there are no errors in the log. Also, there might be a couple errors in the logs per day but the pause happens 30-40 times per day.

Typical event errors include:

Application Events:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Bonjour Service
Event Category: None
Event ID: 100
Description: Task Scheduling Error: Continuously busy for more than a second

So I disabled Bonjour. Problem persists.

Event Type: Information
Event Source: RegSrvc
Event Category: None
Event ID: 0
Description: The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( RegSrvc ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: Service started.

Typical System Events:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: DCOM
Event Category: None
Event ID: 10005
Description: DCOM got error "The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it. " attempting to start the service MDM with arguments "" in order to run the server: {0C0A3666-30C9-11D0-8F20-00805F2CD064}

Probably because I have the MDM service disabled. Most of these errors happen once or twice a day.

It "feels" like a RAM/HD memory swap thing. It just feels like it's having to swap chunks of memory from the drive and things get stuck until that swap is finished. I am stumped.

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Bonjour?
Apr 18, 2014 6:25AM PDT
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/45765/do-i-really-need-bonjour-on-windows

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonjour_%28software%29

You may be on the right track with that Bonjour. Can't you just remove it completely, see if that helps?

I see you already ran memtest, didn't notice that at first.

If removing Bonjour doesnt solve the problem, then time to keep checking the event logs first to see if they will point to other program, or failing that, removing any programs installed recently that might have caused this.
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Bounjour
Apr 18, 2014 8:26AM PDT

I has disabled Bonjour a couple months ago hoping it was causing the problem (after noticing frequent errors in the event log). But disabling had no impact on the pausing issue. I can try removing it, but I have other PC's with Bonjour on them and they don't seem to have this issue. Something is odd.

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If it's not a data corruption problem
Apr 19, 2014 10:09PM PDT

the only thing I can think of that remains is intermittent hardware problem, maybe related to heat, or not even due to that, just the failing electronic part, OR there's some program interfering, perhaps while calling home, legit or a Trojan type. When this happens, watch the hard drive light (the red one) on your computer, see if it's showing continuing action while you are doing nothing, making no read or write commands. If so, then something is accessing the hard drive other than you.

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Answer
Check your hard drive space available
Apr 18, 2014 5:59AM PDT

If you have less than 10% of it left, that can cause this. Windows has metafiles that you never see and don't get counted into the file usage.

http://www.osforensics.com/faqs-and-tutorials/how-to-view-hidden-ntfs-files.html

Of note;

Typically 12% if a volume's space is allocated for the MFT to grow into. OSF parses this file for you when you use the file system browser.

So, by the time you are there, you are encroaching on that reserved space and it's like hitting the end of the drive for space and the hard drive light will come on and stay on as it's trying to deal with the shrinking room available.

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Follow up
Apr 18, 2014 6:07AM PDT

Thanks James -

actually the drive is a 500GB drive partitioned as follows:
C: windows XP. 70GB with 25GB free
D: my docs and data 380GB with 120GB free
E: page file 8G. PF size managed by windows

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well, then that'snot the problem.
Apr 18, 2014 6:14AM PDT
If you want more about metadata files though for future remembrance, here's a good read.


Have you had any data corruption? Like a document file was OK before but after changing or adding to it and a new save on it, you go back the next day and odd characters or parts are missing, or it even refuses to open? If so, then could run a check on your RAM using memtest program available various places like CNET downloads, source forge. You've already run a CHKDSK on the drives?
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possible idea
Apr 19, 2014 8:52AM PDT

James - your comment about data corruption might be an idea. I had this pausing problem 9 months ago and suspected it was my hard drive was going bad. So I bought this new HD (WD5000BPKX) and imaged the old one onto it. For a few weeks, it ran great, no problems, no pauses. And then the pauses came back. Suppose it's possible some corrupted files were moved over to this new drive when doing the imaging. I ran sfc /scannow and as far as I can tell it did not encounter any issues. I can try to run it again if that would help?

If there was corruption, would the laptop work fine otherwise? No problems other than the pausing problem.

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Hmm, might be as simple as
Apr 19, 2014 12:28PM PDT

putting on a new data cable between the drive and the motherboard.

How long did you run memtest86 on the system?

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memtest
Apr 19, 2014 5:08PM PDT

Hmmmm - that's an idea. I can take a look inside there.

I ran the memtest overnight, I think it was ~9hours. zero errors. What do you make of it?

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that would exonerate the RAM for sure
Apr 19, 2014 10:03PM PDT

It was run from something other than the hard drive? If so, that still leaves hard drive access suspect, the cable or it's connection.

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Re: partitions
Apr 18, 2014 6:16AM PDT

Just noting that having your page file at the end of the disk makes it slower, although it's unlikely to be the cause of the delay. But it's easy to move it to the c:-drive and see if it makes a difference.

And If you replace the hard disk, I'd just leave it in the c:\drive.

Kees

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Pagefile
Apr 18, 2014 8:30AM PDT

I had tried moving the system pagefile to the C drive to see if that helped, but honestly the pausing problem is bad enough that it overshadows any possible speed differences due to pagefile location.

I had been suspicious that the problem might be related to the pagefile - since this problem "feels" like a RAM/HD memory swap thing. It feels like it's having to swap chunks of memory from the drive and things get stuck until that swap is finished. So I thought - let me create a separate partition for the page file - but that didn't seem to make a difference to the pausing problem.

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Re: page file
Apr 19, 2014 8:50PM PDT

So now we know the issue is not related to the page file.

Then it's time to go to www.sysinternals.com (a Microsoft site) and try a few of their real time monitor tools (like diskmon and procmon) to see if you can find something happening.

Kees

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Answer
Let's use that 4 to 5 times a hour.
Apr 20, 2014 7:42AM PDT

While I see little headway on the right click handlers let's note that any network resource that is offline can cause XP to pause at 4 to 5 times a hour. This is an old issue with XP dating back to when it rolled out to current day. I demo'd this to my MSFT contact and the response was "don't do that."

So any share you have connected to, even a printer can induce this issue. As you would be well seasoned you know what to do now to remove this as a possible source.

And no, Microsoft never fixed it.
Bob

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update
Apr 22, 2014 9:03AM PDT

Well, I checked into the right click handlers, made a couple minor changes to the reg, but don't see much in the way of things that might be the culprit.

The problem still persists. Although interesting enough, that after changing the spin-power-down settings for the HD over the weekend, the problem did diminish for 1.5 days. I was reluctant to get excited, but I was watching to see if we got lucky. BUT then yesterday the pausing problem came back with a vengeance, right after a routine reboot.

I guess it's worth mentioning again about possible data corruption being the problem? I had this pausing problem 9 months ago and suspected it was my hard drive was going bad. So I bought this new HD and imaged the old one onto it. For a few weeks, it ran great, no problems, no pauses. And then the pauses came back. Is it possible that some corrupted files were moved over to this new drive and that's the culprit?

I had ran sfc /scannow a while back and did not encounter any issues. I can try to run it again if that would help?

This really is strange!

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Keep in mind
Apr 22, 2014 10:21AM PDT

I have no view of the items I noted. It's a shame I can't see reports about the areas I noted.

As to the HDD, you could try the maker's HDD test tools as well as tell more about maintenance. Some folk never use canned air on the vents and a few ask what canned air is or how to use it.
Bob

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reports
Apr 22, 2014 3:07PM PDT

Bob - thanks for your message, which reports would you like to see first?

As background, I've cleared out the vents and the fans and the heat sinks on the internals, so all is clean and good there. She runs nice and cool.

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Any at all.
Apr 22, 2014 3:39PM PDT

I don't have much to look over so anything would be a start.
Bob

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focusing
Apr 23, 2014 10:47AM PDT

Based on the symptoms described as....

The PS pauses for 5-15 seconds. while the hard drive light goes steady. The mouse moves (usually), but nothing else. The pause problem typically happens when I'm switching between applications, but also happens within an application (often when right clicking to get a pop up menu). The pause can happen when I'm scrolling down a web page (and often the mouse freezes then too). It doesn't seem to matter if I have one application open or 5. It's especially bad with Outlook - is happens a lot when accessing emails in folders within Outlook, or moving around in Outlook, opening emails, etc. But if I'm typing within an application like Outlook or Word (just typing) - the problem doesn't happen. So it's mostly connected to me doing something - like moving around, opening things, right clicking, switching windows.

Based on that, we have more than just a menu handler problem, would you agree? So I am trying to pick out what test and data dumps would be most helpful.

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When I see that I
Apr 23, 2014 11:12AM PDT

Go get a HDD off the shelf and do a clone of the HDD. You could run HDD test programs but at the shop it's by the hour so that costs more than the clone and new HDD.

Good hunting,
Bob

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New HD
Apr 23, 2014 3:55PM PDT

That's a good idea, however the background is this is a new HD (2) and it's doing the same problem as the original HD (1). I cloned HD1 onto HD2 about 6 mos ago. I believe there was some corruption on the old drive, so perhaps that was cloned over. However, my current system doesn't crash.

I've done basic HD checks on this new HD, but have not done CHKDSK /r having heard bad stories about CHKDSK /r.

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Since it's a backup.
Apr 24, 2014 12:22AM PDT

Time to either dig in or start over.

I had hopes of checking areas but it appears that won't happen. Going over every area with a fine tooth comb is a lot of work and takes a lot of skill as I no of no tools that automate it. I can share what tools I use but the work is still manual.

So far nothing has popped up here that sets off any alarms for me except that I don't see the work being done. I know folk don't want to be computer scientists but when stuff like this happens, out come the robes.
Bob

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WD extended test
Apr 24, 2014 2:11AM PDT

The robes are a good thing! I ran the Western Digital disk utility last night, took a while. It was the extended test which appears to check the media also. It came back with no errors. So I think we can rule out a HD hardware problem. Could still be a ram problem or even a heat problem, although I always have the HD temp on my system tray and it stays between 34 and 38C. It has crept up a bit over the past few weeks, so I will take the air can and clean the cooling system out tonight when I get home.

I say let's dig in. I'm happy to run some tests and send you the results. What test you would like to see first? When I get home tonight, I will run it and send you the results.