Creepy Crawly

[MilesAhead]

Hmmmmm this Vista is almost as tough as Slackware Linux!!
After only 14 months or so I found the hidden gremlin(well,
one of them anyway) that was running up my HD for no apparent
reason.

I long ago disabled Windows Search, but I noticed after my machine
was sitting idle the HD would start running up. I looked in WinPatrol
and Task Manager and didn't really see anything. Showed no Scheduled
Tasks running, but Process Monitor would show all these files on my HD being accessed for who knows what reason!!!

Finally looked in Task Scheduler and checked Show Hidden Tasks!!
** voila **

Even though indexing was disabled, there's a hidden scheduled shell
task to "crawl start pages" in the task scheduler and it's set to kick
off when the computer is idle!! Even my USB drives are NTFS so
there's really no reason to go over every file on all my drives just in
case one of 'em mighta' changed!! Esp. since I use Locate32 and
index my files with that.

Changed properties to Disabled in the Task Scheduler. So next time I
watch TV for an hour, I have to keep checking to see if maybe this
time my HD will stay still!! Fingers crossed.

[venson43]

lol, better get back to using xp

[MilesAhead]

heh

lol, better get back to using xp

Heh. I have to admit I like Aero though. As Chewy says, it would be
a lot less frustrating if it was preinstalled tuned. If I had my way there'd
be a welcome screen on first boot with a bunch of buttons or check boxes
so you could select one or two things you want to use most and then
it would optimize and reboot with the most appropriate settings. Most
of the frustration is hunting these things down and enabling or disabling
them manually. Like if there were check boxes and you unchecked
"I plan to use Windows Search" then it would turn all the indexing and
crawling stuff off, that would have saved me a lot of searching!

When I first got the machine I turned most of the Aero effects off and
everything seemed so flat it felt like XP. I missed the exploding
windows right away.

I'm curious how it will be when I finally get a PC with 64 bit Vista preinstalled. I've heard it runs very smooth.

[atifsh]

u wont feel much difference between 32 and 64 bit of vista. only few benchmarks will show u 64 is better. but then all that issues of 64bit drivers , programs is a mess.

again, i found fresh install vista+sp1 all updates and avast couple of restarts runs fine for me. leaving ur system do that harddrive thingy for few hrs will never bother u again.

[locoeng]

I dual boot Ultimate 32 bit and 64 bit and don't see a whole lot of difference in the two...that said I don't boot into 64 bit that often.

[Chewy]

I know a mod in another forum(real pc hardware geek) dual booting xp/32 and vista 64 bit who upgraded to 4 gigs of ram, I asked him for a benchmark to see if 64 bit was worth it, after he went to 8 gigs and the trouble he had getting his mobo to run I have as yet to see a benchmark.

[MilesAhead]

I read a user review of an HP Media Center PC. I'm pretty sure it was m9250f model or very similar. It came with 4 GB ram and the user said he upgraded to 8 GB. His recommendation was don't do it. Said is was very fast stock but really bogged after boosting to 8GB.

When I say I heard it runs smooth, I've seen a few posts where users had run XP 64 bit and then have Vista 64 bit and claim that they didn't have to do much of anything to get apps to work on Vista 64 bit. It's coming preinstalled on a lot of the quad core HP Media Center PCs so I'm thinking they should get the bugs out pretty soon if not already. I wish I could see more user reviews after the user has owned the machine for 6 months.
You tend to get the review posting during the initial enthusiastic stage, or during the initial pissed off stage when something is really wrong. No follow up.

I don't really expect Vista to be faster than XP on the same hardware. If you want real fast but still multitasking then you should put Linux OS on with only command line interface. You can run commands and put them in the background using the '&' operator.
No slowing things down with all that X graphics.

[MilesAhead]

u wont feel much difference between 32 and 64 bit of vista. only few benchmarks will show u 64 is better. but then all that issues of 64bit drivers , programs is a mess.

again, i found fresh install vista+sp1 all updates and avast couple of restarts runs fine for me. leaving ur system do that harddrive thingy for few hrs will never bother u again.

Just curious, do you have a LAN or stand-alone PC? Because on my system I never got a quiet HD no matter how many months I waited. Something was always scanning every file on the system. It's quiet now though.

[locoeng]

Not everyone has your expectations with a PC chewy... http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/1...nchmarked.html

I think 8 gigs would be over doing it and 2-4 gigs would be optimal. Keep in mind the benchmark was done with an AMD Phenom, probably a little more power than most people are packing.

[Chewy]

CPU CPU Clock Motherboard Chipset Memory CL-RCD-RP-RAS Score
8x Xeon E5462 2800 MHz Intel S5400SF i5400 Quad DDR2-640FB 5-5-5-15 30480

[Chewy]

with dual quad xeon's you really need a lot of memory

[atifsh]

Just curious, do you have a LAN or stand-alone PC? Because on my system I never got a quiet HD no matter how many months I waited. Something was always scanning every file on the system. It's quiet now though.

2 systems both same case, no harddrive idol usage. but iv defragmented my drives manually once in 2 3 months.

1: dell optiplex 745 c2d 1.8 3 gb ram 2 sata harddrives 1 sata dvdrw [ultimate]
2: dell vostro c2d 1.6 2.5 gb ram sata 5400 harddrive [home premium]

both system runs without any tweaks. both reinstalled with integrated sp1.

[MilesAhead]

2 systems both same case, no harddrive idol usage. but iv defragmented my drives manually once in 2 3 months.

1: dell optiplex 745 c2d 1.8 3 gb ram 2 sata harddrives 1 sata dvdrw [ultimate]
2: dell vostro c2d 1.6 2.5 gb ram sata 5400 harddrive [home premium]

both system runs without any tweaks. both reinstalled with integrated sp1.

Maybe they fixed it up in SP 1 due to user feedback? Dunno'.

[MilesAhead]

hmmmmmm speaking of ram, I just took a look at Best Buy and the $1000 range HP media center machines are coming with 6 GB ram and Intel Q6700!! It's hard to know when to pull the trigger. I almost bought the m9250f machine w/4 GB ram a couple of weeks ago for the same money!!

[copyless]

Chewy, what benchmark test would you like ran? I will be happy to run one for you and post the results, either good or bad. Just let me know which tests you want.

I have a Vista 64 bit machine running 8 gigs of RAM. Also I have have had it for about 7 or 8 months, I can't remember, I either bought it in December or January.

So just let me know, I did run all of the benchmarks with the 4 gigs it came with and then switched to 8 gigs and their was a slight improvement in a couple of the tests but I can't remember now which ones it was.