Painstakingly slow Vista premium 64 bit. Need help

[Castout]

Hi everyone, I just migrated to Vista premium 64 bit but the OS is painstakingly slow compared to XP.

My Vista experience index is just 2.9.
My rig is the following:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2 GHz
8Gb RAM
Nvidia 8600GT 256Mb RAM

The startup takesabout 10 minutes and vista is reporting that I have a driver problem with my intel chip which I subsequently downloaded and installed but it seemed to offer no solution whatsoever for me.

Help please even my browsing is affected. My God what has Microsoft done with Vista? I won't accept this and still think the extremely slow performance of my PC is due to incompatible driver problems. What should I do where should I go who should I call? Any advice what to check and what to do?

[fatty]

Have you applied all fixes and service packs for Vista? Downloaded the most up-to-date drivers for all your hardware? Perhaps check for new BIOS versions as well.

[Castout]

Hi thanks fatty. I've turned on automatic updates which include automatic updating of drivers.

Problem is my 64 bit firewall is not detecting any download activity and the download stays at 0% even after a while so I'm not sure whether it's actually downloading. There are 72 items to be downloaded perhaps it needs quite a considerable time though.

Edi: It's downloading now at 72%. I'm crossing my fingers that automatic updates would solve my slow performance problems.

[Castout]

Over the past few 7 hours my Vista x64 seems to be running faster but it is still slower than XP x86. Haven't tried rebooting though. Installing updates seems to be stuck at 31 out from 72. Hmm so far my Vista x64 experience has been disappointing and confusing.


Does anyone with Vista x64 have fast performance on their machine?

[AVGWarhawk]

A great site to help in your questions is http://www.vistax64.com/ this is Vista 64 so it applies to your machine. I run Phenom X4 9850. 8 gig DDR 800 and 9800gt. I get a 5.9 Vista experience. Vista runs very well and is quick. Please note I was getting a 5.9 with just 4 gig so you do not need 8 gig to get a 5.9. You have plenty of RAM. I did read in the Vista forums that a member set up 3 accounts. Admin and 2 user accounts. She said the admin account was much slower than the user account. MS recommends you have a user account for everyone. The admin account is just for maintenance. She created a user account for herself and now Vista was working great for her. However, in my case, both accounts run the same speed for me. So who knows. Anyway, I thought it was stupid to have a user account because only I use this computer. I did not want to bounce back and forth, yadda, yadda....I find that I don't. I find that I do not need to be in the admin account. I have not been there in over a week. I can do all in user account. I just get the pop up "did you start this process?" If yes and if no...yadda. No problems. Anyway, on the Vista forum there is one forum for performance and perhaps you can start tweaking.

[CaptainHaplo]

www.blackviper.com

Very helpful website in regards to tweaking. There are a lot of background services you want to disable to speed thing along.

The machine I am typing on:

AMD X2 4200 (2.2Ghz)
2Gigs Ram
ATI X1650 Pro card (yes its older but works fine)
Onboard sound and nic.

My "Windows Experience Index" is 4.4 - and my pc runs a slight bit faster than XP pro on the same box. However, if I add Ram the increase at this point is dramatic.

In your case - its not ram. There are three glaring possibilities. First - turn off all the background stuff thats not needed. Second is the possiblity that you need a mb driver for something like the north/south bridge pair. If that is the case, do not expect Windows update to do this for you. It won't. You should get the MB manufacturers driver from their website for your board. This often has a dramatic result. Lastly - it may be a bios/OS setting your missing. Make sure that windows is seeing all your Ram. It could be a timing issue that keeps it from utilizing all it should.

[AVGWarhawk]

That blackviper site is a good one for tweaks

[longam]

Also check the indexing options, Vista wants to index your whole hard drive which take allot of HD access time.

type 'indexing option' in the search box and modify.

[Castout]

I'm surprised that everybody else here is enjoying vista x64.

Thanks for all the posts and suggestion. It's going to be a long day....

Actually Vista detects all my 8Gb or RAM but my Vista index is a mere 2.9. Ouch.

Booting is especially a pain in the ass. It takes more than 5-6 minutes until I can interact with Vista.

[AVGWarhawk]

Something is way out of whack Castout. My machine loads Vista in about 45 seconds. That is boot to desktop. Try this, google CPUID and download. This is a small utility that will tell you what your computer is up to or in your case what it might not be up to. Check out you cores and see if they are running at the speed they are supposed to. Check your FSB and make sure that has not been cut in half by the BIOS. You can also check you RAM speed and if they are running dual channel. This CPUID does not load a program on you drive or make a registry entry. So, you need to click the execute for CPUID when you want to look at what you hardware is up to. I suspect that something in your BIOS was changed. Possible the FSB has been cut in two or your cores have been reduced in speed. These can be put back to the max within your BIOS. BTW, CPUID will identify the maker and model of your motherboard. With that information you can find the site for the board and get any updated drivers plus, there is probably a forum when you can find good BIOS settings for max performance of your hardware.

Get CPUID here:

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

[Castout]

I know something is very wrong.

I ran vista diagnostics and it was telling me that my CPU was overworking(red). went to Intel site but found nothing and now working to update the motherboard BIOS and driver.


Thanks for the application Warhawk. Will definitely try it.

[Castout]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

www.blackviper.com

Second is the possiblity that you need a mb driver for something like the north/south bridge pair. If that is the case, do not expect Windows update to do this for you. It won't.

You're a psychic. Updating the PCi bridge gives me quite a difference though booting still takes about 3 minutes which is half of before.

Problem is soon after Vista is loaded, my CPU is working at maximum capacity for about 5 minutes. Is this normal. Even typing and playing with windows is now much faster.

Thank you.......for hinting it to me.

I was depressed by Vista x64 performance but now though still not overly impressed yet at least it is decent and once loading phase is finished I can say that it is at least as fast as my old trusted XP but prettier and more sophisticated.

[CaptainHaplo]

Castout - glad to be of help. Honestly - sounds like vista is still loading all kinds of unneeded services and such. As soon as you can, pull up taskmanager or another process viewer and see what thread is taking so much cpu time. If its some wacky service or 20 that you don't need - disable em or at least set em to manual.

Your getting there. Vista takes time to get right, mainly due to its more bloated with background stuff than XP was. Biggest thing - if your looking for speed - make sure you turn off aero/themes. It does take away from the "pretty" of Vista, but makes a pretty big difference in run speed.

Keep pounding mate!

[Castout]

Now I'm there!!!!!!!

Downloading the updated BIOS solved my problem and my vista experience index went up from 2.9 to 4.8!


Vista now boot around if not less than 30s.

Thanks for everyone who gave me suggestions. Especially CaptainHaplo which was spot on in guesssing my main problem that was the MB BIOS-driver and bridge.


Huuuuurrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaah Goodbye x86!!!!:rotfl:

[AVGWarhawk]

Excellent news! I'm glad it is sorted and working like it should. The only thing I see that you might want to consider is a faster vid card. It will help with your speed. Book mark the Vista forum. I go there everyday and look for one thing about Vista that makes if better. I have not been let down yet. It is full of tips and tricks. If you got CPIUD, make a utility fold and keep it there. It is a nice program that helps keep you on top of your hardware and what it is up to. I have a utility folder with CPUID and other utility programs. One stop shop to check out what your computer is up to.