sharkface Posted February 11, 2006 Report Share Posted February 11, 2006 when i start a new torrent, i am faced with a huge slowdown of all processes on my computer. it because nearly unusable. 35-40 seconds to open a browser, 30 seconds to alt-tab between programs, ect ect. this usually lasts about 4-5 minutes. I imagine this is because it's begining to write to the disk, however from then on it usually slows the computer down in the same way at random intervals lasting anywhere from 30seconds to 2 minutes. If I pause the torrent I'm downloading, it stops this behavior nearly immediately. I have tried all of the troubleshooting steps i can find related to disk writing, but none seem to help. I have 15 gigs free on my drive so it shouldn't be a matter of space and I've defragged and scan disked in an attempt to solve the problem. It doesn't matter if I have an anti-virus installed or not and it doesn't matter what router I am using. any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Firon Posted February 11, 2006 Report Share Posted February 11, 2006 Read the entire section.http://www.utorrent.com/faq.php#Incompatible_softwareAnd yes, what anti-virus you have DOES matter. Firewall too, believe it or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharkface Posted February 11, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2006 Read the entire section.http://www.utorrent.com/faq.php#Incompatible_softwareAnd yes, what anti-virus you have DOES matter. Firewall too, believe it or not.what im saying is, i have tried it with no anti-virus and with no firewall at all and the behavior is the same. i have tried it behind 4 different routers. it has to be something with my computer or another factor of my windows install.i looked at the faq anyways, i use none of those programs or routers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultima Posted February 11, 2006 Report Share Posted February 11, 2006 When you say you tried it with no antivirus and no firewall... do you mean you tried it with them disabled, or with them not installed? Because disabling them isn't good enough to test =T Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharkface Posted February 11, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2006 uninstalled. i don't use a firewall because i dont use the internet unless im behind a router with a firewall. I uninstalled my old anti-virus, norton, and used my computer with out one for a while. Then I installed kaspersky. The problem has been present with ALL of my permutations of anti-virus setup. It's not as simple as something in the FAQ or I would have tried that. I even uninstalled kaspersky once on a hunch from the faq. I understand you deal with people who don't read the FAQ and ask simple questions that have been answered a thousand times here, but I dont' think this is one of those. i came here because I wanted help troubleshooting.Sadly enough, even with this problem I still choose utorrent because even with this problem i'm having its still better than what is out there because it runs perfectly when im just seeding and uses barely any processor time or physical memory. It only does it when I'm downloading, and I have attempted to troubleshoot it every time i see it happening but i've had no success at making the problem better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultima Posted February 11, 2006 Report Share Posted February 11, 2006 Erf you don't sound like a newbie who'd unknowingly have malware installed on his computer... otherwise that's the next question I'd have asked xDHm... I'll just ask some random questions in hopes that some of them might help us troubleshoot...1) Have you tried connecting directly to the modem? Some people have reported computer slowdowns due to their router...2) Can you tell us your computer specs?Edit: Uh... can't think of any more questions... lol... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1c3d0g Posted February 11, 2006 Report Share Posted February 11, 2006 I don't know what say man. :/1.) Are you sure you have DMA enabled? Check the mini-guide on how to access it if you're not sure.2.) Did you set your diskio.write_queue_size to 2x - 4x your maximum download speed? Have you done the same with the diskio.read_cache_size parameter? :|3.) Use SysInternals' ProcessExplorer and FileMon (when you're downloading something) to find out exactly which process is taking up so much CPU time/Hard Disk activity, respectively. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharkface Posted February 12, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 12, 2006 Erf you don't sound like a newbie who'd unknowingly have malware installed on his computer... otherwise that's the next question I'd have asked xDHm... I'll just ask some random questions in hopes that some of them might help us troubleshoot...1) Have you tried connecting directly to the modem? Some people have reported computer slowdowns due to their router...2) Can you tell us your computer specs?Edit: Uh... can't think of any more questions... lol...hehe, i got the job i have right now because i removed the right persons spyware. he had a bunch of gross rootkits and what not.as far as directly the modem goes, no i haven't. i will do that next time im able to. I cannot do it at home because my roommate is addicted to WoW and he'll attack me with a kitchen knife if i bogart the connection lol. I should be able to do it at work.My computer is a toshiba m35 laptop. it has a 60 gig hard drive. It has an intel wireless card. It's certainly fast enough. i believe it is a 1.75ghz p4-m. 512 megs ram. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultima Posted February 12, 2006 Report Share Posted February 12, 2006 lol attacking people with kitchen knives can be dangerous... ;PYour computer is undoubtedly fast enough to run µTorrent... try 1c3d0g's suggestions -- though I suspect the first one probably doesn't apply to you, since most people's drives are set to DMA by default already (edit: heh I guess I was wrong =P). But in case, I'll just quote the relevant part of his guide:Also, I want to make sure your hard disk is properly tuned to read/write bits & pieces of data as fast as possible too. I won't go into details, as this is not a technical guide, but let's just say that DMA (Direct Memory Access) speeds up your drive quite a bit, so you want to make sure it's set in that mode and not in PIO. Sometimes a drive will revert back to PIO mode if a certain amount of "corruptions" or failures have ocurred, usually around 5. It's important to keep checking the modes the drives are operating in from time to time. Anyway, the instructions are roughly as follows: Right-click My Computer ? Properties ? Hardware ? Device Manager ? IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers ? Primary IDE Channel ? Advanced Settings. Click on the drop-down menu and select DMA if available. Click OK. If you have more drives, set them to DMA as well. You may also want to do this for the Secondary IDE Channel. As a last step, defragment your hard disk regularly with Disk Defragmenter, since using BitTorrent generally will cause your hard disk to be fragmented more often. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharkface Posted February 12, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 12, 2006 I don't know what say man. :/1.) Are you sure you have DMA enabled? Check the mini-guide on how to access it if you're not sure.2.) Did you set your diskio.write_queue_size to 2x - 4x your maximum download speed? Have you done the same with the diskio.read_cache_size parameter? :|3.) Use SysInternals' ProcessExplorer and FileMon (when you're downloading something) to find out exactly which process is taking up so much CPU time/Hard Disk activity, respectively.This appears to be somewhat helpful, I am running in PIO mode even though I have told windows to operate in DMA. I will reboot to check my bios and double check its set right there and see if it is utorrent making it switch because of failures as I suspect. Also, setting my write_queue and read_cache to the correct sizes helped my download speed by around 15kB/s. Thanks!I will start another torrent in a sec and get back to you with results on 1 & 3.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharkface Posted February 12, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 12, 2006 i assumed ultima was correct. that most harddrives are set to dma automatically and since i remember specifically checking that setting a while ago, I thought that it would stay that way. I was wrong. Windows will default your disk access to PIO incase of 6 failed read attempts. my computer started in 25 seconds as opposed to 2 minutes and this makes me very very happy. I already can remember when i had 6 hard disk failures a while back when i was crashing my computer on purpose so I could get a memory dump. It caused my indexing to fail and that for some reason caused event 52's (i think) to happen. Anyways, it was LOCKED in PIO mode so I had to change a few registry settings to get it to switch back. But it being in PIO mode explains everything. Thanks for the help!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultima Posted February 12, 2006 Report Share Posted February 12, 2006 lol I did include the quote just in case for a reason though ;PGlad to hear that it was corrected =] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharkface Posted February 12, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 12, 2006 lol I did include the quote just in case for a reason though ;PGlad to hear that it was corrected =] thanks for the help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1c3d0g Posted February 12, 2006 Report Share Posted February 12, 2006 Great! Good job, Ultima! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultima Posted February 12, 2006 Report Share Posted February 12, 2006 All you, 1c3d0g, all you... I'm serious. Who would've ever gussed that the transfer mode would be the culprit?? Certainly not me... Heh I guess I do learn something new every day =] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharkface Posted February 14, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 14, 2006 I really wanna respond again and say thanks to you both, i never would have checked the transfer mode if this hadn't been a problem and fixing it has really made my computer quite faster in certain situations. Thanks so much! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaosblade Posted February 16, 2006 Report Share Posted February 16, 2006 Thats odd though, Usualy windows falls back to PIO is something really bad happened with the harddrive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultima Posted February 17, 2006 Report Share Posted February 17, 2006 It probably thought something was messed up if the computer crashed as many times as sharkface said it did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triggernum5 Posted February 18, 2006 Report Share Posted February 18, 2006 Sorry if I'm restating anything (didn't read replies).. But are torrents being checked for corruption during this period? Granted my p266 doesn't slow down that much, (however it can take ALOT more than 5 minutes depending), but torrent checking kills my performance (and rightfully so)..Boy do I hate it when I crash mid flow with 3 or 4 complete seasons downloading.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultima Posted February 18, 2006 Report Share Posted February 18, 2006 Nah that wasn't the reason for sharkface's slowdowns, and the problem has already been resolved. Reading a topic thoroughly before posting is a good idea ;P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Switeck Posted February 18, 2006 Report Share Posted February 18, 2006 If you have any unstable/slow hardware/software, running alot of torrents at once with the resulting number of connections needed for good speed...seems a recipe for disaster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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