Doubleclick on the svchost.exe process that's using all the disk activity, so it opens its own window, then check which Services are involved. That should give a clue.
you'll get a list and no clue what's going on.. :(
You'll get a list and no clue what's going on.. :(
Sorry, perhaps that you don't have a clue what's going on, but that doesn't mean everyone will.. not all svchost.exe processes run the same services. Now, if for instance the svchost.exe that runs the person's anti-virus service is using this much disk, then isn't that a clue? Same goes for other anti-malware programs, or indeed Windows Defender.
So don't say up front that there'll be no clue in it, until the one process or couple or whole list is given.
You'll get a list and no clue what's going on.. :(
Sorry, perhaps that you don't have a clue what's going on, but that doesn't mean everyone will.. not all svchost.exe processes run the same services. Now, if for instance the svchost.exe that runs the person's anti-virus service is using this much disk, then isn't that a clue? Same goes for other anti-malware programs, or indeed Windows Defender.
So don't say up front that there'll be no clue in it, until the one process or couple or whole list is given.
hey - i know!
IF you could see which files are involed (which filemon did show), you'd have a much better chance to identify what's going on..
It's conceivable antivirus is involved. That service is usually at the top of the list as well. There's reason to believe that something unique to this machine is part of the problem, interacting poorly with Einstein, since I have BOINC on four machines -- two running XP at work and one running Linux at home in addition to this Windows 7 machine -- and only this one has issues. Antivirus is certainly one of the differences between them. I'll try suspending it and see what happens.
One other data point that may or may not be salient -- there seems to be a time factor. If Einstein has been running for 30 minutes, it isn't troublesome. If it has been running overnight, or while I'm at work, it is.
Tracking down service host is a little tricky. There are currently 17 instances of it running. If you have them sorted in PE by, say, disk usage, it is a little difficult to click on that exact one at the exact moment when the mouse becomes usable again.
I'm not sure if it is possible in your Anti-virus program, but try to exclude the BOINC Data directory and all its sub-directories from being (actively) scanned. This isn't an option in many free AV scanners, but if you have the option, do it.
Then only scan the BOINC Data directory when you've exited BOINC.
The Data directory is by default at C:\ProgramData\BOINC\ under Windows 7 and Vista.
Done. We'll see what happens. But I think I solved it. This is a weird one, too, worth remembering.
I had what looked like an unrelated problem a few days ago. Every item on my start menu disappeared. Or rather, it flashed up for half a second and then went to blank. A little research revealed that there is an undocumented bug in Win7 (or I guess if you live in Redmond it is an undocumented feature) that the start menu is now limited to around 70 entries. Add to that the fact that every program installer wants to create a program group at the root start folder level, and the fact that I am too lazy to bring some order to it all except once in a blue moon, and apparently I went over the magic number. When you do that, if you're lucky, you make explorer.exe become unstable. If unlucky, it actually crashes.
Thus motivated to rearrange things into the group folders of related programs that I fitfully try to maintain, I got my start menu back. I also seem to have solved the Einstein problem, plus a few other seemingly unrelated problems. Interesting. Significant delays (of a minute or so) now only happen when the computer has been alone for some time (like overnight). I attribute this to the fact that I try to save a little power by having the hard disk spin down after an hour of nonuse, and that is the time it takes to spin back up and start pulling data off. Also, Firefox quit throwing up the Circle of Death and that annoying "not responding" message.
This is starting to make a bit of sense. Having been told earlier that Einstein uses a fair amount of memory, this is starting to look like contention for resources between several programs, which argument is not being managed nicely by the OS. Since explorer is already close to the brink, that contention pushes it completely over the edge and it, rather than Einstein, may be responsible for the bulk of the problem.
But not all of it. I still regularly get slammed into a basic color scheme because the OS is complaining about performance (on a 2.8 GHz quad core machine). So I'll see if limiting the virus scans helps as well. That process is also always usually at the top of the heap for i/o activity.
Thanks all, for the help. I hope to have this solved soon.
You didn't mention how much main memory your computer has. That is especially important with Windows 7, since it needs about 1 GB to run properly before it starts handing out any memory to whatever application programs you run.
A shortage of main memory is one known cause of high disk usage - the operating system tries to accomodate shortages of main memory by paging the less used portions to the hard drive, but then it takes around 1000 times as long to recover any of those paged portions than reading them directly from main memory.
No such luck. I tried running with no screensaver at all and just spent the last 20 minutes with an unresponsive machine.
The odd thing is that there is no evidence of any particularly high activity. CPU cores are running between 2 and 5% utilization (all four of them), Process Explorer reports the system is mostly idle, and that there are no processes with particularly high disk activity. It just doesn't respond to input from keyboard or mouse except at a very low level -- the cursor moves but selecting a program just gets the spinning wheel. However, suspending the Einstein component in BOINC is pretty well guaranteed to prevent this from happening.
By default, the Windows Task Manager shows only the processes running under your account. You may want to click on Show processes for all users to see how many are running but not under your account; for example, many portions of the operating system that run as separate processes.
Note that if many processes are waiting for hard drive accesses to finish, they are not likely to be ready to use much CPU. In that case, you may want to check if whatever model of hard drive you are using is one that spins at the usual 3600 rpm, and see if you have space and budget enough left to add a faster one for just the files needing the fastest access.
with process explorer (if we are talking about the one form sysinternals) you should be able to identify the process which is causing the high disk-activity..
It does. It tells me svchost.exe is responsible. This is about as uninformative as it is possible to be without saying nothing at all. Service host is a generic windows component that provides a variety of generic services for any program that cares to invoke it. Typically there will be many instances of it running. It is difficult to determine which specific process has invoked which specific instance of it. I infer that Einstein is responsible simply due to the fact that if I suspend Einsten, the problem disappears.
Normally, each instance of svchost.exe handles a different set of system services. That's why its name alone is not enough to tell what it's doing, and why you need the list of services that instance is handling as well. The list of services it handles may be enough to get a better idea of the problem, even if you can't find a way to ask what program or programs asked for those services.
Something to check - how much memory is each Einstein@Home process using, and how does that compare to the amounts used by any other BOINC processes that are running? If the Einstein@Home processes are the ones using the most memory, it's probably a good idea to check if your computer allows simply installing more memory, even if you have to remove the current memory boards and replace them with boards that have more memory on each board.
RE: Doubleclick on the
)
you'll get a list and no clue what's going on.. :(
RE: You'll get a list and
)
Sorry, perhaps that you don't have a clue what's going on, but that doesn't mean everyone will.. not all svchost.exe processes run the same services. Now, if for instance the svchost.exe that runs the person's anti-virus service is using this much disk, then isn't that a clue? Same goes for other anti-malware programs, or indeed Windows Defender.
So don't say up front that there'll be no clue in it, until the one process or couple or whole list is given.
RE: RE: You'll get a list
)
hey - i know!
IF you could see which files are involed (which filemon did show), you'd have a much better chance to identify what's going on..
It's conceivable antivirus is
)
It's conceivable antivirus is involved. That service is usually at the top of the list as well. There's reason to believe that something unique to this machine is part of the problem, interacting poorly with Einstein, since I have BOINC on four machines -- two running XP at work and one running Linux at home in addition to this Windows 7 machine -- and only this one has issues. Antivirus is certainly one of the differences between them. I'll try suspending it and see what happens.
One other data point that may or may not be salient -- there seems to be a time factor. If Einstein has been running for 30 minutes, it isn't troublesome. If it has been running overnight, or while I'm at work, it is.
Tracking down service host is a little tricky. There are currently 17 instances of it running. If you have them sorted in PE by, say, disk usage, it is a little difficult to click on that exact one at the exact moment when the mouse becomes usable again.
I'm not sure if it is
)
I'm not sure if it is possible in your Anti-virus program, but try to exclude the BOINC Data directory and all its sub-directories from being (actively) scanned. This isn't an option in many free AV scanners, but if you have the option, do it.
Then only scan the BOINC Data directory when you've exited BOINC.
The Data directory is by default at C:\ProgramData\BOINC\ under Windows 7 and Vista.
Done. We'll see what happens.
)
Done. We'll see what happens. But I think I solved it. This is a weird one, too, worth remembering.
I had what looked like an unrelated problem a few days ago. Every item on my start menu disappeared. Or rather, it flashed up for half a second and then went to blank. A little research revealed that there is an undocumented bug in Win7 (or I guess if you live in Redmond it is an undocumented feature) that the start menu is now limited to around 70 entries. Add to that the fact that every program installer wants to create a program group at the root start folder level, and the fact that I am too lazy to bring some order to it all except once in a blue moon, and apparently I went over the magic number. When you do that, if you're lucky, you make explorer.exe become unstable. If unlucky, it actually crashes.
Thus motivated to rearrange things into the group folders of related programs that I fitfully try to maintain, I got my start menu back. I also seem to have solved the Einstein problem, plus a few other seemingly unrelated problems. Interesting. Significant delays (of a minute or so) now only happen when the computer has been alone for some time (like overnight). I attribute this to the fact that I try to save a little power by having the hard disk spin down after an hour of nonuse, and that is the time it takes to spin back up and start pulling data off. Also, Firefox quit throwing up the Circle of Death and that annoying "not responding" message.
This is starting to make a bit of sense. Having been told earlier that Einstein uses a fair amount of memory, this is starting to look like contention for resources between several programs, which argument is not being managed nicely by the OS. Since explorer is already close to the brink, that contention pushes it completely over the edge and it, rather than Einstein, may be responsible for the bulk of the problem.
But not all of it. I still regularly get slammed into a basic color scheme because the OS is complaining about performance (on a 2.8 GHz quad core machine). So I'll see if limiting the virus scans helps as well. That process is also always usually at the top of the heap for i/o activity.
Thanks all, for the help. I hope to have this solved soon.
Thanks for the tip about
)
Thanks for the tip about over-full start menus. I think one of mine might be suffering from that, and I've noticed some high explorer usages too.
RE: Anybody have any ideas
)
You didn't mention how much main memory your computer has. That is especially important with Windows 7, since it needs about 1 GB to run properly before it starts handing out any memory to whatever application programs you run.
A shortage of main memory is one known cause of high disk usage - the operating system tries to accomodate shortages of main memory by paging the less used portions to the hard drive, but then it takes around 1000 times as long to recover any of those paged portions than reading them directly from main memory.
RE: No such luck. I tried
)
By default, the Windows Task Manager shows only the processes running under your account. You may want to click on Show processes for all users to see how many are running but not under your account; for example, many portions of the operating system that run as separate processes.
Note that if many processes are waiting for hard drive accesses to finish, they are not likely to be ready to use much CPU. In that case, you may want to check if whatever model of hard drive you are using is one that spins at the usual 3600 rpm, and see if you have space and budget enough left to add a faster one for just the files needing the fastest access.
RE: RE: with process
)
Normally, each instance of svchost.exe handles a different set of system services. That's why its name alone is not enough to tell what it's doing, and why you need the list of services that instance is handling as well. The list of services it handles may be enough to get a better idea of the problem, even if you can't find a way to ask what program or programs asked for those services.
Something to check - how much memory is each Einstein@Home process using, and how does that compare to the amounts used by any other BOINC processes that are running? If the Einstein@Home processes are the ones using the most memory, it's probably a good idea to check if your computer allows simply installing more memory, even if you have to remove the current memory boards and replace them with boards that have more memory on each board.