SP4 (Win2K) made my computer slow considerably - any ideas?

Hi,

I just ran a Windows Update and downloaded SP4 for Win2K (pro)... well, well, well... what do you know, my computer's behaving like it's 1984.

Applications in general take about three times as long to load, and navigating through windows explorer is sluggish at best.

I tried a few things:

Reset the size of my virtual mem., (I'm running 512Mb RAM, so I set it to 768Mb min, 1024 max.)

I also defragged my drives, but no real effect.

Anybody have any ideas?

(ALL ideas welcome!)


Thanks,

nao

What was the reasoning for adding the service pack? Did you read the readme for sp4? Can you roll back to the previous service pack?

Thank you Victor,

Yes, I read through the 'List of Bugs that are Fixed in Windows 2000 Service Pack 4'. In particular, I installed because I am having a problem openning files on DFS shared folders.

319967 You Cannot Open a File That You Moved to a DFS Share
324627 A Network File Cannot be Opened if the File is Locked

Also, I had USB lock problems which I still have (but I think it's an IRQ conflict somewhere - don't bother me too much since I don't hibernate my computer very often)

810090 Universal Serial Bus Devices Are Not Detected Intermittently When You Start or Resume the Computer

Anyway, there were at least five more reasons to do it...

I can use 'Add/Remove Programs' to de-install SP4, but I don't like the sound of it! Never done an Add/Remove on an SP before. Man, remember back in the day of IE4/5 updates.... I lost many a day re-installing Win98 - got a feeling this is a similar kind of one-way trip!

Anyway, let me know if you think it's a good idea!

Thanks again,


Nao

Removing a service pack can be dreadful. If you have a good bakup/ snapshot or restore point, and the speed is `unbearable`, then rolling back may be the best option. For the points you described, did Microsoft release hot fixes for those issues?

Hi Victor,

Yep, I installed a hot fix (SP5!) but it didn't really do anything, plus, it was mostly a fix for Intel networking so (got an intel card).

I've set my page file to 2048Mb, which is HUGE, but it seems to have restored my system back to it's pre-SP4 state (in terms of speed).

I'm going to make a cup of tea and get a dounut from dunkin's... then I'm going to sit down and have an intimate moment with my Syslogs in the Event Viewer... noticed I'm getting a lot of failures in there.

Thanks again dude,

Nao

I didn't have an overall problem with speed after installing SP4, however:

* can't download my mail using pop3 (only tried 1 server)
* can't ssh, even to my LAN
* can't access certain http sites, including www.amd.com, www.vim.org, www.debian.org

BUT

* can access other sites, but *very* slowly, including www.microsoft.com (wow), www.intel.com, www.google.com, www.postgresql.org.
* can PING any IP address
* can use ICQ

Any ideas? In general, I didn't have a particular reason to install SP4. I didn't have a look at SP4 readme, but I like when my OS is as safe as possible (same goes for my Linux notebook)

TIA,
Surranó

Wow, I couldn't SSH as well! I had to reinstall PuTTY (0.53b) to get round the problem. Similarly, I have no idea why.

The domain names you specified do work fine on my Win2K machine - all of them - with no noticeable lag. I think you may have to re-install your networking drivers (TCP/IP protocol, MS Network Client, File/Printer sharing... etc.) It seems to be that your machine is no longer resolving DNS correctly (although, it's a complete guess on my part).

I started this post about two weeks ago, and in that time, my system's gradually returned to it's pre-SP4 performance. I've also added a fourth drive to the system (82Gb HDD) - and changed my virtual memory to run from that.

nao,
* Thanks about ssh, maybe I'll reinstall it (part or all of CygWin)

* how should I reinstall the networking drivers? remove windows components? or reinstall motherboard drivers? (which may be a good idea)

* I'd exclude DNS problem for two reasons:
1) I can't connect via http even if I use an IP numbers in the LAN (connected through the switch)
2) I can ping machines using IP names so that rules this out.

* also, (external) firewall problems are out of question since I can freely surf from my Linux notebook just like before. What I suspect is an internal firewall or something like that in SP4.

* VM: do you think upping virtual memory might solve the problem? (I have it on auto, and 3d games aren't an issue -- would browsing be an issue?)

* Another argument about it being a protocol issue: the network speed can't be really low, since my NFS share from this machine works with optimal speed. I think this rules the Ethernet driver out.

HW details: would you please share your HW spec to see clearer? Mine is, from most relevant to least relevant (from my POV):
ECS K7VTA3 v3.1 (Via KT333)
AMD AXP 1700+ (Palomino)
256M DDR333 at DDR266
30MB Maxtor 7200rpm hdd

The problem with PuTTY (SSH client I'm using) was that the keys it was using to authenticate my connections were slightly corrupted. For some reason, the keys in the registry all ended with the 0xFF ASCII character (white space), as soon as I took the 0xFF chars out, it worked ok.

CyGWin runs on DLLs, so my best guess is that SP4 may have replaced some of the DLLs with its own, newer, SP4 versions (no?)

BEFORE YOU BEGIN, make sure you've got a copy of the OS installation CD (Win2K CDROM, for example) and that the OS CD is in your CD-ROM drive.

Ok, you just need to right-click on your My Network Places icon and select Properties. Then right-click on the appropriate connection (for example, Local Area Connection) and select Properties again. Then select the 'Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click the Uninstall button. Next, uninstall 'Client for Microsoft Networks' and also uninstall 'File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks'.

When you've done all of this, reboot your computer and follow the same steps (as above) until you get back into the Local Area Connection properties. This time, click on the Install button and select 'Protocol', then select 'Client' and then select 'Client for Microsoft Networks'. Once that is done, click the 'Install' button again and this time go to Services and then to 'File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks'. Once File & Printer Sharing is installed, repeat the 'Install' button procedure and this time choose Protocols and Internet Protocol(TCP/IP)

Re: Virtual Memory - upping it worked for me, but it's only means that my system now has enough memory to function 'normally'. But the problems remain unresolved.

My specs.,

ASUS K7V333 m/b
512Mb DDR333 @ 333
GeForce 4 (128Mb DDR)
Intel Pro 100Mbit NIC
AMD XP 1800+
WesternDigital 30Gb (100) @ 7200RPM\
IBM DeskStar 82Gb (133) @ 7200RPM
IBM DeskStar 60 Gb (133) @ 7200RPM

(I use it almost exclusively for off-line video editing)

nao

nao,

Thanks for your elaborate response.

As for hardware: have you noticed that we have the same MoBo chipset and the same CPU? (I think RAM and HDD is irrelevant)

Do you know about others with such hw (Via KT333 chipset, Athlon XP cpu) who installed SP4? Have they experienced any problems or not? I'll take some time to query around.

Dear nao,

Thanks for your help-- removing the client, service and protocol then reinstalling it instantly solved the problem!

Thanks again,
Surranó

Thanks, I'm glad it worked. It happens to me periodically - Win2K always finds a way of letting you know when it wants something re-installed.

I must spend a least a week each year re-installing Windows. 2K's been the best so far, I used to re-install Win98 at least once a month...

Good point. Worth a look I guess - I'll try as well.

Best,

nao

Ever since I've installed Win2k (about 2.5 years ago), I reinstalled it only twice: first was an hdd upgrade and the other was my totally insane mistake (installing a win9x virtual cd thing).

It has some traits I can't circumvent (such as failing to draw dialog fonts for any user but Administrator), but I'm happy with it. I think it happened when my mem module went wrong and I had more faith in hw than in windows. It was a real mistake. Win2k is worthy to be called an OS after all.

Also, in this 2.5 years, I replaced almost the complete machine, but I didn't need to reinstall it. I'd do it now. For me, installing Win2k isn't a big deal, but I don't like the idea to reinstall *everything*.

I found this thread while trying to resolve an issue that I have had since installing SP4.

I, too, can ping any URL, but I am unable to load many web pages, and others are agonizingly slow.

Interestingly enough, I also have the following specs:
Asus A7V333
AMD XP 2100+
512MB PC2700 DDR RAM
Asus GeForce 4 4400 Ti
SoundBlaster Audigy
3Com 3C905TX

I will try uninstalling and reinstalling my network drivers as suggested here. Thanks for the info!

Just a follow-up-

I tried uninstalling and then reinstalling the network drivers as recommended by NAO.

It worked beautifully!

Thanks NAO!