My machine takes an extraordinarily long time to boot. During bootup,
I notice that the hard drive activity light does not glow steadily.
It just flashes at about a 2 times/second rate.

Subsequent examination of the error log shows that there were a long
series of errors on paging operations. This happens every time I
reboot.

Can someone tell me what to look for in order to fix this problem?

System:

Win XP Pro - all the latest updates
Athlon 64 dual-core 4600
DFI "LanParty" UT4 motherboard
2 GB RAM
Seagate 300GB SATA drive

I tried a Hitachi 500 GB SATA drive - same problem.


TIA

Lowly Engineer wrote:

Try running chkdsk /F /R from the command prompt.

You may also try to set the swapfile to its own private partition.


--
....................
http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS.html

http://free.thelinuxstore.ca/

On Thu, 10 Aug 2006 06:34:52 -0700, Lowly Engineer wrote:

It wouldn't help to not remember to include the error message, event id
and source information from the event log? I guess not.

<snip>

Me

Au79 <au79@789.edu> wrote:

The /F parameter includes /R so all that is needed is CHKDKS /F

Not a good idea for Windows under any circumstances. The Windows
swap file is used entirely differently than it is in Linux and
rules/procedures that apply to one operating system do not necessarily
apply to the other.

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

Lowly Engineer <charles.linquist@gmail.com> wrote:

2 gb of RAM and you are getting paging errors during startup?

Can you provide the detailed particulars of some of these errors?

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

All are ERROR TYPE 51 and I get 10 or 20 of them each time I start
up.


I attached a screenshot of EVENT VIEWER.





On Thu, 10 Aug 2006 17:41:46 GMT, Ron Martell <ron.martell@gmail.com>
wrote:

Ron Martell <ron.martell@gmail.com> wrote:

Got that one backwards. The /R parameter is the higher level
function, and implies /F so the correct command is CHKDSK /R

Apologies.

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

LowlyEngineer <charles@linquist.net> wrote:

No attachment found (which is a good thing - this is a text-only
newsgroup and attachments are frowned upon).

You probably mean Event I.D. 51 so I will proceed on that basis.
Please try to be precise when posting error information as very often
it is the presence or absence of a single word in the error data that
is the essential clue to the underlying cause.

See the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Information about Event ID 51
Article ID : 244780
http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=244780


Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

EVENT VIEWER tells me that all the errors are TYPE 51





On Thu, 10 Aug 2006 17:41:46 GMT, Ron Martell <ron.martell@gmail.com>
wrote:

Ron Martell wrote:

However, Ron, you do not specify the *why* it would be a bad idea to
segregate the swapfile into its own partition.

We understand that two operating systems designed entirely differently will
operate as such; Page swapping nontheless works under the same principles.


--
....................
http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS.html

http://free.thelinuxstore.ca/

Au79 <au79@789.edu> wrote:

#1: Performance. If the system is actually using the swap file (and
much of what is reported as PF Usage by Windows Task Manager is
actually "phantom" usage) then moving the swap file to a different
partition will result in increased travel distance for the disk head
mechanism each time there is a paging opertion as it shuttles between
the operating system/application/data file partition and the swap file
partition.

#2: Design. Windows uses the swap file (paging file to be
technically correct) on the boot drive (and only on the boot drive) to
receive the content of the memory dump. It then renames the file when
the dump is complete. This is faster than creating a new file for the
memory dump, and time is often in very short supply when a major error
occurs. So if the paging file is on a different partition on the
drive then it will not be possible to capture these memory dumps,
which can be an important tool for diagnosing the underlying cause of
an error.

Note that this is the also the only reason that I am aware of for
having a Windows XP swap file size that is related to the amount of
RAM in the computer. If the "complete memory dump" option is
configured (default) then the paging file has to be at least equal in
size to the amount of installed RAM so as to receive the content of
the memory dump.

Other than this specific instance (and most machines can be safely
reconfigured to produce a smaller memory dump which is still fully
adequate for most error tracking purposes) the size of the paging file
is *inversely* related to the amount of installed RAM - more RAM means
less paging file and less RAM means more paging file provided all
other factors are held constant.

I am not at all familiar with the technical details of Linux memory
management, except that tracking the source of "old wives tales" such
as setting your swap file to 1.5 times the amount of RAM usually ends
up with it originating with Linux/Unix.

Also am not sure how Linux handles the unused portions of memory
allocation requests. Windows requires that addresses must be
assigned to satisfy the full amount of all memory requests, but
improves efficiency by mapping the unused portions to locations in the
swap file and using RAM only for the part that is actually used. This
can often be illustrated by comparing the PF Usage figure reported by
Windows Task Manager with the actual physical of the swap file. For
example on my system at this moment with 1 gb of RAM there is PF Usage
of 545 mb but the actual size of c:\pagefile.sys is only 80 mb. The
maximum size limit is set at 1 gb.

I noticed a comment in Wikipedia about a recent Linux improvement
(2.6) called "swap prefetch". That strikes me as being very similar
in effect to the pre-emptive swapping introduced in Windows 98 where
pages eligible to be swapped out would be written to the swap file
during idle times and also retained in RAM. Then if RAM was
subsequently for another purposes those pages previously written out
and not changed could be instantaneously dropped from RAM as they were
already in the swap file.
Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

Ron Martell wrote:

Ahh... Are you saying that the page file is written/read in close physical
proximity to whatever application or process is using it? Why should a
partition, which could be in the same platter, make performance an issue? I
doubt very seriously that if there is indeed a performance hit, it would be
of any significance, or even measurable. At any rate, in the Windows world,
fragmentation has taken care of the performance question.

It's a mystery why memory dumps cannot be written outside the boot drive. If
so, it very much seems like a design flaw.

Quite true, since Windows 3.1.

Maybe, but it seems like a mute point.

Without desiring a flame war, my opinion is that Linux has a smoother
improvement continuum on memory management that should not be compared with
Microsoft's development efforts. I trust in the reliability and efficiency
of my 2.6 Kernel way more than Windows 98/2000/XP Pro.

Nice treatease on memory management, well done.


--
....................
http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS.html

http://free.thelinuxstore.ca/

Au79 <au79@789.edu> wrote:

Yes, especially with regard to paging out operations, which most often
occur in conjunction with another activity such as launching a new
application, which triggers a requirement to free up RAM to load that
application. So paging out operations will be interspersed with file
loading operations in most instances.


Hard drive "seek" times vary quite a bit. A typical PATA or SATA
drive sold today with an *average* seek time of 8 milliseconds will
have actual seek times that vary from 2 milliseconds (track to
adjacent track) to over 20 milliseconds (full stroke seek). The point
is that the greater the distance between the locations being used by
two concurrent disk operations, such as loading a new app and paging
out, the longer it will take.


It might be considered as such. But that was the design decision and
as I recall it was based purely on the need for speed. Using an
existing file was shown to be faster than creating a new file for the
dump, and as the paging file content is totally dispensable that was
the choice. Even the potential delay while the hard drive
repositioned to another partition was considered excessive if it could
be avoided.

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

On Thu, 10 Aug 2006 12:55:36 -0700, LowlyEngineer wrote:

Guessing your EVENT VIEWER is different from the usual MS supplied one?

The MS one has Event IDs , so 51 could be that instead of a TYPE.

More information would be handy, along with the ID number, there should
also be a message and a source process name. Oops sorry, I already said
that in an earlier post.

How to use Event Viewer
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427/
How to Interpret an Event
Each log entry is classified by type, and contains header information,
and a description of the event.

Try entering some of the info you get from the event log here
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sup..._advanced.aspx

Events and Errors Message Center
Results 1 - 8 of 8 for: Event ID: 51;

A nive easy read, only 8 hits.

<snip>

Me