Scientists and ther PCs
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PaulowniaK wrote:
rogue software knocking about
Matlab? :-D
Too much of heaven can bring you underground Heaven can always turn around Too much of heaven, our life is all hell bound Heaven, the kill that makes no sound
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Abhinav S wrote:
Matlab?
:-DNah, Matlab is my best friend. I'm making do with Octave as I have no budget to buy Matlab. :((
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...
You need a better class of friends :~. Part of one of our current products actually runs a MATLAB 'thing' in the background to do some calculations. I hate the damned thing, as it's a PITA to get installed correctly.
Software Zen:
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I write software for scientists. They sit in front of fat (but not necessarily high spec, although of decent spec) PCs connected to heavy duty analytical instruments that spit out tonnes of data every day. And they all seem to have a knack for wrecking PCs. I don't know how they manage it, but many a scientists that I have to visit to get opinions from or dig them out of a sticky situation have PCs that are practically grinding to a halt at every command that is issued. From what I can tell, they tend to have weird software launching at them from all corners, like Adobe Photoshop and MSN messenger. (Those kind of rogue software seem to creep in when they blindly accept update offers from various sources.) They also have a tendency to stick everything on their desktop (OK, I know enough developers that do that too...) How they manage to find anything is beyond me. They also have no regards for the naming of their files so the names are either very long or contain spaces and hyphens. True, most programs can cope with that these days, but I still get the urge to hide under the table when I see horrible file namings. OK, I'm digressing, but the point is, apart from having more rogue software knocking about than I would like to, I can't see anything obviously wrong with their PCs but they are still going at snail pace. I use my work PC quite heavily and I'm not all that kind to it (stick it in endless loops and shut it down with brute force, etc... :doh: ) but I've never had that much trouble with my PC slowing down beyond my level of patience. Any guesses as to what's going wrong!? PS In my experience, these scientists end up in similar situations with their home PCs as well, only worse.
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...
Blame Adobe. Always. Adobe does that to PCs... RootkitDobe. ShitDobe. bAnDOBE!
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I write software for scientists. They sit in front of fat (but not necessarily high spec, although of decent spec) PCs connected to heavy duty analytical instruments that spit out tonnes of data every day. And they all seem to have a knack for wrecking PCs. I don't know how they manage it, but many a scientists that I have to visit to get opinions from or dig them out of a sticky situation have PCs that are practically grinding to a halt at every command that is issued. From what I can tell, they tend to have weird software launching at them from all corners, like Adobe Photoshop and MSN messenger. (Those kind of rogue software seem to creep in when they blindly accept update offers from various sources.) They also have a tendency to stick everything on their desktop (OK, I know enough developers that do that too...) How they manage to find anything is beyond me. They also have no regards for the naming of their files so the names are either very long or contain spaces and hyphens. True, most programs can cope with that these days, but I still get the urge to hide under the table when I see horrible file namings. OK, I'm digressing, but the point is, apart from having more rogue software knocking about than I would like to, I can't see anything obviously wrong with their PCs but they are still going at snail pace. I use my work PC quite heavily and I'm not all that kind to it (stick it in endless loops and shut it down with brute force, etc... :doh: ) but I've never had that much trouble with my PC slowing down beyond my level of patience. Any guesses as to what's going wrong!? PS In my experience, these scientists end up in similar situations with their home PCs as well, only worse.
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...
I just went through something similar. My system (laptop) was extremely slow, it literally took minutes to launch a new window of any kind. Turned out that the CPU was overheating due to poor ventilation and dust bunnies. It took it upon itself to throttle down to 25%. Once the system was cleaned out and the bios was reset it was running like new.
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I write software for scientists. They sit in front of fat (but not necessarily high spec, although of decent spec) PCs connected to heavy duty analytical instruments that spit out tonnes of data every day. And they all seem to have a knack for wrecking PCs. I don't know how they manage it, but many a scientists that I have to visit to get opinions from or dig them out of a sticky situation have PCs that are practically grinding to a halt at every command that is issued. From what I can tell, they tend to have weird software launching at them from all corners, like Adobe Photoshop and MSN messenger. (Those kind of rogue software seem to creep in when they blindly accept update offers from various sources.) They also have a tendency to stick everything on their desktop (OK, I know enough developers that do that too...) How they manage to find anything is beyond me. They also have no regards for the naming of their files so the names are either very long or contain spaces and hyphens. True, most programs can cope with that these days, but I still get the urge to hide under the table when I see horrible file namings. OK, I'm digressing, but the point is, apart from having more rogue software knocking about than I would like to, I can't see anything obviously wrong with their PCs but they are still going at snail pace. I use my work PC quite heavily and I'm not all that kind to it (stick it in endless loops and shut it down with brute force, etc... :doh: ) but I've never had that much trouble with my PC slowing down beyond my level of patience. Any guesses as to what's going wrong!? PS In my experience, these scientists end up in similar situations with their home PCs as well, only worse.
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...
What about older Norton/Symantec packages? I know for a while they had a version that was known to slow down the system to a crawl and because of that I don't trust any of their packages anymore, they're just too intrusive and so I uninstall them and actually use MS Security Essentials which is less intrusive and works pretty well. Also a friend of mine had a problem caused by "dueling toolbar" (she had MSN, Google, Yahoo and Ask installed). I uninstalled all four and her system became snappy as if it were brand new. I told her pick one, and only one, and don't install any others. I did take the time to set her IE cache to be small (50mb), set IE to auto clear the temp cache on browser close, cleared both TEMP folders (%windir%\TEMP, and %TEMP%), defrag her drive, etc, but it was the toolbars that caused her the most grief. Just a thought.
Mike Poz
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What about older Norton/Symantec packages? I know for a while they had a version that was known to slow down the system to a crawl and because of that I don't trust any of their packages anymore, they're just too intrusive and so I uninstall them and actually use MS Security Essentials which is less intrusive and works pretty well. Also a friend of mine had a problem caused by "dueling toolbar" (she had MSN, Google, Yahoo and Ask installed). I uninstalled all four and her system became snappy as if it were brand new. I told her pick one, and only one, and don't install any others. I did take the time to set her IE cache to be small (50mb), set IE to auto clear the temp cache on browser close, cleared both TEMP folders (%windir%\TEMP, and %TEMP%), defrag her drive, etc, but it was the toolbars that caused her the most grief. Just a thought.
Mike Poz
Mike Poz wrote:
What about older Norton/Symantec packages?
You guessed right! They did have Norton 360 running. It insisted on updating itself although there was no network connection and complained that it couldn't connect to the internet :doh: There was a Google tool bar thingie running, and I did get tempted to shut it down... only the Task Manager froze...
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...
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I just went through something similar. My system (laptop) was extremely slow, it literally took minutes to launch a new window of any kind. Turned out that the CPU was overheating due to poor ventilation and dust bunnies. It took it upon itself to throttle down to 25%. Once the system was cleaned out and the bios was reset it was running like new.
jharano wrote:
Turned out that the CPU was overheating due to poor ventilation and dust bunnies.
Wow, that's a new one! :omg: Well, not that overheating can happen but that it has such a profound effect on the CPU. Better get that thing cleaned up! Cheers!
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...
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The laundry list for this kind of problem is a mile long. I used to go to PCPitstop.com and just run the check. I haven't gone in a long time and I don't know if their free check is still there. Probably there are other sites that do so too. When you have a group of people you can often go over one pc with a fine-tooth comb and a lot of the problems you find will be on the other pcs as well. My checklist: -what runs in startup? -while the pc is sitting there, run task manager to see what processes are out of control -run updates on Windows -check the hardware to make sure there are no items running without a driver (and I think there is a compatibility mode driver or some such). -Defrag. Remove the swap space. Defrag. Replace the swap space, or put it on another drive if possible. (I try to give my machines their own drive letter just for swap). -Check for viruses, spyware, etc. -Clean out all temp files. -Check IE to see what the cache size is set to. If it is set to anything other than 50 to 100 meg you might be chasing an old windows bug. You should delete the cache contents, then check to make sure that the entries are really deleted by going to the location on the disk where Temporary Internet Files are stored. The above is from memory so I'm sure you can get more tips. I seem to recall that garbage on the desktop costs, anything other than shortcuts in the start menu costs (like an executable or a document), and an excess of fonts can cost. Also, if the hard drive that the OS is on is full then you will get all kinds of problems with speed. Anyway, you can google from there. All of the above tips work on some machines.
_____________________________ Give a man a mug, he drinks for a day. Teach a man to mug...
Add to the list: check the anti-virus software. Where I work, the IT dept has the Macaffe virus software set to such a high priority, that when even when I edit a file, it starts running. This slows the computer to a crawl. I had to call IT several times to disable it. (Yes, we users cannot disable the anti-virus software on our own computers. It does stifle productivity.) Try lowering its priority to the lowest possible.
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Add to the list: check the anti-virus software. Where I work, the IT dept has the Macaffe virus software set to such a high priority, that when even when I edit a file, it starts running. This slows the computer to a crawl. I had to call IT several times to disable it. (Yes, we users cannot disable the anti-virus software on our own computers. It does stifle productivity.) Try lowering its priority to the lowest possible.
Yup. I recall one place I worked where once a month the farging antivirus would run a full scan on your machine at high priority. All the drives. You couldn't get squat done until it was done. I used to spend my time while it was running figuring out ways to thwart it.
_____________________________ Give a man a mug, he drinks for a day. Teach a man to mug...
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I write software for scientists. They sit in front of fat (but not necessarily high spec, although of decent spec) PCs connected to heavy duty analytical instruments that spit out tonnes of data every day. And they all seem to have a knack for wrecking PCs. I don't know how they manage it, but many a scientists that I have to visit to get opinions from or dig them out of a sticky situation have PCs that are practically grinding to a halt at every command that is issued. From what I can tell, they tend to have weird software launching at them from all corners, like Adobe Photoshop and MSN messenger. (Those kind of rogue software seem to creep in when they blindly accept update offers from various sources.) They also have a tendency to stick everything on their desktop (OK, I know enough developers that do that too...) How they manage to find anything is beyond me. They also have no regards for the naming of their files so the names are either very long or contain spaces and hyphens. True, most programs can cope with that these days, but I still get the urge to hide under the table when I see horrible file namings. OK, I'm digressing, but the point is, apart from having more rogue software knocking about than I would like to, I can't see anything obviously wrong with their PCs but they are still going at snail pace. I use my work PC quite heavily and I'm not all that kind to it (stick it in endless loops and shut it down with brute force, etc... :doh: ) but I've never had that much trouble with my PC slowing down beyond my level of patience. Any guesses as to what's going wrong!? PS In my experience, these scientists end up in similar situations with their home PCs as well, only worse.
Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike... me...
PaulowniaK wrote:
connected to heavy duty analytical instruments
There you have it. Drivers and/or background data collection services for that hardware. Think about the sales volumes for that kind of hardware - virtually nil compared to, say, a printer. Then think about the code coverage they get during beta testing - nil, because they don't do external beta testing. Then think about the number of users using the drivers and discover bugs - virtually nil. Result? Utter crap, in most cases. What does a crappy driver do? Undermine the OS. By definition, a driver is the only piece of software (except the OS kernel) that is permitted to really mess the OS up. Running at IPL, a badly chosen algorithm in an interrupt handler can slow down a computer almost to a halt. I work a lot with computers hooked up to industrial control systems - I write PC software for higher-level control. This is a constant problem - the drivers very often have inefficient polling loops that absolutely cripple the machines. The only thing that helps is chasing the suppliers with a torch - and it only helps sometimes. It is also very time-consuming. *sigh* Second "usual suspect", like many have said - antivirus software. For much the same reasons, actually. Just my two cents... :) EDIT: A printer was a bad example. They often suffer the exact same problems. Let's say a popular graphics card instead (yes, they are sometimes buggy too, but the high volume cards usually get stable drivers eventually).