Operating System XP Pro starts lagging after < oneday uptime (1 Viewer)

[Zappza]

Hi!

I have a HTPC setup which runs XP Pro SP3 with all the latest upgrades, newest drivers and everything is working perfectly including MediaPortal and codecs.

But as always, there is always a snake in paradise

If my HTPC has been on for more than one day, Windows starts to slow down/lag. Even the icons on my desktop take a few seconds to load completely, and I only have 8 icons. I have no background, just a solid colour.

In MediaPortal this is easily noticeable as the RSS Ticker in the bottom of BasicHome in StreamedMP and the menus are lagging. This also occurs when MediaPortal is not running, so I do not suspect that this is related to MP. As soon as I restart my HTPC, the lagging disappears for about one day, and then reappear.

My HW is:

AMD Athlon 64 4850e
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
2GB DDR2 5400
Fujitsu-Siemens 80GB 2,5'' SATA 5400rpm

Thanks a lot for the time you might be willing to put into this!

 

[Zappza]

I have recorded two 30 second clips of how the lagging appears.

Here is it lagging; YouTube - VIDEO0014

Here it is not; YouTube - VIDEO0015

The videos should be available shortly

 

[moab]

Check your Free drive space!

Wow your 80GB HDD is tiny (unless it is a typo).
Is it a RAM/SSD drive and you have a NAS?
I would want at least 80GB available work space on my system.
If you record any TV (especially HD) it will fill up quickly. My TV recordings are between 4-8GB each.
Consider increasing it as HD consumes space fast. IMHO a serious HTPC will need > 1TB of space.

skål

 

[Spragleknas]

Vids don't work

 

[Zappza]

Check your Free drive space!

Wow your 80GB HDD is tiny (unless it is a typo).
Is it a RAM/SSD drive and you have a NAS?
I would want at least 80GB available work space on my system.
If you record any TV (especially HD) it will fill up quickly. My TV recordings are between 4-8GB each.
Consider increasing it as HD consumes space fast. IMHO a serious HTPC will need > 1TB of space.

skål

Drivespace is fine

I have 15 GB free space for timeshifting files, and 8 GB free space on my C drive. I have a server to which all recordings are stored. The server has 5TB space, and 2TB free, so I do not have any storage problems

The drive is a 5400rpm drive, with rotating plates, so no SSD here (That is a dream though).

Vids don't work

Youtube is just slow, I just uploaded the videos and it needed some processing.

They do work now, not top-notch quality, but you get the idea

 

[kiwijunglist]

press ctrl+alt+del, run taskmgr, see what process is using more memory / cpu time,
compare btwn starting when everything is fast, vs later on when everything is slow
does restarting mediaportal solve the problem?
worst comes to worst you will have to schedule a daily or twice daily reboot

 

[Zappza]

press ctrl+alt+del, run taskmgr, see what process is using more memory / cpu time,
compare btwn starting when everything is fast, vs later on when everything is slow
does restarting mediaportal solve the problem?
worst comes to worst you will have to schedule a daily or twice daily reboot

No process has high CPU usage, but sqlservr.exe has a memory usage of over 460 MB after one day uptime. I know that this is by design, but SQL Server seems to be unable to free memory once needed. I am downloading the Management Studio now, and will put a limit to the memory usage. After all, only FTR and TVService is using this SQL Server.

I do find this a bit strange though, even though SQL server is using 460MB of RAM, I still have 500MB free and unallocated. AFAIK, MediaPortal is only using approx. 200 MB of RAM, so there should not be any lagging. Nevertheless, I will try to limit the memory usage and get back to you tomorrow

 

[kiwijunglist]

i don't know a lot about sqlserver process, but that memory useage seems excessive.
does it have low memory useage when the computer is running fast, if so that must be the problem.

 

[Zappza]

i don't know a lot about sqlserver process, but that memory useage seems excessive.
does it have low memory useage when the computer is running fast, if so that must be the problem.

I have not verified it yet, but reports from other users state that the sqlservr.exe process gain memory as it is being used in order to increase performance, and will continue to do so until about 4-10 MB memory is available. So this seems a very plausible cause