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'create Restore Point' question
Shades:
The value that is shown here in this overview from my own computer (idling, Firefox opened with 1 tab), this is already too high. Values like this shouldn't appear on idling PC's. If they do, it means there are one or more hardware issues cropping up. This PC is already 7 years old, but it is functioning well enough.
Values should be between 0.00 and 0.25 on an idling system. When doing lots of activities on your PC, this value should not go over 1.00 or at max 1.50. If you see higher values, your PC is encountering serious problems, resulting in a sluggish system at best...but you can wait for the BSOD's to appear soon. This, because your hardware won't (sufficiently) enable Windows anymore to read/write the data and info it requires to be a fully functional OS. This is not Windows fault, your degrading hardware is to blame.
Now, if you have such a system and it only runs 3 to 6 hours a day doing menial tasks only...you still will get some use out of it, hopefully for quite some time. But make no mistake, your hardware continues to degrade.
Network traffic and reading/writing data to a hard disk (internal or external) or pendrive are common to cause 'Interrupt' spikes. Such equipment that you regard as fast will cause hardly any spikes at all, while slow equipment will cause much bigger spikes than you would expect.
The 'Interrupt' value is the first indicator that things aren't running as smoothly as they should be.
When you have determined that networking is the cause of the 'Interrupt' spikes:
If by any chance you have a spare network card laying around (100Mbit/sec or faster) you could build that into your PC, disable the onboard network in your BIOS and start using your PC again. It is quite possible that this action eliminates one or more causes that make the 'Interrupt' value spike and you would have a much more functional PC again. Even if you don't have a spare one, new ones cost between 5 USD and 10 USD here in Paraguay (so should be cheaper in the US).
When you have determined that the reading/writing on HD is the cause of the 'Interrupt' spikes:
Eliminating or reducing spikes is much more tricky here. For example If you used your computer and HD's with Windows XP before and you upgraded to this installation to Windows 7, you might have an unaligned hard disk. Simply stated:
when this is the case, every read/write action on your PC is practically done twice. Partition manager software (MiniTool has an excellent piece of freeware) can identify and fix this for you. Aligning is a very intense operation and will take hours, perhaps even a full day, and if things fail you are in serious trouble (so make backups first if you do this). However, after your HD's are successfully aligned you will be very glad you did this.
However if you installed Windows 7 from scratch, this aligning is already done and the point of the paragraph above is moot. In that case it is more likely that the part of the Nvidia chip-set responsible for the actual reading/writing on your HD's isn't working properly anymore. You can get a SATA controller that fits in one of your mobo's PCI-E connectors, connect your HD's to that controller and disable this part of your BIOS. This won't be that cheap and is more of a 'hail Mary' than anything else.
More often than not, it is cheaper and/or less of a headache to get a new mobo and RAM, move your SATA HD's (no IDE connectors on new mobo's anymore) and video card to the new PC and re-install Windows.
bit:
:Thmbsup: Tnx, I think I kind of see what you mean.
In Process Explorer,
System>Interrupts value:
-when idling = about 0.35 to 0.70.
-running LiveLeak vid = about 1.50 to 3.00.
Win 7 Pro = scratch install.
Operational HD = 10,000rpm WesternDigital 'platter' type sata.
Crashes don't seem to happen so much playing vids from HD.
I may have to uninstall Malwarebytes to reduce load, and maybe reinstall it once a month for a full PUP system scan.
From experimentation, MWB cannot be put into any kind of 'sleep mode' for cpu-intensive tasks, but must either be completely uninstalled or allowed to do its thing and run in full protection mode.
Before MWB, a click on a folder takes an 'eye blink' to open; now with MWB a click on any folder can take a count of 2 to 15 seconds sometimes (seriously).
I've wondered if my 8 year old case could take a new mobo/cpu/ram upgrade combo and transfer everything else over (maybe even save the four 1GB ram sticks), and what a good econo mobo/cpu combo might be (AMD seems cheaper than Intel).
At this time, it appears that a mobo/cpu combo would be a higher priority than a HD upgrade from 'platter' to SSD.
An obvious temporary work-around is to 'pull the plug' on watching on-line vids of over 3-4 minutes.
Shades:
Although SSD's work fine with SATA2 ports, SSD's really start to work for you when you connect these to SATA3 (a.k.a 6g) ports on your mother board. And if your PC is older than 4 or 5 years, it is highly likely your motherboard doesn't have these SATA3 ports. RAM isn't backwards compatible. Your current mobo likely uses DDR2 RAM, your new mobo would use DDR3 RAM or better. Besides, your current RAM 'sticks' would slow down new RAM 'sticks' so significantly that you negate most, if not all, speed gains a new mobo gives you.
Unless you have a very custom build case, your case can handle mobo's build according to ATX standards.
f0dder:
I've wondered if my 8 year old case could take a new mobo/cpu/ram upgrade combo and transfer everything else over (maybe even save the four 1GB ram sticks), and what a good econo mobo/cpu combo might be (AMD seems cheaper than Intel).-bit (April 06, 2015, 12:31 AM)
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With that age, you'll be looking at a full PSU+Mobo+CPU+Ram+GPU upgraded. You can probably salvage the GPU if you aren't doing anything intensive, but it's likely to die within too long if it's in that age range... but for the rest, it really is a full upgrade. New CPU socket, new RAM type.
A thing, though... do you have any nvidia firewall thingy installed? That was one extremely source of instability when I ran AMD hardware from around that time. I'd also suggest you to migrate your data and break up the raid, I had some pretty bad experiences with amd/nforce raid (and ATi before that) from back then - can't remember the details, but from googling back then, I wasn't the only one. And it resulted in pretty bad data loss.
Although SSD's work fine with SATA2 ports, SSD's really start to work for you when you connect these to SATA3 (a.k.a 6g)-Shades (April 06, 2015, 08:08 AM)
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SSDs are a big performance boost at any level, even at SATA1 (150MB/s) you'll have trouble finding HDDs today that can keep up that speed at then entire disk surface... and the random seek time is always going to be better. It's only the most recent SSDs that need more than SATA2 (300MB/s) too reach max sustainedperformance. The very top models these days need faster than SATA tho :)
bit:
^Shades - I uninstalled Malwarebytes, and folders all open within 1/2 second now, and Process Explorer System Interrupts is down around 0.40 at idle.
I can reinstall MWB once a month for a full system scan.
Meanwhile, I'll just have to be careful where I surf or what I install.
^f0dder - My case is a 'no frills' aluminum LianLi which I like value very highly, so if or when I can ever do a full PSU+Mobo+CPU+Ram+GPU upgrade, I may try to save the case.
I Googled the NVidia firewall issue, and don't seem to see any sign of it on my Uninstall Programs list, so I don't think it's there.
If I get a chance, I'll pick up an SSD HD as an easy speed boost.
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