System pauses (a while) before alert sounds?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win2000.general (More info?)

Hi folks --

I'm having a problem where there is a significant hang of my system (with
substantial running of the disk) before system alert sounds are played.
Then, when the sound has been played, everything pops back to normal.

I'll be using any program the machine, then all of a sudden everything slows
to a stop, the hard disk is running like it's paging a whole bunch of stuff
in and out, and I'll get a bell and and an alert box from whatever program
I'm using. The alert box/bell is not the result of the slowdown, it's the
trigger. Any bell from any cause seems to bring my system for a halt for
perhaps 5 second. After that, everything is back to normal.

I have an off-the-shelf Dell OptiPlex GX300 with 256Mb of RAM, and the audio
is integrated on the motherboard. Win2K is up-to-date in patches and my
audio drivers are up-to-date from Dell. I run Norton, Zonealarm, and regular
spyware scans.

It feels to me like RAM is overloaded and the computer has to page things to
the disk to perform even basic functions, but it only feels that way in this
one situation, everything else seems to run fine. I realize that I could go
higher on the RAM, but this behavior happens even when I have hardly anything
else running which doesn't seem normal.

Has anyone run into this before? Any suggestions? I'd even welcome
pointers to utilities that will help me analyze my RAM usage, or help me
interpret the information that Task Manager provides. This is starting to
drive me crazy.

Thanks very much in advance!

-- Dave

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.win2000.general (More info?)

You may be waiting for some Event logging processing to come in so it can
log the alert

IMHO, I found Windows 2000 to thrash as you describe with 256Mb.
Upgrade to 512Mb and you will be much pleased.

Meanwhile you could try turning off the Event Log under
Computermanagement.servicesandapplications.services
Make a note of all active services before tweaking tho.
I found the hard way that some applications may fail if an obscure service
is offline.


"Humptydank" <Humptydank@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:7043EE74-8B76-4F3F-B8D3-B8C52F89ACE3@microsoft.com...
>
> Hi folks --
>
> I'm having a problem where there is a significant hang of my system (with
> substantial running of the disk) before system alert sounds are played.
> Then, when the sound has been played, everything pops back to normal.
>
> I'll be using any program the machine, then all of a sudden everything
slows
> to a stop, the hard disk is running like it's paging a whole bunch of
stuff
> in and out, and I'll get a bell and and an alert box from whatever program
> I'm using. The alert box/bell is not the result of the slowdown, it's the
> trigger. Any bell from any cause seems to bring my system for a halt for
> perhaps 5 second. After that, everything is back to normal.
>
> I have an off-the-shelf Dell OptiPlex GX300 with 256Mb of RAM, and the
audio
> is integrated on the motherboard. Win2K is up-to-date in patches and my
> audio drivers are up-to-date from Dell. I run Norton, Zonealarm, and
regular
> spyware scans.
>
> It feels to me like RAM is overloaded and the computer has to page things
to
> the disk to perform even basic functions, but it only feels that way in
this
> one situation, everything else seems to run fine. I realize that I could
go
> higher on the RAM, but this behavior happens even when I have hardly
anything
> else running which doesn't seem normal.
>
> Has anyone run into this before? Any suggestions? I'd even welcome
> pointers to utilities that will help me analyze my RAM usage, or help me
> interpret the information that Task Manager provides. This is starting to
> drive me crazy.
>
> Thanks very much in advance!
>
> -- Dave