Computer Sluggish after sustained disk activity

[banger]

Not sure where to put this but I have an MSI P35 board with an E8400 C2D CPU, 2 Gb of DDR2 RAM and Xp Pro SP3. If I run a virus scan with Nod32, Backup with Paragon backup or open a VMWare machine - after this has been done the machine becomes sluggish taking a couple of seconds to open programs, before it is instant. Running drives on IDE ports of the board and CPU use is about 3% when disk activity takes place. If you need more info let me know, any ideas why after large disk activity the computer becomes sluggish, haven't noticed this on my Foxconn 946/E2180.

Tim

 

[sturm]

Check the amount of pagefile usage and memory usage that is going on. Also check fragmentation on the drive.

 

[banger]

How do I do that? Also after I defrag machine seems sluggish.

 

[sturm]

Ctrl-Alt-Delete or right click on the taskbar and select task manager. there is a performance tab that gives you cpu usage, pf usage and memory usage. You can also see what programs are running behind the scenes with the processes tab. Look for anything out of the ordinary.

 

[banger]

Ctrl-Alt-Delete or right click on the taskbar and select task manager. there is a performance tab that gives you cpu usage, pf usage and memory usage. You can also see what programs are running behind the scenes with the processes tab. Look for anything out of the ordinary.

Have checked the running processes and no malware. CPU use is low when I run a virus scan and page file use rises slightly, although I don't understand why as there is still 1200 mb of RAM available for use. Is my system paging unnecessarily ? Also have noticed when I close a vmware machine and it releases RAM there is a slight stutter as memory is being released if I'm using another program. I have a toolbar on the desktop that displays RAM and as I see it ticking up after closing a virtual machine programs tend to lock then a second later start working again. Any ideas?