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dual boot win7 and ubuntu(very slow)

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  • Dual Boot
  • Ubuntu
Last response: in Linux/Free BSD
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August 11, 2013 3:45:41 AM

6GB RAM
nVidia 310M 512 MB
i3 2.2ghz
500gb HHD
Waned to dual boot win7 and Ubuntu 12.04. installed ubuntu first only. It is very sluggish and nonresponsive. Tried every thing from re installing graphic card to making hhd compatible(from bios) and many more changes still its is very laggy. My win7 runs very soomthly by itself.
Note: haven't dual booted yet. Complete format then installed ubuntu
Note: works perfectly fine booting live cd(even though graphic card is unknown)

More about : dual boot win7 ubuntu slow

August 11, 2013 7:40:44 AM

1. What make and model is your motherboard?
2. What version of the nVidia graphics driver are you running?
3. Have you looked at the output of the "top" command to determine if any processes are hogging the processor?
4. Is the disk light on all the time?
5. How much swap space do you have?
6. What do you mean by "making hhd compatible (from bios)"?

And, yes, you will have problems when you later install Windows (your Ubuntu will be unbootable).
August 11, 2013 11:34:41 AM

1. Lenovo G460 (Is that what you meant? otherwise I'll check in bios later and let you know)
2. Unless the latest version changed since the last two days its the one you get when you download "nvidia_current"
3. How do you do that? "top" command
4. DVD disk? If I use LiveCD sometimes... is that what you asked for?/ 500gb only 20 gb is used. ext4 rest is ntfs
5. I read that swap should be equal to the RAM so 6gb. But i lowered the swappiness to 10
6.Enter bios, locate SATA drive, chaged from ACHI to Compatible.

Not if you re-install grub right?
Related resources
August 11, 2013 11:41:36 AM

Yea I read up on which you should install first. But i was upgrading my win os anyways so i did a complete format and installed ubuntu(first time) to see how it is. But was pretty slow compared to any other os i have tried on this machine. But surprisingly it runs super fast if i run it of the live cd!
August 11, 2013 12:21:30 PM

2. There were problems with these symptoms with some versions of the NVidia driver, but I would assume that the driver supplied now doesn't have this problem. I take it that after installation you have brought the software up to date with the latest changes.
3. Just open a terminal and type "top". This will show you how much cpu the various running processes are using. The point of this is to find out if the problem is that some process is hogging the cpu.
4. I meant the hard disk activity light. The point of this is to find out if the problem is that some process is hogging the disk.
5. You have plenty of swap space. Swappiness will make little or no difference to performance.
6. Personally I would use ACHI (but I don't know for sure that 12.04 supports it).

It's true that you can reinstall grub (if you are confident that you know how to rescue a system using the Live CD) but it's easier just to install Windows first.
August 11, 2013 1:32:36 PM

Ijack said:
.....
6. Personally I would use ACHI (but I don't know for sure that 12.04 supports it).
.....

Yup, it does. The kernel has supported AHCI for ages.
August 11, 2013 1:58:31 PM

In that case I would use it. It works fine with my Fedora and Gentoo installations as well as Windows.

Having Googled a bit, this problem seems to be quite common with Ubuntu 12.04. I'm not a great fan of Ubuntu and the direction it is taking. Personally I would cut my losses and install Mint, Fedora, or SuSE. There are other arguably better distributions, but I think these three are the most friendly for a new user.
August 12, 2013 5:36:50 AM

Right . I am noob so i haven't really heard of the other linux os that you mentioned. But would you say that they are more "nvidia" friendly? Also if i were to use the older ubuntu versions would the problem be gone?

Alright, i checked top and it says out of 177 only 5-10 are running. This is at startup. What should i be looking for here?
August 12, 2013 6:45:00 AM

So from top i got
Update-apt-xapi 100
dpkg-query 105
top 30

Few others are below 5. There are the cpu percentages. It looks pretty grim. My windows never when up 50 unless playing a demanding game
August 12, 2013 8:02:17 AM

Sounds as if Ubuntu is spending some time running some sort of update task. It may just settle down if you leave it for a while.

I wouldn't say that any Linux distro is more NVidia friendly than others. Most work very well with NVidia cards. It's more the overall philosophy. The ones I mention go for a rather leaner setup than Ubuntu.
August 13, 2013 11:40:14 AM

Yea it didn't help. Even if 20 percent is the max cpu usage it is still very slow. I tried re installing. Even that didnt help. It is not possible that my laptop was not built for it right? It is a software issue right?
!