Slow computer + periodically disconnecting from terminal server

[Hardcore Til I Die]

Hi

 

I have two problems with computers at work and would be grateful for any thoughts.

 

1) My computer now runs really slowly. It has the same processor and RAM (E8400 dual core 3GHz, 4GB RAM) as my home computer, which is a hell of a lot more responsive. My main suspicion is that my work computer is slow because it acts as a file server, and around 10 other computes access files on it. Does anyone think this might be causing it to run slowly? I've tried to talk my boss into buying a dedicated file server but he doesn't think he can justify the cost. It's got to the point where sometimes I can be waiting 2-3 minutes for something as simple as a popup to appear. And Microsoft Outlook freezes constantly. 

 

Apart from that I've tried the usual making sure it doesn't run lots of unnecessary stuff at startup, defragging, etc. 

 

2) The computers in the office I work in periodically disconnect from the terminal server at our head office. We have ran some ping tests and both the server and our office are able to ping each other at the time that the disconnects occur, so the problem is not due to lost internet connectivity on either end and must be being caused by something else. Any ideas?

 

Thanks a lot in advance. 

[+BudMan MVC]

Well what is the cpu usage on the machine, what does the network performance look like.. What OS are you running - if you call up the task manager you can see if your cpu is HIGH, and or your network connection is being used constantly, etc.

 

how much space do you have on this box that is being use as file server?  A simple nas can be had for pennies to be your workgroups file space.

 

Example

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822165540

 

This comes with 2TB, single bay..  $161

 

You can for sure get fancier, more bays, more storage, etc.. How are you backing up this data your sharing?

[Skiver Veteran]

If its being used as a file server, I would be more inclined to think it could perhaps be Disk IO, maybe open up Resource Monitor and check disk activity around slow periods?

 

Like Budman has suggested, it doesn't have to be expensive to get something sorted, even something like this might be a perfect solution. If your boss really doesn't want to spend the money, maybe suggest moving the FS to his machine  and see how he gets on or just explain that its ok as long as he expects tasks you are supposed to carry out will take a lot longer than they should.

[+BudMan MVC]

Yup disk I/0 could be the killer to your performance as well - if your seeing large disk i/o I would think its because they grabbing/putting files off your share which you would see in network activity as well.

[Hardcore Til I Die]

Microsoft Outlook can reach 40-50% CPU usage. 

 

I'm not sure if it has a 240GB hard drive or two 120GB hard drives, but it has two drives listed in Windows and each one is 120GB. The network share was previously on C: which only had about 3GB left. I moved it to D: as that had about 80GB left - and still does have about 70GB left. 

 

I'll have a look at the network and I/O performance tomorrow.

 

The PC runs Windows 7 Professional. 

 

It's worth noting that the vast majority of disk I/O should only be small .docx/.doc files. Basically I work in an office where we write a lot of letters to clients, so most of them are text based Word Document files only. We do use other files but by far the most popular types of files we use are text-based .doc/.docx files. 

 

Files are backed up to an external hard drive every Friday night. We could probably even use the existing backup drive to move the files to and then look into buying another cheap backup drive. 

 

Thanks for the ideas, I'll get back to you with more info tomorrow. 

[+BudMan MVC]

120GB?  So SSD??  Or really really OLD??

 

120GB Hard disks have not been around/used for years and years.. Even if was say a 250GB drive that was partitioned it would still be quite dated..  I would look in the event log as well for any sort of insight to maybe problems with the disk, etc.

[Hardcore Til I Die]

PC is about five years old.

I did three things today and one or a combination of them has solved the slowness issue.

1) moved the network share onto the spare hard disk and attached that to the router, so my computer no longer need be a file server;

2) turned off Microsoft Outlook scanning in Symantec Endpoint;

3) rebooted.

Thanks both of you for your input!

[+BudMan MVC]

There you go - you already had a nas, your router