slow PC complaint from IBM users

May 26, 2009 12:40 PM

Hi fellow MeFites! You are all Great! Today, I am posing a question that has hounded me for a year or so... at work, we have an IBM workstation environment, with some M50's, M52's, S51's, etc. in the line-up. the issue that I am having is with our/my S51's.

no matter what I do, up to and including re-imaging; the user's are always complaining that they are too slow. usually, I remove previous user's profiles, temp files; and after that I will typically upgrade the memory to 1GB. all without any discernable improvement. we, of course cannot dispose of the machines themselves, as they are capital assets, so does someone have some insight into the problem, perhaps some experience of their own to share... thanks in advance for your kind assistance!

posted by rxbert to computers & internet (9 comments total)

It would help to know what kind(s) of software they are running.
What, exactly, is running slow?
How many processes are running when the slowness happens?
Are the computers connected to the internet? If so, do users have free access to anything they desire? If so, have you checked for malware and the like?
posted by kapu at 1:11 PM on May 26

sorry not to have included "soft" info, I am so focused on the likelihood that it is "hardware" related... anyway, our environment is heavy on internet use. a key application is accessed through the IE browser, often a user will have a few to many browser windows open. they are also heavy Outlook users. when I look at processes, these two show up at the top and at a much higher usage than any other processes... additionally, Word is up there too.
posted by rxbert at 1:17 PM on May 26

512MB ram is way to little, especially for multiple window browsing and Outlook. 2GB is much better.

Also, are the machines sluggish with a clean install of Windows?
posted by wongcorgi at 1:22 PM on May 26

Are these running XP? Latest service pack? Ram is cheap - max these systems out at 2gb.
posted by zerokey at 1:31 PM on May 26

Heavy Web browsing= spyware and adware which will kill the speed of any computer...xcept Macs. IF the systems seem speedier after reimaging and then fall off I wold suspect some adware is clogging the pipes.
posted by Gungho at 1:53 PM on May 26

that is just the thing, re-imaging has no impact or improvement on performance. I know that 512MB is too low, but there is no changing (upgrading) now (because of the corporate higher ups). and the thing is, I have increased them to 1GB and still the user complains. And still the user complains.
also, these other machines(M50's, M52's) are plugging along okay with mostly the same configuration as these S51's... I just can't help thinking that it is more than that.
posted by rxbert at 2:09 PM on May 26

Are you installing the chipset drivers? I've run into machines that didn't have it installed and there was a noticable performance hit.
posted by wongcorgi at 2:32 PM on May 26

You really need to tell us specifically what is slow. I understand that users are just going to throw up their hands and say "it's slow", but can't you provide more details?
posted by PueExMachina at 7:38 PM on May 26

As a proactive step look into dropmyrights from Microsoft to better protect your systems running internet facing software. It's quick and easy and very powetrful.

Here are some things I would try if it were me.

Look into trimming unnecessary processes on a test box. Trim all you can and test fully before trying the settings on production machines.

Set XP for "performance mode"

maybe disable system restore if you have imaging software in place.

Look into making these things like kiosks and have the users store their data on a file server. So that each time it turns on it is in a fresh state.

I can elaborate on any of these things if you wish. Just some ideas for you to think about.
You should be able to tweak these computers with some effort. Keep an eye on ram usage and cpu usage and see what you can do. And, there is always seppuku ;-)
posted by kapu at 9:43 PM on May 31