You receive a call from a user who recently upgraded her computer from Microsoft Windows 98 to Windows XP Professional. After the upgrade, the computer’s performance has decreased, and it is functioning at unacceptably slow levels when running resource-intensive applications. The computer is configured as follows:
Processor: Pentium II/233 MHz
RAM: 64 MB
Hard disk: 4 GB EIDE
You start the Performance tool on the computer and configure it to monitor key memory, processor, and physical disk counters. You then launch the applications that are significantly degrading performance. The Performance tool records the following counter values during the test:
Memory, Pages/sec: 107
Processor, % Processor Time: 40%
Physical Disk, % Disk Time: 67%
What is causing the computer performance problem, and how can you resolve it?
You receive a call from a user who reports that his computer seems to run more slowly than it used to. Upon further questioning, you suspect that the problem may not be hardware-based, but that the user probably needs to optimize the performance of his hard disk. What three actions would you suggest to the user for optimizing his hard disk before resorting to using the Performance tool to measure the computer’s performance?