Problem report about slow laptop

Here is a problem report I just submitted to company IT. Not once, but three times, because of problems with their problem reporting tool. Thank goodness I had cut and paste my problem report to a file. The problem reporting system is so unreliable.

This is just bitching. But there's a chance some web.lurker outside my company may be able to help solve my problem.

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My laptop is slow. This is true in general, but especially in one specific circumstance: starting up after it has been in standby for an extended period of time, e.g. overnight.

This sort of problem seems to be shared by many people, but it seems to be especially bad for me. This can be indicated anecdotally: I often pair program with people, and we have to wait while my laptop powers up. They turn to me, and say things like "Wow, your laptop is slow." Then they suggest that the problem may be that I have too little DRAM, or too slow a processor, or ... But we have never found a configuration option that we can tune that improves things significantly.

At the moment, the leading candidates, suggested by "expert" PC performance tuners (people at my employer whose job it is to make PCs run faster) are:

a) that I have too little DRAM. Although I have 1GB of DRAM, it has been suggested that I request an upgrade to 1.5 or 2GB, because I use my laptop more extensively than most people, running visual studio for large compiles, etc.
I would like to officially request such a memory upgrade.

b) that my disks are too slow. Some folks have suggested that I request a disk upgrade from 5400 to 7200 rpm. Another person, the most expert, has suggested that the problem may be that my disk has a lot of bad blocks. Certainly, during these slow periods, the disk is cranking, audibly constantly seeking - a characterostic of bad block remapping.

I would like to officially request that somebody in IT provide me with PC diagnostic software that can query the disk controller, and see how often such bad block remappings are being done. Note that this is controller level software; OS level software reports "bad blocks", but most physical bad block remappings are hidden by the disk controller hardware. If you, whoever is in IT reading this, do not understand what I just said, please escalate to someone who does.

And, yes, by the way: I have repeatedly run IT diagnostics, and have not found the problem.

Let me provide some data. In the last few days, I have recorded the time I started my computer, and the time at which I could use Outlook to read email. These sample times are:

8:39 - 8:46 - 9 minutes

8:46 - 8:55 - 9 minutes

8:37 - 8:50 - 13 minutes

8:04 - 8:11 - 7 minutes

9:06 - 9:20 - 14 minutes

8:05 - 8:17 - 12 minutes

Such delays do not just occur in the morning after being idle overnight. They sometimes occur during the day, e.g. when I have an hour between meetings. 12 minutes of startup time is a significant fraction of an hour, and makes it very difficult to get things done.

Moreover, getting from start to Outlook is not the whole story. The computer often remains slow for 5-10 more minutes, with the disk cranking away. I have used "start to Outlook" as a measure because it is an objective measure, but it is an understimate of the period of slowness.

The disk is, as I have mentioned, cranking away madly during the period of slowness. It is not always possible to run Task Manager to see what is going on (e.g. Task manager sometimes takes sevceral minutes to start), but when I have been able to I have often observed virus scanning in progress. Similarly, I have also often observed IT tools such as BESclient. In fact, BESclient was so often associated with delays of much worse duration - 15-30 minutes - that I completely disabled it (as reported in earlier servicedesk requests). I am reluctant, however, to disable virus scanning, because of IT chargeback policies.

I suspect that the problem may be caused by virus scanning or other periodic tasks all starting up after a period of idleness; possibly related to invalidation or timeout of in-DRAM caches of file blocks.

The paranoid part of me fears that my laptop may be controlled by malware, or possibly by company installed spyware. But, that's paranoid.

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To be honest, I do not expect IT to do anything useful, to hekp me, with this problem report.

I am making this problem report mainly so that nobody in IT can say that I have not reported the problem. I have repeatedly reported the problem over the past year or so, but could not find it in the problem database, probably because of changes in the problem reporting system.

As usual, there is no problem reporting category that this seems to fall under. So I choose something as close as possible: Computing/Notebook/Docking Station.

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I am reluctant to spend many hours on the phone or in chat sessions with IT HelpDesk personnel trying to fix this. I have wasted many hours in such conversations in the past, usually to no avail. (Although I must admit that the last time I interacted with the IT ServiceDesk, they actually solved my problem quickly and competently - kudos on that.)

I am completely willing to leave my laptop with IT service people, so that they can try to reproduce and solve this performance problem themselves. However, I would need a loaner PC, ideally with an image made of my current disk, so that I can continue to work.

Actually, that would be a good test: image copy my disk, and install the new disk in a new loaner PC, and see if the slowness continues. If not, it suggests a problem with the old disk, such as bad block remappings. If it were possible to try the extra DRAM, even if only temporarily in a loaner PC...

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I typed this in twice, but the ServiceDesk web application lost what I had typed: so now I have placed the problem report in an attached file. Please read it.

Also, the service desk web application refuses to accept such detailed problem reports.

Requirements and ZBBs

I dislked "Requirements Engineering". Very often it is associated with projects that do not satisfy the customer. At the end, the engineers often blame the customer, saying "If only they had written more precise requirements".

This is a cop-out. It is the engineers' job to figure out the real customer needs and requirements. Or maybe the architects. Or marketing.

Here is an example of why I dislike "Requirements Lists". If you have requirements R1…R10, often people say "Let's restrict ourselves to the top three", and implement a mechanism or separate mechanisms that meet R1, R2, R3. They ignore the possibility of a mechanism that satisfies all of R1…R10, although possibly not as wel as the specific mechanism.

Or, there may be a single mechanism that satisfies R1 and R3…R10, but not R2. But it gets dropped, because we have arbitrarily excluded R4…R10 from consideration.

I.e. it is not so much the process of requirements that I dislike, as the simple minded prioritization thinking that is so often associated with it.

45 minutes = 500MB ?

Yesterday IT complained that I had exceeded 1GB of diskspace on my home directory, and the 17GB disk was full, hurting 47 other users on the disk.

It took me 45 minutes to clean up 500MB.

Ironically, the first 300MB was easier - it was a disk usage report I was creating to find out why a different disk used by a project was full. I.e. my home directory disk was full because I was using it to investigate why my project disk was full.

According to PriceWatch, 1GB of PC disks can be purchased for less than 25 cents; heck, 1GB of flash is only around 10$.

45 minutes of my time is worth more than 1GB of disk.

Heck, 45 minutes of the US minimum wage is worth more than 1GB of disk.

Autoclose timeout of security problem reports without investigation

I have posted about my paranoia about malware on my laptop. I think this email from IT's servicedesk / bug reporting / ssue tracking system says it all:

...long code number...

Dear Andy Glew,

We have an answer to your request. See the details as follows:

Request Summary: CB: MS RootkitRevealer indicates possible security problems on my laptop

Answer Summary: Closed by Auto-Close process

You may also click on the link above if you want to view or provide additional information to your request and answer online.

Sincerely,

Note: Please do not reply to this e-mail as messages are not monitored or responded to.

Nobody at IT ever contacted me about the problem. No email, no phone call, no text added to the "helpdesk" problem report.

They just allowed it to time out.

Now, I can understand: RootkitRevealer sometimes has false positives. Maybe IT recognized the symptoms I reported as a false positive, and knows to ignore it.
Or maybe they don't bother investigating security problems, relying only on malware scanners.

Or maybe IT themselves installed the rootkit on my system. (There's my paranoia kicking in again.)

ProcessExplorer - yay

Thanks to Tom Walsh for pointing me to Microsoft's ProcessExplorer, and other sysinternals.

One heck of a lot more useful than task manager.

I continue to waste time tryng to diagnose performance issues that would be better fixed (a) by more DRAM, and (b) a PC upgrade.

E.g. 4 hours wasted today, due to a runaway IT process (BigFix.exe)

I wish I could say "Well, if that's how my employer wants me to spend my time...", but

a) it's my career time that is being wasted. It often seems to me that my employer doesn't give a damn about me wasting my time.

b) even if my employer did, the orgchart doesn't bill IT for time wasted by an engineer like me.

I think more and more about lightweight webpads, as opposed to using IT (not really) managed PCs.

Just because I am paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get me

My system is dog slow.

Microsoft RootkitRevealer indicates suspicious stuff. (Hmm... maybe a good reason not to upgrade to a newer CPU with VT support.)

My system got slow all of a sudden, when an IP issue came up.

Part of me wonders if my employer is monitoring me. It is, after all, their legal right. (But if they are, I wish it didn't impact my productivity so much.)

Part of me wonders if other miscellaneous bad guys have taken over my PC.

Part of me wonders how embarassing it will be if my PC is infected. Since I work in security.

But I have never pretended to be an expert about the ecosystem of PC viruses, worms, and other malware. I have never pretended to be an expert in detecting malware on my PC.

I have reasonably good, standard, knowledge and practices for how to keep a PC clean of malware. Those rules begin "no active content". Unfortunately, the very fact that I am using a Windows PC means that much of such standard BKMs for security do not apply. E.g. I used the preview pane in Outlook, back when various preview pane related security holes became evident. E.g. I tried for years to send only plain text email, but eventually gave up because of the number of people I correspond with who complained.

Yes, I will be embarassed if my PC has been taken over. But not unduly so. The very fact that a reasonably conscientious and security aware guy like me has to worry about this highlights WHY I want to make security easier to use.

Standby Exit Speed

Continuing occasional notes about excess slowness coming out of standby:

This morning, at home while "hurrying" to find a phone conference number: 13 minutes from standby to where I could use Outlook to see the phone bridhe number salad.

Today, at work, after lunch: 14 minutes.

All these times are from standby, not hibernate.