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What is a reasonable number of page faults/hard faults per second?

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veryhumid

Member
Joined
Apr 22, 2004
Location
New Hampshire
My hard drive will not stop crunching on the computer I just built. It's Vista Ultimate, freshly defraged, passed memtest and I get sometimes 1,000 faults per second when I load apps and when the computer boots. What is normal? What is too much? What am I overlooking? SMART is all okay, too.
 
Hard Faults / Page Faults as read in the Performance and Reliability Monitor aren't necessarily errors...
A hard fault (also known as a page fault) occurs when the page of the referenced address is no longer in physical memory and has been swapped out or is available from a backing file on disk. It is not an error. However, a high number of hard faults may explain the slow response time of an application if it must continually read data back from disk rather than from physical memory.
Windows Vista Performance and Reliability Monitoring Step-by-Step Guide
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Windo...b177-43ec-8a4d-0bfac62d88961033.mspx?mfr=true
veryhumid said:
My hard drive will not stop crunching on the computer I just built
Vista's Search function is indexing all your personal files silently in the background; while SuperFetch is taking data from your HDD(s), storing it in available RAM and making it readily accessible to the processor.
Windows SuperFetch

A new memory management technology in Windows Vista, Windows SuperFetch, helps keep the computer consistently responsive to your programs by making better use of the computer's RAM. Windows SuperFetch prioritizes the programs you're currently using over background tasks and adapts to the way you work by tracking the programs you use most often and preloading these into memory. With SuperFetch, background tasks still run when the computer is idle. However, when the background task is finished, SuperFetch repopulates system memory with the data you were working with before the background task ran. Now, when you return to your desk, your programs will continue to run as efficiently as they did before you left.
Windows Defender is also running with real-time priority to scan all your disks for malware.
Windows Defender Real-time protection

Scanning can remove existing spyware, but to help protect against new or unknown threats, Windows Defender includes monitoring agents for real-time protection. Several security agents monitor critical areas of the computer that spyware might attempt to modify: autostart, system configuration, Internet Explorer add-ons, Internet Explorer configuration, Internet Explorer downloads, services and drivers, application execution, application registration, and Windows add-ons. These critical areas of the computer represent the common entry points for spyware.
In addition the Disk Defragmenter is running as a scheduled job, and also runs silently.
Automatic disk defragmentation

Infrequent disk defragmentation leads to an inefficient layout of files on the hard disk, which can slow PC performance. Windows Vista includes a new disk defragmenter that runs in the background and automatically defragments the hard disk as need arises. The new disk defragmenter no longer needs to complete its work in a single session—it can defragment incrementally, whenever the computer is idle.
And one other thing, Vista is checking your CD/DVD drive(s) for the presence of disks.
 
Thanks for your thorough post. I know they are not necessarily errors, but it seems that even since I built it on Friday there is so much more disk usage and slowness. I have been hung up on the idea that a software change is responsible. I suppose I will just wait it out and see if things improve with the superfetch and defrag.

Would someone mind posting some PF deltas that they see as viewed in the windows task manager? (click "view" > "select columns" > "PF Delta")
 
Thanks for your thorough post. I know they are not necessarily errors, but it seems that even since I built it on Friday there is so much more disk usage and slowness. I have been hung up on the idea that a software change is responsible. I suppose I will just wait it out and see if things improve with the superfetch and defrag.

Would someone mind posting some PF deltas that they see as viewed in the windows task manager? (click "view" > "select columns" > "PF Delta")
Mine were all zero except for active programs running (firefox, vantive - our ticket system, etc.)
 
Windows Defender is the primary cause of the disk thrashing, which will subside considerably after a few days. To troubleshoot your high disk usage and slowness, temporarily disable it... Start | Control Panel | Windows Defender | Tools and Settings--> Options. The secondary cause would be the indexing function, which you could also temporarily disable... Start | Control Panel | Indexing Options | "Modify" button.
 
Mine were all zero except for active programs running (firefox, vantive - our ticket system, etc.)

Mine stay at zero unless they are loading or doing something. If it were the defender app or indexing service would the page faults show up in different apps like outlook, steam, etc?

Also, it's funny. To try to troubleshoot, I changed the SATA port on the motherboard and I have noticed less thrashing. I might just be too sensitive to a new computer (haven't had a desktop in 5 months!). I will keep troubleshooting and post if I find out something else.
 
Any new developments on this? I've been trying to track down an excessive pf delta issue on my own box. Installer.exe produces an average of 6000 pf/sec and system is generally sluggish. Wish I could blame defender, but it's not installed.
 
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