Dodgy performance from iTunes and Steam

[Macha]

Steam and iTunes are both running incredibly slow on my computer. It can take up to a minute for them to refresh the screen or realise when I click on something.

This happens even though my RAM usage is often less than 25% and CPU usage < 10% with them running.

The only two things they have in common, that other apps on my system do not is this:
- They both use "custom" windows, i.e. the title bar and everything are not windows default (EDIT: actually MSN, and WMP both use custom windows with no performance impact)
- They both access large amounts of data on drives other than c:. Steam has 50GB of games on my D: drive, and iTunes has about that in music on a network drive.

EDIT: Steam's downloads and installs still progress at a normal rate. It is just the user interface that is slow.

Specs:
Intel T8300 (2.4GHz) processor
ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics card.
2 x 250GB internal hard drives + 1 x 500GB network drive
4GB RAM
Vista Home Premium 32bit

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Could it be that it's accessing so much data from the other drives that it's bottlenecking? Just a wild guess. Probably wrong, as the downloads still work at normal speed, you said.

Another wild guess: Maybe you accidentally set the priority to be lower? Don't know if you can do that in Steam or iTunes.

Edit: Try this -- might identify something. Process Monitor.

 

[Zelig]

itunes and steam are both incredibly slow programs.

I don't use itunes, steam I just suck up and deal with the crawling.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

itunes and steam are both incredibly slow programs.

I don't use itunes, steam I just suck up and deal with the crawling.

Besides the internet component in either, they run perfectly fine on my pc.

Its just your configuration.

 

[Zelig]

Besides the internet component in either, they run perfectly fine on my pc.

Its just your configuration.

What's "perfectly fine"?

Photoshop launches faster than Steam for me.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the only things I have which take as long to launch as Steam are entire virtualized operating systems.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

What's "perfectly fine"?

Photoshop launches faster than Steam for me.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the only things I have which take as long to launch as Steam are entire virtualized operating systems.

Let me think as to what launches faster than steam that I use regularly...mIRC and, hmm, Process Explorer

Photoshop launches slower, AE launches slower, PP launches slower. Firefox launches slower.

Its just something messed up for you, because im not the only one for whom it launches quickly.

 

[Zelig]

Let me think as to what launches faster than steam that I use regularly...mIRC and, hmm, Process Explorer

Photoshop launches slower, AE launches slower, PP launches slower. Firefox launches slower.

Its just something messed up for you, because im not the only one for whom it launches quickly.

I can install Steam as the first program on a clean install of Windows, and it's still slow. Not much room for messing up there.

Warm launch times for me:
Don't have photoshop installed. (Yeah, it takes me more time to install photoshop than it does to generate a new clean install of Windows)
Don't know what AE refers to.
PP - 1 second
Firefox - 1 second
Steam - 10 seconds

 

[azzaman333]

Steam and iTunes run perfectly fine for me, even when I have them both open at the same time (at least 50% of the time)

 

[Genocidicbunny]

I can install Steam as the first program on a clean install of Windows, and it's still slow. Not much room for messing up there.

Warm launch times for me:
Don't have photoshop installed. (Yeah, it takes me more time to install photoshop than it does to generate a new clean install of Windows)
Don't know what AE refers to.
PP - 1 second
Firefox - 1 second
Steam - 10 seconds

Steam - 4 seconds
Firefox - 7 seconds
AE ( After Effects ) - 13 seconds
PP - 12 seconds
Photoshop - 9 seconds
mIRC - 2 seconds

 

[Zelig]

Steam - 4 seconds
Firefox - 7 seconds
AE ( After Effects ) - 13 seconds
PP - 12 seconds
Photoshop - 9 seconds
mIRC - 2 seconds

Looks like your Powerpoint and Firefox are messed up.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Looks like your Powerpoint and Firefox are messed up.

Firefox is starting up and opening 10 tabs or so
PP is Premiere Pro, not PowerPoint.
PowerPoint starts in 8 seconds.

 

[Maniacal]

Sometimes steam can be a bit slow starting up, but I have a LOT of games on it and dozens more linked in the game's tab and mostly the start up is simply signing in. Opera usually has 12 or 20 or so tabs up, so it can take a bit longer to start, or at least until it's done loading all the tabs.