Bouts of Extreme System Slug

[m]

Oliver Ruebenacker wrote:
>      Hello, All,
> 
>   I am running F10 on a Dell Latitude D820 laptop, about two years
> old, with 2GB memory and Centrino Due processors. Since a few weeks,
> my laptop is suffering from bouts of sluggishness, typically lasting
> for maybe a minute to a few minutes, and I have a feeling, it is
> progressively getting worse. During these phases, everything is
> running slow and GUI response is delayed for seconds or longer.
> According to the system monitor, both processors are busy (up to
> almost hundred percent); memory usage is well below one half and no
> swap space is used, and network traffic is low, too.
> 
>   The more applications I am running, the more noticeable these phases
> of sluggishness become, although I am not sure whether this cuases
> them or whether it just makes them more noticeable. In any case, when
> I open more or more intensive applications, the onset of sluggishness
> usually takes minutes, and persists minutes after applications are
> closed again.
> 
>   How can I diagnose what causes the sluggishness?
> 
>   I considered running fsck or badblocks, but these can only be used
> on unmounted file systems, and I find that even if I boot single user
> mode, the root file system is mounted and can not be unmounted (says
> it's busy).
> 
>   I also experience some other problems, such as occasional crashes of
> Firefox and OpenJDK. I am connected to the Internet via DHCP. When I
> go to some places (including Stata Center, MIT) and connect to the
> network (wired or wireless) there, my laptop freezes entirely in
> irregular intervals (can be minutes or hours) and does not recover.
> 
>   Thanks for the help!
> 
>      Take care
>      Oliver
> 
Sounds like a hardware problem. Get zapped by a storm lately?
Check the CPU temp in the BIOS. Check the system logs for errors, make 
sure you are allowing adequate ventilation, check to make sure the 
exhaust vents aren't choked with dust or cat hair. A hard drive test 
would be advisable, Hitachi has one you can download and burn making a 
bootable cd. Memtest would also be a good idea, run it overnight at least.

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