slow FC5/unused swap space/hang at boot/can't suspend

[URHereIMNot]

lemme start off by saying that i'm a total linux n00b. i can rarely install programs that don't come in a nice rpm package, even after doin everything said on the README.

now that's over with, lemme describe my configuration. i've installed FC5 in a dual boot configuration with windows XP on my Sony Vaio PCG-FRV35 laptop. I have the partitions set up as follows:

partition 1: windows xp
partition 2: logical partition
partition 5: fat32 extended partition //for music and other stuffs i want shared
partition 3: boot (GRUB)
partition 4: LVM
900MB for swap
the rest for everything else linux

i have 4 distinct, but hopefully related, problems.
1. sometimes during the boot sequence, the system hangs at "enabling swap space...", and usually i have to turn the laptop off and and back on to get any further.
2. during normal use (firefox, playing music, etc), the system would slow down DRAMATICALLY, with lag times so great that it would cause trauma to a lan gamer.
3. upon further investigation (really, just me clicking on random Administration->System Monitor), it turns out that the swap space isn't used, or if it is, only about 1.4MB or so is.
4. I also cannot suspend my laptop, and gets the black screen of death. i've looked at firewing1's howto guide, but my laptop uses an ati chipset

any help?

[JoeyJoJoe]

my swap is only using 120KB... I'm not sure thats a problem though... won't the swap be quite slow to use because it only uses that when the RAM is full?

How much RAM do you have? and on the system monitor how much is it using?

[scotta3234]

The first thing i recommend in checking for slow FC5 is checking out what unnecessary services you have running, here is a good site: http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-services-fc5.html

This should dramatically increase performance if you have unnecessary services running. As for your swap space everything should be A OK (minus when it doesnt start at boot). Linux aps are small and don't use that much memory. I don't think i even use my swap space ever.

In regards to your suspend function this might be a little more tricky. BUT... if you comment out the "POST" section in /etc/pm/functions-ati you shouldn't get the black screen of death anymore. ALSO know that if you cd into /etc/pm and list out you might have to comment another "post" section in another file. For me it was /etc/pm/functions-intel in which i had to comment out the post section there. that made it so i wouldnt get the black screen. Sadly my trackpad looses sync after resuming so I'm still workin on that.