Fedora 13 Awfully slow!

[nitz]

So I got a computer with a basic setup to be a home server running Fedora 13, here are the hardware specs:

Asus M2N68-AM
AMD Athlon 1640 (2.6GHz Single Core, 1 MB Cache)
4GB Ram DDR2-800 Kingston
MSI Geforce 8600GTS 256MB
80GB + 500GB HDD

The hardware is fine, I have checked the memory and ran several stress tests flawlessly, on the 500GB HDD it runs Windows XP 64 Bit just fine, I have tried to install Fedora 13 on the 80GB HD and I'm getting an extremely weird behavior.

Here are the symptoms:

Mouse sticks/freezes every 1-2 seconds;
The ping answer from the machine varies from 1ms up to 800ms;
Slow response, gets slow and worse when on for long;
Takes forever to boot.

What's REALLY weird is the fact sometimes when the machine boots there is nothing wrong with it, Fedora runs smoothly really fast, all it needs is a reboot to get back on those symptoms, it's rare to boot "nicely" but it's pretty random.

Windows XP 64BIT works fine without problems, also Fedora 11 Live CD works fine, however, with the Live USB with Fedora 13 I get the same problem.

Never had this kind of issue before, any ideas?

Thank you!

[DBelton]

have you done a full update yet? Some of those problems may have been fixed in an update.

[nitz]

Yes I have, on the very first boot when it was fine.

I have also tried to reinstall, still the same issues.

[Chilly Willy]

Given the scenario that you mentioned, the ONE THING that sticks out as being different is the use of that 80G HD. I suspect THAT is the culprit. Extremely heavy disk activity will bring a machine to a grinding halt, no matter HOW fast. Try (if you can) to put Fedora on the 500G HD as well or another HD. Plus run a test on the 80G.

[beaker_]

I'm just guessing but for giggles; paste the output of:

cat /proc/cpuinfo
uname -r

I've seen X grabbing 95% cpu usage when it doesn't detect a monitor. Which video driver (nvidea or nouveau?) and maybe post a top.

top

[nitz]

Nice to mention that....

I tried to swap the 80GB hdd by another one (I got a bunch of them, mostly brand new from previous upgrades). Didn't fix that.

I thought that was the X as well and I'm using the nVidia driver.

But I killed the X and still the same problems, the computer would not stop responding but was slow as hell even on plain text console.


I'll post the feedback from the cpu use.

[Chilly Willy]

I assume you are running sata, did you try another port for that HD? - could be bad - (again, trying to go with the scenario of the differences.)

The "X" IS a good suspect as well... (from what previous post on this forum have mentioned)

I'll throw in the possibility of a bad cable, while I'm at it...

[beaker_]

Just adding, wouldn't hurt to do a:

su
yum-complete-transaction
yum update

Just to be sure there's nothing lingering there and it's up to date.