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I recently installed Windows 7 x64 Professional and full package of software when I noticed that system became unresponsive.

After debugging a while I noticed the disk read/write speed was dropped 90% to 25MB/s Seq Read (according to CrystalDiskMark3). Before installing the software I tested the new Kingston SV200S3128G 128.0GB SSD disk to have in the same PC and OS 210MB/s Read speed so from HW point of view there was nothing wrong. Then I traced my steps back to test the speed after removing some of the software. Just to make sure I re-installed the OS and the suspicious software.

According to my test the reason was installing Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 x86 Redistributable. To remind you this is a 64-bit machine and 64-bit W7. But the x86 version of this redistributable is required by CamStudio software which I like to use and so far I have not found it to survive with any x64 redistributable versions.

I did make the disk speed test with Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 x64 Redistributable and all was again good at 210MB/s.

So I'm looking for any help or clues to solving why Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 x86 Redistributable would be making the machine slow.

Topic updated acc. to recent test results. Having only VC++ 2008 x86 installed the disk speed was still up at normal level. Testing continues.

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Voting to send this to SuperUser. – Mysticial Dec 28 '11 at 22:07
Do you have Intel's RST (Rapid Storage Technology) installed? I've seen that cause major issues with computers with SSDs as the primary disk. – kobaltz Dec 28 '11 at 22:28
partition alignment issue perhaps, so SSDs preform poorly when not properly aligned – Lamar B Dec 28 '11 at 22:42
@kobaltz Intel RST is not installed. I'm not familiar with that software. – tobias Dec 29 '11 at 6:56
@LamarB I don't believe partition alignment can affect different disk speed results in same session when only installing a new software in between. – tobias Dec 29 '11 at 6:57
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migrated from stackoverflow.com Dec 28 '11 at 22:16

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1 Answer

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That's weird for sure, and I can only offer a suggestion as to how to troubleshoot it....

I suspect it's more likely a case of something improperly using the x86 VC++ run-time libraries (if available), rather than the x86 runtime libraries themselves being at fault.

I'd wipe it AGAIN, install only Windows and the most basic drivers required to get to a desktop.

Install the VC++ x86 Redistributable package first, and see if it affects performance.

If no effect (things are still fast) then go from there installing software, checking I/O speeds after each, in hopes of finding the real culprit.

If it affects the I/O speed right after install of the VC++ package (with a minimal driver-set), then you've probably got a funky driver (RAID or AHCI perhaps), and you'll want to contact The manufacturer to let them know what's going on (or to get the latest driver to try, if you haven't already).

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Thank's for your reply. I'll try your approach next. This is an older PC (Lenovo T61) and Windows 7 install would give already the latest driver set. Later today I can also try with a regular disk and also without AHCI. – tobias Dec 29 '11 at 6:50
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ok, now I'm lost again. I wiped the disk and installed the OS again with only adding VC++ x86 and I'm getting still good readings. I verified the partition alignment as it was asked and Paragon reports all ok. I tested by installing the applications using VC++ but so far I received no issues. I'll continue installing components and Windows Updates now to check that what would be the component resulting to slow speed. – tobias Dec 29 '11 at 8:43
I've now istalled all Windows patches individually, SP1, T61 driver updates individually. There has been no single update that could repeat that poor performance. I'll now just move on to install the additional software (VC++ 2010 CamStudio, TortoiseSVN, browsers, media packs, loads of other sw). Let's see if anything new will happen. If not, I'll close this thread and conclude that all now works by magic and previously it was just a bad install. – tobias Jan 1 at 15:49
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