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We've a lot of users that usually complain about that his PC is "slow". (we use win XP).

We usually check startup programs, virus, fragmentation, disk health and common problems that causes slowness (Symantec AV drops disk to 1mb/s , or a seagate HD firmware error in certain models), but in those cases the slowness is pretty evident.

In other hand, the most common is the user complaining about his pc but for us looks OK, even in 6 years old desktops. People sometimes even complains about his new quad core desktops speed!!!

So, we are asking if there's a way to OBJECTIVELY check that a computer didn't dropped its performance, compared with similar ones o previous measures, specially for work use (I don't think that 3dmark benchmark o similar may help). The only thing that I found that was useful is HDTune, but it only check hard disk performance.

Basically, what we want is something that enable us to say to our users "see? your PC is as slow as was three years ago! stop complaining! Is all in your head!"

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  • I wonder if it might make your users happier if you said "Ah! We found what was making your computer slow and we fixed it."
    – Ladadadada
    Jun 13, 2012 at 9:18
  • but that don't help us to check if really there is a problem....
    – ekms
    Jun 13, 2012 at 9:21
  • Which is why it's a comment and not an answer.
    – Ladadadada
    Jun 13, 2012 at 9:23
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    What anti-virus software are you running? That's the biggest culprit in such complaints. If possible have it scan on either read or write but not both.
    – John Gardeniers
    Jun 13, 2012 at 9:23
  • Is Symantec AV... an yes, it's my number 2º most hated software. Nº1 is lotus notes. But for what we're talking about, the AV always has been there, also when the computer was "fine" to the user. When AV is really the cause, is solved reinstalling it.
    – ekms
    Jun 13, 2012 at 9:53

2 Answers 2

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I strongly disagree with the "it's all in your head" sentiment, even if I understand the reasoning for it. The problem is that this nearly never solves the perceived problems the user has, be it real or imagined.

Anyway, the defacto standard Benchmark for Office systems is the BabCo suite, but I doubt it's free or cheap.

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On WinXP, try System Monitor MMC snap-in (perfmon.msc). It even has the right counters loaded by default (pages/sec, disk queue length, processor time).

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