Windows 10: Alt-Tab becomes sluggish over time

hmmm...ok you have the latest BIOS. That one got release about a year ago.

And I suppose you let Windows update all your drivers automatically?

 

Yeah they update automatically. I've also reinstalled a lot of them manually just to make sure.

 

I still think this is a driver issue.

One more thing you could try, is go to Intel website and download the latest drivers for your hardware. The Intel RST driver in particular. This update has solved some sluggishness issues for others in the past.

Another thing you could try is disabling the Radeon GPU in Device manager and run on integrated graphics only just to test this too.

And finally also test to boot without any other services starting except Windows own and NO startup applications. (this you can do by going to System Configuration and switching into Safe Boot)

 

Alright I will try these later and report back on the results. I appreciate your extensive help on this; I typically can troubleshoot everything myself and I was surprised this has stumped me.

 

I have had some weird glitches every now and then with Windows 10. Only way to solve the issues has been to try everything and start from something minimal and try to track down the root cause. Sometimes I can solve it sometimes not. Usually the problems has been on an Insider build and some problems went away after a few Windows upgrades.


For instance, my nVidia GT-540M could not start at all, no matter what I did...but suddenly it started working again after a few new flights from MS. *Smile

I have a Looong list of stuff I want to test every time I run into any kind of issues. I even test stuff that are not even related to the problem.

Oh and yes, get that Cumulative update .502 or .540 that got released today, for your OS, that could also solve the issue.

August 8, 2017—KB4034674 (OS Build 15063.540)

Direct link to the KB4034674 Update Catalog

 

So Intel Driver Update Assistant found no issues with drivers when I scanned it, there is no radeon gpu because it's just using integrated intel graphics, and I installed the new update, doesn't seem to do anything differently.

 

The Intel Driver Update assistant never finds anything on my device, does not even recognize half my Intel chips. *Smile

Are you saying there is no Radeon Card in your device? Not using it is not the same as putting it completely offline by disabling the driver in Device Manager. The driver is still interacting though not card being used.

Try creating a new Windows User account of the Administrators group and use that for a while. If the problem still persist, we know at least that it is not an Account or configuration issue. You can always delete the account later.

Did you try to run with ALL startup items disabled and ALL non MS services disabled?

 

Yeah, I assume you looked up the model, but mine doesn't have radeon graphics; I don't remember it ever having it. Also, I booted in Safe Mode, everything seemed fine.

I'll try making a new user and see how that works. But again, I have completely wiped my hard drive and re-installed windows 10 on this laptop multiple times, always ends up having this same issue. I've also wiped several other hard drives on several other computers/laptops and never encountered this same problem.

 

There is something that is screwing up the explorer process or it's related processes. We need to find that one.

If booting into safemode fixed the issue, then we are on right track. Now we need to disable all non-MS services and all startup items, but boot into normal mode (not Safe Mode). If the issue still remains, we know it's in one of the Windows services or a driver. If no issues, then we enable one service at a time until we find the issue.