Windows 10: Fall Creators Update poor performance/lagginess FIX

Hi,

ever since FCU update, I've been experiencing general slowness and lagginess of Windows, even in trivial things, like maximizing/restoring Explorer window, as well as some extreme performance regressions in professional software, such as 3ds Max, DaVinci Resolve or Photoshop. And it seems I am not alone.

Recently, one of my friends, who is a programmer, found a fix to this issue, for which I am eternally grateful to him.

SO! I will try to basically translate what he said:
With FCU, Microsoft has introduced some new crap with which they try to blindly patch exploits in softwares. These blind patches significantly reduce performance of some functions, and they are enabled by default system-wide. It is a questionable decision, but since Windows is seeding ground for all kinds of viruses, flash, acrobat and browser exploits, it's to some degree understandable.

But now comes the ridiculous parts: There's one system function, called GetPixel - which Microsoft stresses in their own documentation, you should never ever use, because it's slow as hell. This function is affected by one of these exploit preventions, making it further 10-100x slower. And guess what, Microsoft themselves use it in the Ribbon! Yes! That is right! The ribbon you can find for example in Windows explorer!

Furthermore, this function, and many others similarly affected are frequently used in some more complex, professional grade software, especially computer graphics softwares. But not only there; The fix to the issue was actually discovered by programmers who found that Tortoise Git runs several dozen times slower than how it did before FCU.

Alright, so with the explanation of the issue out of the way, here is how to fix it:

1, Hit start menu and type "Defender", it should bring up "Windows Defender settings" entry, so open it.

2, Another juicy part - if you use another AV software, like for example in my case - ESET, then you would naturally assume everything Defender related is disabled, and you would be wrong. If you use Defender, you will be brought to the Windows Defender Security Center straight away, but if you don't, you will end up on a Settings page saying that Windows Defender is not available because it's turned off. Click "Turn on Windows Defender Antivirus" - don't worry, your AV software will disable it again straight away.

3, Once you are in Windows Defender Security Center, Click App & browser control button

4, Scroll all the way down, to Exploit protection, and click Exploit protection settings text

5, Once on Exploit protection page, set Control flow guard (CFG) to OFF.

6, It will prompt you to restart your PC

7, After the restart, enjoy your smooth Windows experience again

8, Curse Microsoft for the rest of your life and be very skeptical about new feature updates.

Hope it helps! *Smile

:)

 

Unbearable lag after fall creators update

Hi Radney, thank you for your answer and pardon me if I'm late.

My current stable Windows is the 1703 version, build SO 15063.966

If I try to update to the Fall Creators, it becomes laggy and I need to revert back

 

Windows 10 Creators fall Update

First time I tried to get the Creators fall update I experienced errors. It wouldn't install and it made my pc run much slower and I had crashes. For a while I couldnt even turn on my pc it would be stuck at the loading screen. When I managed to turn on
pc Windows 10 creators fall update was reinstalling. This time it has been installed successfully but now my pc is soo much slower and soo laggy. I get 10fps on games where I would have around 200 fps constantly. I get gglitches sometimes and game crashes.
I even had problems writing this report how laggy it is now.

 

More security always means more load on system because it must stay between OS and program operations and system itself to be effective. Only way to stop malware is to interdict it before it makes problems or invade system, later on, after it does it's damage, it may be too late.

 

I did a clean install of Windows 10 Pro Fall Creators Update x64 on both my pc's the afternoon it was released.
With both my pc's havpng a ssd and my registry tweaks to speed things up, I haven't notice any performance issues.
The only thing I've noticed is FCU doesn't like some software, that previous versions of 10 had no issues with.
It doesn't like Sapphire TRiXX for my video card and it doesn't like OpenDNS Updater, so I uninstalled both and just check if both companies have a newer version. So far neither do.
I've also notice a weird issue were my wired Ethernet connection takes one minute in FCU to have a usable internet connection.
Thee registry tweaks I'm talking about are:
HKEY_CurentUser_ControlPanel_Desktop_MenuShowDelay (set to 1 for a ssd)
HKEY_CurrentUser_ControlPanel_Mouse_MouseHoverTime (Set to 1 for ssd)
Default for each setting is 400.

 

So, basically you are advocating giving up security for speed? Not something I would advise anyone to do and not something I think is wise. I have a similar system as yours and I have none of those problems. Just because you have issues does not automatically make it Microsoft's fault. There are a lot of other things that could cause similar problems.

 

As Einstein said, a little knowledge is dangerous, a lot is more !

 

The little benefit of added security (this particular exploit patch is targeted to very specific malware types) meant I was not able to use some of my software I used on daily basis to make living. 3ds Max for example would run at terrible framerates as long as I had scene explorer open, but I needed to have scene explorer open almost all the time, otherwise my productivity would drop significantly. It was really that bad.

For the first time in my life, since I started working, I realized how fragile my livelihood is. That all the software I need to create and finish projects is running on a single OS, which is becoming increasingly unstable and unreliable since W10 release, to the point it actually affected my ability to finish project, get paid for it, and pay my bills. This is no joke.

When you have some professional piece of software, you are usually able to get some professional support, eventual patch, or at least professional advice for a workaround. Do you know what I got when I tried to contact Microsoft support with this very specific problem? A guy, probably from India, who figured out my poor graphical performance is caused by too many files in Appdata\Local\Temp.... *really

Yes, it makes it Microsoft's fault because:

1, You probably can not spot the issues because you don't really care about system smoothness
2, You probably can not spot the issues because you don't use any computer graphics profession software
3, The issue only started to occur after Fall Creators Update
4, The issue ceased to exist after disabling a feature introduced in Fall Creators Update
5, Many of my friends working in similar field reported similar issues, most of which were fixed by disabling CFG.
6, The performance regression affects even Microsoft's own Ribbon inside Microsoft's own Explorer shipped with Microsoft's own Windows.

The proof here is undeniable. I am all for security, don't take me wrong. But 10-100x performance drop for widely used function is not justified, no matter how important the security fix is. It's simply a poor execution. This thread is mainly here fore people who will run into the same problems, and will be equally as desperate as I did.

 

The software has to support CFG and enable it. So I guess, you can also disable it with a parameter?
Windows explorer is the most exploited shell by malware, so it makes sense, that it is enabled there.

Control Flow Guard (Windows)

P.S.: You can disable it per software.

 

Yes, I found that out already myself. About explorer - when CFG is enabled, there's visible jerkiness/lagginess in maximize/minimize/restore animations as well as scrolling lag when browsing folders with large amount of pictures.

I do not believe that any security measure should make something as trivial as a file/folder explorer perform poorly on GTX1080Ti, i7 5930k and 48GB of RAM. It's truly incredible that in the year 2017, I have an incredibly powerful hardware I've invested so much money into, yet I have a Windows version that can not even do 2D window animations and browse pictures smoothly. The performance is worse than many years ago, when I get GeForce 6600 and I was running Windows Vista.

It's as if everyone here was suggesting that not being able to run 2D rasterized file explorer on high end hardware smoothly in a year 2017 due to the exploit patches is completely normal and adequate.

If I had to project a trajectory from this trend, then in a few years of time, when I have 32-Core 64-thread CPU, and GPU with the 4x performance of currently insanely powerful GTX1080Ti, 24FPS animation and realtime feedback in Windows will be unachievable luxury.

 

Indeed and not just that, after clean install I had to wait for 30 secs before I was able to use Windows, otherwise I got "Windows not responding". My tweaks fixed it, but something like that is just unacceptable. *Confused

 

When I follow your directions I get no "Click App & browser control button" Any suggestions?
Thaks
Rick

 

While it might not be the same, I had a similar problem when I wanted to first upgrade to Creators Update, I have a piece of software called Clip Studio Paint, which happens to work fairly good, except when I attempted to upgrade middle this year, the zoom operations were unbearable slow (while they were working good in AU). Celsys had to release an update, and that fixed the issue.

The point here is that, in CU they introduced a new driver model, and new ways to render fonts in the OS, which, of course, affected this software, because they were using a method of cleartype in the titlebar that was broken in CU (that made zoom operations laggy, as soon as you disabled the titlebar prior to the software update, all was good). It's supposed that Windows 10 was introducing new features to make it easier for users, not for the worse.

As I posted in a news thread, the real problem is that they are releasing upgrades way too fast, and it's clear Microsoft coders are unable to debug and test new features in 6 months, they simply can't, and has been demonstrated every time they release a feature upgrade, all of this feature upgrades come with bugs, problems or, in the worst cases, BSODs, crashes and system features rendered useless (Cortana, Start Menu, Cleartype, DirectX 11...)

If they released an upgrade once a year, that would give them enough time to test and debug possible bugs, as well as finally get rid of old bugs that they NEVER fix, because they are too busy adding new stuff you will probably never use in the near future, and of course, introducing new bugs. (I mean... is it normal the first account you create to setup windows come out corrupted out of the box, and that you need to create another one you you can get basic stuff like libraries and search function to work correctly?)

If they continue this trend, they will just break Windows... I mean... is it possible that is easier for a phone to upgrade to a major version of Android without bugs and issues than it is for a PC/Laptop/whatever? And yeah, I'm aware that Android is posibly simpler to maintain than Windows... that's why they need more time to test stuff and release, this 6 month thing is just insane. (and my reason I'm just skipping 1709 altogether...)

Just my two cents in the matter.

 

I'd do a clean install of FCU and see if you experience a improvement.
Also do check for updated drivers and software.
After all that I bet your problem goes away.
Every 6 month's is a new version of Windows 10 basically and things change and new features are given.
I personally do a clean install with every major update. I/E; Anniversory, Creators, Fall Creators, etc.
Steps I'd do it in after you download and save any newer drivers and software.
1. Clean install Windows after formatting and deleting the 4 partitions (if you have a newer pc with a UEFI).
2. Update Store app's and run Windows Update until no updates are found.
3. Install all your drivers, rebooting after each one.
4.Configure how you want Windows. I/E: Power Settings, Privacy Settings, etc.
5. Install and configure your software and games if you play them.
6. If you have a ssd, restart your pc without logging in 8 times. On the 8th restart log into Windows.
That speeds up your startup time a little bit.

 

I registered here just to say

THANK YOU!!!

As I always do, when a new version of Windows is released, I take the time to back up all my files and settings, format my OS drive and install Windows and all my programs cleanly. It gives me the chance to pare back to only my most essential programs, not installing ones I've not found useful in the preceding year.

After the Fall Creator's Update, I definitely noticed a significant hit in general UI performance. Some programs were effected more than others, but overall, it ranged from very frustrating to rendering some virtually unusable. My main 3D program had horrible UI lag, as did Photoshop. Just navigating around Windows was slow and choppy, windows took seconds to open, making file selections on the desktop took seconds to start drawing the selection box. Edge became unusable, typing lagged 3 to 4 seconds from what was being input. I'm running dual 10 core Xeons, 32 gigs of ram, a new GTX 1070 and SSDs, yet my system literally felt like a 10 year old laptop straining to run a version of Windows is was never designed to run.

It got so bad that I had decided to take time over the holidays to reinstall the previous version of Windows. I gave searching for a solution another try and came across this. One reboot and my system now seems fully back to normal.

I get the caution with respect to disabling a bit of malware protection, but it really was rendering my system almost unusable. And as I need to produce work on a daily basis, it was seriously impacting that work. I do have other malware protection in effect, so the slight increase in risk is hopefully offset, and even if not, living with the performance hit just wasn't feasible.

Thank you so much for posting this solution. Hopefully Microsoft finds an alternate way to address this vulnerability that doesn't entail such a horrific performance hit.