Windows 10: Mysterious System Slowdown

I'm posting this on behalf of my old friend and colleague, Herb Martin, who used to teach Windows NT desktop and server curriculum at his company LearnQuick.com back in the day when I was first getting into that same area (which puts it around 1994-1995). He still works with Windows every day, but primarily on the Server side of things. He's having some mysterious performance issues best described as "chronic and persistent system lag/slow response" on an HP Envy laptop with a Haswell i5, 4 GB RAM, and a 500 GB conventional HD. He's looking for ideas on things to check and look out for to try to improve system performance.

In checking Task Manager, Process Explorer, and even Resource Monitor, he's not seeing any obvious standouts that could be sucking up large amounts of resources. That said, he is likely to have half-a-dozen applications open at the same time, including two different Web browsers, each with 10 or more open tabs, plus a development platform, a code editor (like NotePad++), and one or two other tools.

He's inclined to think that context switching among the many open processes is involved in this lag, but neither he nor I know of any effective ways to get a handle on that through performance monitoring. My only thought is to keep an eye on paging activity and working set size, both of which much surely be stressed in this kind of computing situation. I also told him to keep an eye on Reliability Monitor and Event Viewer since these two facilities are particularly able and informative when it comes to catching and diagnosing hardware-related issues.

All this said, here's my appeal to the community: what else would you folks suggest that Herb do to try to speed things up? He's already planning to buy a new and presumably more capable laptop later this year, so he doesn't want to buy an SSD or add more memory to sink older, more expensive parts into an older machine, just to turn around and spend more money on that new laptop shortly thereafter.

All suggestions, ideas, and advice welcome. Thanks!
--Ed--

:)

 

System slowdown...

Hi William,

The issue you are experiencing may have been caused by corrupted system files or due to a software conflict.

To improve PC performance in Windows 10, you can refer to the steps provided in this
article.

Should you need further assistance, feel free to get back to us.

 

System slowdown...

Hi . I am writing Same steps to bhoot your pc

1. Go opaque
Windows 10's new Start menu is sexy and see-through, but that transparency will cost you some (slight) resources. To reclaim those resources,
you can disable transparency in the Start menu, taskbar, and action center: Open the Settingsmenu and go to Personalization > Colorsand toggle off Make Start, taskbar, and action center transparent.


Photo
by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET 2. No special effects
Making the Start menu, taskbar, and action center transparent is one thing, but Windows 10 still has a lot of other snazzy, built-in special effects. To really go bare-bones on the special effects, right-click theStart button and click System.


Photo
by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
Click Advanced system settings to open the System Properties menu. On theAdvanced tab under Performance, clickSettings...


Photo
by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
This will open the Performance Options menu. In the Visual Effects tab, either choose Adjust for best performance to turn off all unnecessary animations and special effects, or choose Custom: and deselect the visual
effects you think can live without. When you're finished, click OKto apply your changes.

3. Disable Startup programs
If your PC is taking a long time to boot up -- and you've enabled Fast Startup and everything -- you may have too many programs
starting up when you turn your computer on. To fix this, right-click on theStart button and click Task Manager. Click the Startup tab (click More details if you don't see the Startup tab) and peruse the list
of programs that start up with your computer. If you see a program that doesn't need to be there, right-click it and click Disable. You can also arrange the list of programs by Startup impact, if you'd like to see the programs that
are taking up the most resources (and time).


Photo
by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET 4. Find (and fix) the problem
Windows 10 has a built-in performance troubleshooter that can help you find and fix any problems that might be affecting your PC's speed. To open the troubleshooter, right-click on the Startbutton and click Control Panel. UnderSecurity
and Maintenance at the top, clickTroubleshoot common computer problems. Next, under System and Security, click Run maintenance tasks.


Photo
by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET 5. Reduce the Boot Menu Time-out
When your computer starts up, the boot menu is displayed for a certain amount of time before the operating system loads. This gives you time to do things like start Windows in Safe Mode. You can shave a few seconds off your startup time by changing the boot
menu time-out, which is set to 30 seconds by default.


Photo
by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
To do this, right-click on the Start button and click Control Panel. Go to System > Advanced system settings, and, underStartup and Recovery, click Settings.


Photo
by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
Next to Time to display list of operating systems:, change the value from 30 seconds to 10 seconds and click OK.

6. No tipping
In an effort to be helpful, Windows 10 will sometimes give you tips on how to get the most out of the OS. It scans your computer in order to do this, a process that can have a slight impact on performance. To turn off these tips, go to Start > Settings
> System > Notifications & actions and toggle offGet tips, tricks and suggestions as you use Windows.


Photo
by Matt Elliott 7. Run Disk Cleanup
This one's a win-win. It'll improve performance and free up space on your hard drive. Disk Cleanup has been around forever, but this trusted Windows utility can still help clean out the temporary files, installers and other junk littering your hard drive.
To run it, just search for Disk Cleanup, run it and click the button labeledClean up system files.



8. Eradicate bloatware
If your PC came with preinstalled apps you don't want or need, get rid of them. Same goes for any apps you installed that you later found to be of little or no use. Right-click the Start menu, choose Control Panel and
under the Programs header, click Uninstall a program. Peruse the list from time to time and select the programs you no longer need and click Uninstall at the top of the list.



9. Power plan
Make sure you aren't using a Power saver plan if you don't need to. Even desktops will sometimes feature a power-saver option, which doesn't do you any good unless you are trying to conserve battery life. Open the Control Panel and go toHardware
and Sound > Power Options to see which power plan you are currently using. For better performance, make sure you are using a High Performance orBalanced plan (or a plan from the PC manufacturer that says it's balanced).

Home this helps

 

No solution to recommend, Ed, but I wonder - has he had updates of OS/BIOS/Firmware relevant to the security vulnerabilities identified over last few months (a la “speculative execution side-channel attacks”/Spectre/Meltdown)? I recall many people were concerned about performance degradation as a result of some fixes being issued. Not sure how widespread it is that people are seeing any performance downside to these patches.

 

Hi,With only 4 Gb of RAM and a spinning disk (I guess 5400 rmp) and a lot of workload, your friend can't expect much performance on this configuration.
As you already know, the disk is the primary bottleneck. and I suggest he do some disk health checking.
If the disk health is good, then he should check if the Superfetch service is enabled.
If the Superfetch is enabled, then he could try to repair the prefetcher mechanism by running this command: xbootmgr -trace boot -prepSystem -verboseReadyBoot

this reboots Windows several times, does a defrag and trains the prefetcher again. It can take several minutes. So patience is needed *Wink

 

Hi,
Asus has had issues with haswell with the microcode mess has he update it lately ?

 

See if these show any issues:

Download PoolMonX - MajorGeeks

Download SysInternals RAMMap - MajorGeeks

Then there's safe mode boot to see if the issue remains.

Force a full shutdown:

Shut Down Computer in Windows 10 Windows 10 Tutorials

Disable Automatic Folder Type Discovery:

Option 3/3 here and in Option 2 (Libraries) set all to General.

Change Folder Template in Windows 10 Windows 10 Tutorials

Have a read: Optimize Performance of Windows 10 Windows 10 Tutorials

Run MemHistory Tool for a day or so and output log to .csv and check results:

Memory History Tool Official Site | Lat-Ton Software Company

Run Essential Net Tools for a day or so with logging enabled and check log to see what has been connecting.

Network Scanning, Security, and Administrator Tools - Essential NetTools

Check all installed software for updates. Check for any software that installed a shell extension and update if updates are found. When updating make sure that software is not running.

Run a disk check: chkdsk /f /r

 

Thanks for all the great suggestions @ThrashZone, @zinou, and @Word Man. I'm not disinclined to suspect slowdowns from the Spectre v2 patch -- if he's applied it -- owing to the age of the machine. I'm leaning toward telling him to put a gimlet eye on the pagefile and working set sizes, too. Methinks he's asking the machine to do more than it can gracefully handle, especially given an older 5400 RPM spinner as the main (and only) drive.
Thanks again,
--Ed--

 

Hi,
Yeah the Intel patch was released and withdrawn fairly quickly but you never know how paranoid people are in jumping on releases *Smile

I was thinking also add an ssd for goodness sakes I didn't think anyone installs os's on hdd's anymore :/
10 is such a clean install os with these large build updates it's almost automatic to reinstall at some point *Smile

 

Agree about SSD. IT pro and his main work tool ... This is capable machine, but with SSD and another 4 GB stick.

Also check, if there is any unknown drive or CPU activity, but you are aware of this, I'm sure. Coin mining in browser is awful *Sad and you never know it, if not checking for it.

 

Hi,
Yeah this is a good one you probably already know about if now well worth using
Protecting yourself from In-Browser Miners Solved - Windows 10 Forums

 

First off, you've presented us with the old "locked-room" mystery.

"Herb" doesn't want to do either of the two most necessary solutions for more speed; he doesn't want to spend the money for an SSD drive and/or more RAM, so to my mind, there's absolutely no solution to his problem.

The only "solution" I see is that he speed up his purchase of the new laptop.

 

Maybe it would be a good idea for Herb to Join TF so the gurus could ask him questions directly ?

 

Thanks again for everyone's suggestions. I'm going to email Herb a link to this thread, after reading which he can decide if he wants to surface here on TF or not. Thanks also for confirming my overall diagnosis, which basically boils down to "trying to cram 10 lbs of something into a 5-lb sack!"
Best wishes,
--Ed--

 

Hi,
Yeah I believe 10 just slows down after a while too many inplace builds 1607/ 1703/ 1709 and now 1803 so if he hasn't clean installed in a while that would be the first thing I'd try.
SSD would be 2nd *Smile