Windows 10: Why has Windows 10 slowed my computer so much?

So you do have a lot going on in the background. Try shutting down some stuff, it's obviously having an impact on performance of your system.

 

MoxieMomma: I will try the mbam reinstall.

CountMike: I'm surprised to hear you say I have a lot going on in the background. I thought I had my startup items paired down pretty good. At this point I'm, actually more concerned about performance after desktop has loaded.

I "think" I've noticed a difference since changing my resolution back to the recommended (1024 x 768. I had changed it from that to 1280 x 1024 because after upgrade everything appeared so large and increasing the resolution helped that. However, then it made my photos and such a bit distorted; things stretched too wide. After upgrade I ended up with Microsoft Basic Display Adapter. Before it was a Nvidia GeForce so I don't know if that's an issue or not. A short time ago I changed resolution back to the 1024 x 768 and performance has improved. Maybe that is just a coincidence, but all the same it has definitely improved.

I appreciate all the help and response I've had.

 

What are your memory and CPU loads at idle and what when using your usual programs ?

 

Readings are all over the place, but mostly pretty darned high -- like right now it's jumping between 70's and as high as 90. Right after I first restarted it was in the teen's to 25.

I found a link, on this forum, where a couple of people tried a registry fix and said it worked perfectly. Could you take a look at it and see what you think. i don't care about Cortana, removed it from my start menu. I read that it can't actually be shut down though.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TimeBroker
Look for the Start entry and change its value from dword:00000003 to dword:00000004 (simply replace the 3 at the end of the value with 4).
Changing this value could have an impact on Cortana’s performance, but it appears to be closely connected to the high CPU usage in Windows 10. In case you’re not using Cortana at all, you’re on the good side. Otherwise, setting reminders won’t work.

 

I guess everyone gave up on me in this thread. I really would like to know about that fix to the register to speed things up because I've found several who said this worked a miracle on their machines.

 

Hello and yes that is definitely an issue, this means you don't have a correct graphic card driver installed. The resolution you mentioned, plus the display issues you described also do not sound right, and this is a result of incorrect graphic drivers.

I had the same issue as you and in my particular case, making sure all Windows 10 updates were installed fixed it completely and instantly. For some reason, after updating from Windows 7 to Windows 10, Windows 10 did not automatically update at first despite having automatic updates enabled. This happened again on the fresh install I did yesterday. This means you need to manually get it to update, if this also happened to you. Simply hit the Start button on your keyboard and type Windows Update, it should show up as Look for Updates or something similar in the search list. Click on it and click Look for Updates (I don't have an English version of Windows, but I'm sure you get the idea!). This has the added bonus that Windows update should automatically install the correct graphic drivers for you!

Make sure to reboot your PC when Windows tells you to, and after the reboot check again if there's any more updates left to be installed.

If running Windows 10 updates does not update your graphic card drivers (if it is still not listed as Nvidia Geforce), you need to visit this site: Drivers | GeForce On the bottom of this page is a Detect Your GPU and Operating System. With luck, this will work for you. If it cannot find any drivers, you will need to find out exactly what Geforce card you have so we can find you the correct drivers.

Don't mess around with the registry just yet, though sure you can try that registry fix if you're not using Cortana anyways. But if you don't have GPU drivers, it sounds to me that you may have more driver issues which is more than likely the cause for your sluggish PC.

 

Actually, I found a fix for my display situation. A little program called Windows 10_DPI_FIX.exe performed a miracle on my machine. I was told that Nvidia only supports GeForce through Windows 7. I imagine that is why, when I upgraded to 10, that Microsoft Basic Display Adapter was used. I ran the Update Driver on that and it said no better driver was found. But I am going to go to that page you suggested and use that Detect Your GPU. Thanks for that.

Now what's happening is just slow, slow, slow. I'm thinking about having a tech person access my computer remotely and check things out for me. It's getting worse, especially when I'm in browser (Chrome). I don't know if it's Chrome or my computer or what.

Thanks for all this wonderful information.

 

Don't think you've said which GeForce graphics you have. On my Win 10 system I'm running with a Geforce GT430 card, the driver is provided by Nvidia, version 10.18.13.5382, dated 07/08/2015. Working fine.

As far as I recall it was installed automatically, I don't have the installation file(s) in my Installs folder.

I'd certainly be looking at finding the latest driver for your graphics card.

 

I'm trying to do that on the page you directed me to. It keeps telling me Java is required. I installed Java and it's still telling me Java is required.

I just went into the GeForce forum and asked why I keep getting the message that Java is required when I've already installed it.

 

Hello,

For science, I'm really curious to know if your Windows was indeed fully updated? I'm happy to hear you found something that at least alleviates your problems.

Abandon the Nvidia Geforce quest until you finish reading my post. You don't have a nvidia, if your laptop is the Toshiba.

I'm going to assume we're talking about your Toshiba laptop that you have in your Profile on this site. If this is the case, your laptop does not have a geforce graphic card, but Intel HD Graphics 4000. That does not change the problem though - you have no drivers for your graphic card, and by extention it seems reasonable to assume more missing drivers, and the chance is about 95% that this is the cause of your sluggish computer.

A driver is a piece of software that makes your hardware run correctly. Without drivers or without the correct ones, your hardware is either not working or it's working at 20% efficiency. In your graphic cards case, this is why your display looks so big and the images stretchy: your pc does not know how to handle your graphics because the drivers are missing. The resolution this particular laptop should be running is 1600x900, instead, you're messing around with 1024x768 simply because your computer does not know how to handle the graphics without the driver. Now imagine what effects drivers missing for other parts of your computer would have, and it's easy to understand how your computer is getting bogged down. I hope with this you understand better the importance of ensuring you have the latest, correct drivers. Before trying any other fix, whenever there are computer issues, it is important to always check the drivers. They're often the culprit.

Thankfully companies like Toshiba try to make your life easy when it comes to updating drivers of your laptop. I have had pretty bad experiences in this department, but hopefully you'll have more luck. Unfortunately I cannot try and/or test it for you (as I have no Toshiba), but according to some googles, on your computer should be Toshiba specific software called Toshiba Service Station. This software is supposedly used to easily update the drivers of your Toshiba Satellite P875-S7200. If you cannot find this on your computer, see this page for drivers for your laptop: Satellite P875-S7200 Support | Toshiba Click Drivers and Updates and you will see a list of software. What you want here is the Toshiba Service Station and, if I were you, I'd also install the two Intel links. While normally nothing goes wrong while installing drivers - honestly, it is a very easy process - it is always wise to make a new System Restore Point and/or some backups before, just in case. I never had any issue updating any drivers in the past 20 years that I've been messing around with computers, yet I still always make backup and restore points. Please note that this link is only good for the Toshiba Satellite P875-S7200.

Alternatively, if this Toshiba software is inadequate, as I fully expect it to be (never call me a pessimist!), you can install drivers for your graphic card that is in this Toshiba here: Download Intel® Graphics Driver for Windows® 10 and Windows 7*/8.1* [15.33]

At least that should fix your resolution to be less headache-inducing, if nothing else. You can also try this, seeing as your laptop has a lot of Intel stuff:

Drivers & Software and click the Automatically Detect button.


If the problem is occuring on a different computer, tell me what the specs are or what computer model it is, and I will try to find out what you would need for that.

If you are unhappy with Windows 10 and your issues are not getting resolved, you can always revert back to Windows 7. There's an option for this in Windows 10 - as long as it is within the first 2 months of you upgrading to Windows 10, reverting is possible. If your hardware has no support for Windows 10 (it should though) or if you'r simply sick and tired of it, this could be an option (as it was for me).

In short, not wanting to sound rude, but your IT guy messed up. *Sad If he really had checked your computer it would have been painfully obvious that some things are missing. Sorry for the long post but I really want to help you!

 

Hello,

no worries about the confusion on your pcs. I'll get back to you later, visiters coming soon. Just letting you know I did not abandon you.

On a sidenote, did you check the windows update? because that should automatically install everything you need. Nvidia of course does support windows 10, but from my initial lookup it seems your particular card may not be supported for Windows 10. I'll get back to you with details

 

Hello,

no worries about the confusion on your pcs.

I have bad news for you. While Nvidia does support Windows 10, your particular card is not equipped to deal with the new software that Windows 10 is using. For this reason, Nvidia cannot bring out drivers for Windows 10 for your card. Your card, in short, is too old for Windows 10. Trust me, I feel your pain, I had the exact same thing happen to me (even though the update was offered to me too - I guess it would be an enormous task for Microsoft to exclude the many older hardware that would be unable to run Windows 10 optimally).

There is a workaround for your card - however, it is not the easiest thing to do, it is timeconsuming and the display will, although better, still not be what you were used to, and I doubt it will fix the sluggish issues you're having with your pc. Your PC was released about 8-10 years ago, if my Google is correct, and your hardware, while not the worst I've seen, simply seems to be unable to handle Windows 10's more modern environment. The drivers I have been able to find on the Dell site (Product Support | Dell US) are from 2008, so it is highly unlikely that even if you install the newest ones available, that it will fix anything as they are still 8 years old.

If you really insist on trying to fix it, I would recommend installing whatever Dell tells you to install on that site. Like I said, There IS a workaround for your graphic issues (that I would personally never be OK with dealing with), but again, your Dell PC will simply never run optimally with Windows 10. As a result, I suggest you revert back to Windows 7 and maybe on the longer term invest in a newer model. I'm truly sorry I could not be of better help.

 

You have been a great help and I very much appreciate it.

I'm wondering about something. When upgrading to this Windows 10, it changed my display adapter to that Microsoft Basic. If I go back to Windows 7, will I get my old GeForce display adapter back?

If I go back to Windows 7, will my Windows Live Mail accounts still sync like they do now?

I gotta' tell you that in view of what you have told me here, this old computer isn't running that badly ... all things considered.

It ran like a new computer when I had Windows 7 on it and it kinda' scares me that if I roll back now, that will have been messed up through this process. I'm thinking it might be better to leave well enough alone for now. I've always got my laptop if i want something that's faster. I'm talking to myself here, trying to decide what to do.

Complain though I may about its performance since Windows 10, this is too good a computer to discard.