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Geek Culture / Windows go-slow - any links to the solution?

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BatVink
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Posted: 1st Sep 2014 20:02
I have searched for hours on the internet for this issue and read 100 or more pages, none of which have given me the answer. Maybe, just maybe, somebody here has the solution...

I'm running Windows 7 on an i5 2500 @ 3.3Ghz.
4GB RAM (2x2GB paired Corsair)
1TB SATA drive with 3 partitions
AMD 7750 Graphics card, 2GB dedicated DDR5 memory

For the last 3 months or so:
On startup, most of the time it takes at least 5 minutes before I can type anything. In this time the keyboard responds but at about 1 character every 10 seconds. My keystrokes get buffered and arrive eventually. This is Chrome, Notepad, everything. This can also happen periodically when the machine has been on for hours.

The Windows start menu is slow. I can click on options 3 or 4 times before they register as a click.

Programs can take 2 minutes to start fully. Others can start as expected in a few seconds.

Right-clicking in Windows explorer can take 10 to 15 seconds to respond.

USB devices can take 30 seconds to register.

While getting the info for this, the Computer properties screen took about 30 seconds to display properly. Id I do it a second time, it takes 5 seconds.

While all of this is happening, System Idle can be at 96-99%, mostly on 99%.

I've replaced antivirus (switched between Windows Defender and AVG)
Graphics card has been replaced (not because of this issue)
Hard drive defragged
2x Memory tests run (Windows and MemTest86+), no problems reported
Startup programs disabled
Services disabled
CCleaner run
Temp files deleted
Registry cleaned

Help!

Phaelax
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Posted: 1st Sep 2014 20:09
Does this happen if you boot from safe mode?

BatVink
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Posted: 1st Sep 2014 23:01
Thanks for the reminder, I'll do that again after my current FDISK (which was never really designed for a terrabyte of data!)

First Safe boot hung after AVGIDSHX, but daftly the onscreen progress only tells you what it last succeeded with, not what it is currently failing on. Next safe boot will be with logging to see what happens.

MrValentine
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Posted: 1st Sep 2014 23:06
What anti-virus system are you using?

BatVink
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Posted: 1st Sep 2014 23:25
It's currently AVG (no email scanning or web-safe add-ons etc), though I have the same problem with Windows Defender and Avast. I have the same programs running elsewhere without experiencing the same problem.

MrValentine
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Posted: 1st Sep 2014 23:40
Check your start up apps, and services lists

ensure:

Windows Font Cache Service
Superfetch

Are running in Automatic Start [With NO DELAY]

Maybe Disable Volume Shadow Copy if you are not using the internal Backup features, maybe set it to manual start...

Try enabling Thread Ordering Server in case it may help...

Superfetch will not have any benefit if you shut down your system many times a day... [My system is up for days on end ]

Disable Secondary Log-On if only you use it

Perform Disk Defrag and Clean-Up... ensure their automatic runs are enabled...

Disable Windows Search if you don't use it...

And generally read through your services list to make sure silly things like FAX services are not running

Something might be indexing things on your system so check Task Manager for whatever is using up CPU time...

GL!

Green Gandalf
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Posted: 2nd Sep 2014 00:49
Overheating? Is the fan running at full blast or, worse, has the fan failed?



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MrValentine
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Posted: 2nd Sep 2014 01:48
Dead Mobo north bridge?

{Irish Accent} Have you checked your BIOS?

Run a memtest... from your BIOS if it has the option... Windows Install Disk has it as well...

James H
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Posted: 2nd Sep 2014 17:40
Heating issue seems plausible if all else is failing - had a similar"ish" issue where I got random slowdowns for various periods of time though startup was not affected until after a certain point. All started after I installed BF4 update in july. Game started to struggle after this update with cpu spikes all over the place, then came the go-slows and occasional temporary freezing of random apps, so I OC`d my cpu. Immediatly experienced more frequent slow downs and occasional crashing - it wasnt the OC as Ive had it Oc`d in past with complete stability and at a higher frequency. Obviously I`m not suggesting its the game! Problem is my cpu is old now, I was unsure of myself so went back to regular clock and voltage, things went back to just the slow downs and though they werent as frequent as when Oc`d they were more frequent than previous standard clock setting! So I took a look at the thermal paste or whatever its called on my cpu, it crumbled away like dust! Had no paste to replace or money for that matter so checked 2 other heatsinks on the mobo to see what they were like, one seemed fine, the other(northbridge I think) was a bit dodgy though, so opened my old gfx card and stole the paste from that and stuck it on my cpu and a bit on the other chip(the one I think is northbridge), put everything back together. Hasnt done a go-slow since, overclocked it again and once again stable and smooth. Have put clock back since as it makes no difference to BF4(they need to fix their game pronto) and I am not gonna risk it with that dodgy thermal paste trick coupled with old hardware..I dont play bf4 now(bf3 is smooth on high settings) and as everything else runs just fine I doubt I will OC again as the cpu is old - as is everything else in my machine. I think whats been happening is overtime the thermal paste has become ineffective. And the relevance of this to you? Ok so your hardware isnt old but only reason I mention this is the nature of the slow downs being similar and its not unheard of for a simple reseating of the heatsink to fix issues.
BatVink
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Posted: 2nd Sep 2014 17:56
I've gone through and checked out all of the above suggestions, thank you all. Everything seems to be in order

Heating doesn't seem to be an issue. While running an intensive memory test (memtest86+) and the Windows Memtest, the temperature remained stable. It's also stable while playing games like Far Cry 3.

One thing I found while looking at services was one that crept in - Ashampoo Defrag. I hadn't spotted this before, so I've removed it.

CHKDSK also returned very little, although there was a minor volume correction made.

I'll keep you posted

Clonkex
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Posted: 4th Sep 2014 04:16
My very first thought is how full is your hard drive? Particularly since it's an SSD. Stuff running very slowly like that is very frequently caused by a full hard drive (within 25GB of being totally full, for a normal HDD, and about 20-100GB for an SSD depending on its total size).

mr Handy
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Posted: 4th Sep 2014 06:21 Edited at: 4th Sep 2014 06:26
Looks like a normal behaviour of Windows systems. Only fresh installed Windows works like Linux always works.

Try to trace system updates!

Quote: "This can also happen periodically when the machine has been on for hours."

a) clean dust, renew thermal grease! very like it is the reason.
b) any software sheduled tasks? defrag, antivir, backup, update...

I'd say long boot and random slowdowns are 2 different issues.

BatVink
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Posted: 4th Sep 2014 11:51 Edited at: 4th Sep 2014 11:51
Quote: "I'd say long boot and random slowdowns are 2 different issues"


Yes, I've managed to speed up the boot time significantly, getting rid of lots of rubbish from startup.

I may have found the culprit. I have been running Process Explorer and I found this at the time of a freeze:



I'm going to reduce the number of indexed folders to see if it helps, I can't remove them all.

I've also spotted that when playing games my keyboard and mouse - both USB - sometimes stop working for a few seconds. I may try to reinstall the USB ports.

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Libervurto
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Posted: 4th Sep 2014 12:48 Edited at: 4th Sep 2014 12:57
Quote: "Looks like a normal behaviour of Windows systems. Only fresh installed Windows works like Linux always works."

This is true, and I'm convinced a major reason for that is the way windows handles (or rather, doesn't handle) software updates. Every program has its own daemon and this quickly clogs up memory. Is there some software you could install to manage these leeching programs more efficiently? It would be great to have a central server database that keeps track of all these software versions and then your client checks against the database every so often and downloads what it needs. That is sort of how LiGNUx does it but I wouldn't think it was too hard to mimic for Windows. Also, staggering the start up programs should help.

Is there a program like ureadahead for Windows? It preloads data for booting the OS to make booting faster. (Or something like that, I don't know the specifics.)

Formerly OBese87.
MrValentine
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Posted: 4th Sep 2014 14:04
Quote: " It would be great to have a central server database that keeps track of all these software versions and then your client checks against the database every so often and downloads what it needs."


Windows 8 Apps

Phaelax
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Posted: 4th Sep 2014 15:31
Quote: "Looks like a normal behaviour of Windows systems. Only fresh installed Windows works"

Nonsense. Reinstall should be a last resort. People that either don't know what they're doing or when the time it takes to reimage outweighs the cost of actually fixing it. If you do the latter at work, just make sure your company actually has an image to use (don't ask)

Quote: "I'd say long boot and random slowdowns are 2 different issues."

I'd agree with this as well for the most part. But a single app could be causing the startup issues and the later issues.

mr Handy
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Posted: 4th Sep 2014 16:22
Phaelax

I have not adviced to reinstall the system. Just for comparison, WinXP SP 1 with user installed SP2 and SP3 boots much longer than latest build of WinXP with preinstalled SP3.

BatVink

Oh, so I was right with the b)
But a) helped me a lot despite there was a small amount of dust.

Quote: "both USB - sometimes stop working for a few seconds"

May not be the drivers but hardware (motherboard), hope not. Try Linux/Ubuntu live cd, if the problem will remain - hardware 100%.

Phaelax
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Posted: 4th Sep 2014 16:23
Quote: "WinXP SP 1 with user installed SP2 and SP3 boots much longer than latest build of WinXP with preinstalled SP3."

I've never done that comparison. But was that tested with a fresh install, or SP3 installed later on an already running system?

mr Handy
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Posted: 4th Sep 2014 16:59
The fact: windows update kills perfomance on XP.

The Zoq2
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Posted: 4th Sep 2014 17:22
Quote: "This is true, and I'm convinced a major reason for that is the way windows handles (or rather, doesn't handle) software updates. Every program has its own daemon and this quickly clogs up memory. Is there some software you could install to manage these leeching programs more efficiently? It would be great to have a central server database that keeps track of all these software versions and then your client checks against the database every so often and downloads what it needs. That is sort of how LiGNUx does it but I wouldn't think it was too hard to mimic for Windows."


Quote: "Windows 8 Apps "


I guess that's the advantage of apps... But how free are the apps to what they want? If im not misstaken, you can only install metro apps from the windows store which have all kinds of limitations on them.

And having a central database that keeps track of stuff would only work as long as developers use it which might be hard. Look at the appup store for example, it never got any attention and died out. On windows, it's much easier to just find a setup file online and use it.

One sollution to the problem with autostarts slowing down the boot would simply be to make programs check for updates when they are used instead of at boot. There is no need to update java or adobe reader until you actually want to run the program?

Say ONE stupid thing and it ends up as a forum signature forever. - Neuro Fuzzy
BatVink
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Posted: 5th Sep 2014 12:45
Things have calmed down immensely.
What has improved things the most (inspired by Mr Valentine's comments, thanks) is reducing the Windows Search indexing. The hard drive light gets a break every now and then!

The biggie was probably a directory containing thousands of java source files, all zipped up. Decompressing and scanning those files will have been a momentous task. I also have about 5 Gigabytes of DB, DBPro and AppGameKit projects zipped up that I don't need to index.

MrValentine
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Posted: 5th Sep 2014 14:21
Good to hear, and thanks in return



Clonkex
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Posted: 6th Sep 2014 04:00
Quote: "Is there a program like ureadahead for Windows? It preloads data for booting the OS to make booting faster. (Or something like that, I don't know the specifics.)"


It's called Superfetch and is a built-in part of Windows.

Quote: "The biggie was probably a directory containing thousands of java source files, all zipped up. Decompressing and scanning those files will have been a momentous task. I also have about 5 Gigabytes of DB, DBPro and AppGameKit projects zipped up that I don't need to index."


Unless you frequently use the Windows search function, you can actually just turn of the search indexer. The search box will still work, but more slowly. And if you still want to search for stuff, I highly recommend you install Everything. I mean the program called "Everything". It's a spectacularly fast search program.

I don't disable the entire indexer, though, because I use the start menu search frequently and want it indexed, so I just set it to only index the start folder.

Phaelax
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Posted: 8th Sep 2014 03:41
I keep that service disabled and searching still works plenty fast enough for me.

Green Gandalf
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Posted: 8th Sep 2014 21:57
Interesting discussion.

Quote: "so I just set it to only index the start folder."


Hoe do you do that?



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BatVink
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Posted: 8th Sep 2014 23:00
Quote: "How do you do that?"


Control Panel | Indexing Options | Modify


That's where I found my overload of files being indexed, I removed anything that I don't search for regularly.

Green Gandalf
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Posted: 9th Sep 2014 01:53
Thanks.



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Clonkex
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Posted: 9th Sep 2014 04:06
Green Gandalf
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Posted: 11th Sep 2014 16:48
Quote: "Quote: "Control Panel | Indexing Options | Modify"

Exactly."


When I try that all I see is a couple of greyed out buttons and the header "indexing is not running". Since I'm not aware of any problems should I be concerned?



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BatVink
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Posted: 11th Sep 2014 16:54
On a positive note, it means that Indexing isn't consuming any of your valuable processing power because it's disabled.

On the down side, it means you can't improve performance by finetuning it.

Quote: "Since I'm not aware of any problems should I be concerned?"

Nothing to be concerned about, it can be legitimately switched off.

Clonkex
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Posted: 11th Sep 2014 17:06
Quote: "When I try that all I see is a couple of greyed out buttons and the header "indexing is not running". Since I'm not aware of any problems should I be concerned?"


Nah, just means it's turned off. Absolutely fine, unless you want faster searches (but IMO it doesn't do an awful lot for speed anyway).

Green Gandalf
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Posted: 11th Sep 2014 23:06
Quote: "(but IMO it doesn't do an awful lot for speed anyway)."


That's my experience too. I haven't noticed any significant delay without it. Perhaps it's redundant on modern systems?



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Clonkex
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Posted: 12th Sep 2014 04:53
Quote: "Perhaps it's redundant on modern systems?"


It can make the searches faster if you're using a slower (<7200rpm) HDD or the drive is totally clogged up, but in general (and particularly if you've got an SSD) it really doesn't help much. Everything, on the other hand, is a lightning-fast search engine and its super-fast indexing really is necessary.

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