Post #438,307
2/1/21 10:39:58 PM
2/1/21 10:39:58 PM
|
High disk usage on Win 10, suggestions needed
This is an old laptop that originally had W7. It was upgraded to W10 32-bit before I got it.
It was always slow. Task manager showed disk frequently pinned, but no process showed more than 3-4%. (Usually top users of disk and memory were Windows Defender and System.) It only had 2GB ram, so I assumed it was just constantly swapping.
I upgraded to W10 64-bit and bumped it up to 8GB. It's still showing the same behavior.
The one app I need it for is a cycling app that shows videos while controlling a smart bike trainer. It keeps freezing unless I turn off the videos. There's not a separate video card, and W10 no longer allows you to reserve video memory.
The only thing I keep seeing is anti-virus/Defender constantly using >40% memory, even after the upgrade. Is there any way to make it less aggressive? Or anything else to look at to improve video performance?
|
Post #438,310
2/1/21 11:07:07 PM
2/1/21 11:07:07 PM
|
firefox is a disk hog, other than that reboots seemed to help me
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
|
Post #438,311
2/2/21 12:49:45 AM
2/2/21 12:49:45 AM
|
It may just need to do its thing once.
Those things run a lot just after bootup. If you've got a slow CPU, they may need to run a really long time.
(I'm not sure the Task Manager is accurate for some of MS's stuff - it seems like they hide AV and similar activity so that users don't get upset by how much of their system is being eated by perpetual virus checks. I may be wrong though.)
Can you leave it running overnight or over a few days and see if it settles down? They might need to check everything once before being more sensible via incremental checks in the future.
I typically turn off all the fancy Windows visual stuff except for ClearType.
Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Advanced system settings -> Advanced Tab
Performance Settings button...
Custom radio button
Everything unchecked except "smooth the edges of screen fonts"
Ok.
Installing a SATA SSD and using that as the boot disk will help with the slow disk activity too, of course. You should be able to clone your HD to a SATA SSD without Windows activation issues.
HTH a little. Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
|
Post #438,312
2/2/21 3:43:55 AM
2/2/21 3:43:55 AM
|
Task Manager is fine, and better than it was (visually, at least)
I've compared what it says with SysInternals Process Explorer, and the two concur.
Come on, Scott. "Hiding AV and similar activity"? "Perpetual virus checks"? Let's not be silly :D
The bottom line is that modern operating systems really show up the performance advantage of SSDs, which is fast random access to lots of small files, which is what OSes do a lot of.
Nothing in the "performance" tab you mention will make anything other than absolutely marginal difference. I do turn off Windows' animations, for aesthetic reasons - it's in Ease of Access.
macOS runs like shit if the system volume is on a rotating disk, too.
|
Post #438,317
2/2/21 12:55:27 PM
2/2/21 12:55:27 PM
|
Yeah, I know...
It doesn't make much sense, but I've seen similar things to Drook on occasion.
Ungodly slow (with a SATA SSD), Task Manager shows a bunch of things running, but none more than a few percent each. It was that way especially when there have been a mountain of updates to do (e.g. going from Win7 Pro to Win10 E and updating to 1909 or whatever).
Eventually, it settled down, but getting there was painful.
Drook - are you running any other AV besides MS? We have McAfee (Intel) at work and it usually breaks when MS has a "Feature Update". Partially uninstalled AV things can seemingly cause wonky behavior as well (but the machines discussed above didn't have anything but MS AV).
Good luck.
Cheers,
Scott.
|
Post #438,319
2/2/21 3:41:47 PM
2/2/21 3:41:47 PM
|
I haven't installed anything that wasn't in the default image
|
Post #438,337
2/3/21 5:16:36 PM
2/3/21 5:16:36 PM
|
SSD and external enclosure arrived this afternoon, cloning underway
At current rate it looks like I won't be swapping it out until after dinner, which means I won't be trying the cycling app until after 9. I hate waiting.
|
Post #438,338
2/3/21 11:32:23 PM
2/3/21 11:32:23 PM
|
Fingers crossed!
|
Post #438,339
2/4/21 9:23:05 AM
2/4/21 9:23:05 AM
|
Worked on the first try
Boot speed can best be described as "holy shit". I haven't tried the bike app yet as I was waiting for the videos to download.
|
Post #438,314
2/2/21 3:52:10 AM
2/2/21 3:52:10 AM
|
Hmm
If you go to Windows Security (double click the shield in the tray) do you have green ticks across the board? If it's an Intel processor, go here to update your drivers: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/You could just be shit out of luck on the video side if it's really, really old. Does it play YouTube video reliably? Will it play 1080p60 video? Also, it's an old box with magnetic storage. The disk could be failing. Run up CrystalDiskInfo or similar to see if it's reporting itself as problematic.
|
Post #438,315
2/2/21 10:17:06 AM
2/2/21 10:17:06 AM
|
Video plays fine from YouTube
1080p60 full screen smooth. Disk usage kept bouncing between 70% and 99%. I killed the YouTube tab and disk dropped to about 40% for a few seconds before creeping back up over 70%.
I noticed registry kept showing up as one of the top 4 in disk usage. Is that normal?
I've left this running for several days so it's not just initial scan issues.
|
Post #438,316
2/2/21 10:41:40 AM
2/2/21 10:41:40 AM
|
Something's rotten in the state of Denmark
That is very not normal.
The "registry" thinger on my desktop PC (OK, it's a monster compared to your lapper, but still) is using no disk and 13MB RAM.
And I have an absolute shitload of stuff installed here: Office 365, Adobe CC, half a dozen game launchers (fy, game industry!), VMWare Player, iTunes, NordVPN, Glasswire, etc etc etc etc.
Run up Resource Monitor. Click the "disk" tab. What's at the top of the list?
|
Post #438,320
2/2/21 3:53:08 PM
2/2/21 3:53:08 PM
|
Current list
System
perfmon.exe
Memory Compression
svchost (multiple instances)
Registry just jumped to the top while I was watching
settingsynchost.exe
dllhost.exe
chrome.exe (multiple instances)
MoUsoCoreWorker.exe
Registry keeps showing up every minute or so, sometimes goes to the top, then eventually drops off after.
Couple other things show up briefly. That was with 2 tabs open to YouTube in Chrome, nothing playing. I killed chrome and multiple chrome instances showed up, one stayed at the top for over 10 seconds. Took nearly a minute before all the Chrome threads dropped off.
|
Post #438,324
2/2/21 4:41:40 PM
2/2/21 4:41:40 PM
|
I seem to remember the sysinternals I/o stats were pretty good
Go download them all and start playing. basically you need to see what's chewing up the IO and then zoom in and figure out why. Everything else is waiting on that. Yeah I know this sounds oh so obvious but if you are not playing with THAT tool set then you are wasting your time.
|
Post #438,326
2/2/21 5:25:28 PM
2/2/21 5:25:28 PM
|
Looks like I've got my Wednesday planned
|
Post #438,327
2/2/21 8:15:25 PM
2/2/21 8:15:25 PM
|
"Memory Compression"?? "Registry"??
WTF is that? http://woshub.com/memory-compression-process-high-usage-windows-10/The compressed memory feature in Windows 10 is designed to improve the performance (responsiveness) of the system due to storing part of the memory pages in RAM in a compressed form. It helps to reduce the number of read / write requests to the memory pages in the slow (compared to RAM) paging file on a hard drive. The required data are extracted from the RAM faster even though additional CPU resources are spent to compress/decompress them. Might be something to look at. Similarly, https://www.onmsft.com/news/heres-more-on-that-registry-process-you-may-be-seeing-in-windows-10-build-17063In recent Insider Preview builds, you may have noticed a new process labelled “Registry” in Task Manager. The purpose of this process is similar to that of the memory compression store process in that it is a minimal process whose address space is used to hold data on behalf of the kernel. However, while the memory compression process is used to hold compressed pages, the registry process is used to hold registry hive data (e.g. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE, HKEY_CURRENT_USER). It sounds like Win10 thinks your system is too slow, so it's doing a bunch of trickery to try to speed things up. That trickery may in fact be slowing down what you actually want to do. It also sounds like it really, really wants to have a SSD for the paging/swap file. That may take care of most of these issues you're seeing. HTH a little. Good luck! Cheers, Scott.
|
Post #438,332
2/3/21 6:17:17 AM
2/3/21 6:17:17 AM
|
Chrome is a fucking resource-eating animal
Use Edge, if you want a blink-based browser.
|
Post #438,333
2/3/21 8:16:58 AM
2/3/21 8:16:58 AM
|
True, but mostly irrelevant
When I said I use this to control the bike trainer, I meant that's *all* I use it for. The only reason I had a browser up on it was to research the issues it was having.
|
