Deleting files, folders (to the bin) and moving them on the same drive last extremely long, perhaps 2, 5 minutes for 50, 100 elements or so. There always is a noticeable waiting time even for 1, 2, 3 elements.
What might this be caused by?
And there are some, a few programs running extreme slowly, others don't. May be there is a connection.
Hi, please post screenshots of your task manager showing resource usage
a. 3 mins after logging in with no other progs launched.
b. when you are experiencing slow performance.
Please check your disk (s). I don't know anything about them.... no specs... please complete. Click 'My Computers' below my post for example. Tutorials available.
Hard Disk Sentinel is excellent- functional trial. Applies to SSDs too.
If ok, run
chkdsk C: /scan
from an admin command prompt and advise if that passes. (Don't post the whole result).
How much free space do you have on C: ?
Sadly you ignored the forum prompt to specify your full build number (using winver) - the prompt is there to save us asking. Thanks.
Some people find poor performance is associated with 100% disk usage at low transfer rates e.g. 10MB/s. You can check your task manager, Performance tab.
History (almost never given by posters):
a. When was your PC last behaving acceptably?
b. What has changed since then?
(Installation/uninstallation/update/hardware change....).
Although deleting a single folder may seem like it should be fast, Windows has to individually delete all the files in that folder before it deletes the folder itself. So, if there's 3,000 files in that folder, it will take some time to 'delete' each of them by modifying (overwriting) a position in the directory entry for that file.
Slower drives also take longer delete large numbers of files. I can delete large folders on my SSD very quickly compared to deleting comparable folders on my slower 'bulk storage' hard drives. And deleting large folders on USB memory sticks, or even an SSD connected via USB takes seemingly forever to complete.
Also, the amount of concurrent drive activity over and above the deleting of a folder can affect deletion time. A Windows update does massive amounts of drive reading and writing. If that's happening at the same time, file deletion will seem to crawl. I've also noticed that if I'm watching a video, or simply listening to a music file on the same drive, deletion will slow down.
Recognize that hard drives can become 'really slow' when trying to perform multiple activities concurrently. In my situation, it may do a 'read' on the next 1/4 second of video from the drive, then have to reposition the 'arm' to another spot, possibly a 'long' distance (if you're a hard drive), then wait for the desired sector (position) on that drive to rotate around to 'delete' a single file. Then go back to the video for the next segment, and so on.
Deleting files, folders (to the bin) and moving them on the same drive last extremely long, perhaps 2, 5 minutes for 50, 100 elements or so. There always is a noticeable waiting time even for 1, 2, 3 elements.
What might this be caused by?
And there are some, a few programs running extreme slowly, others don't. May be there is a connection.
Hello, Spoilo.
Although you did not specify the amount of time taken, I assure you, it's nothing to be alarmed about.
Please, again, carefully read the below post, written by @bratkinson.
Regards, take care.
Hello!
Thank you!
Sorry, I cannot shut down / restart the Acer Aspire E 15 (Acer E5-573) at the moment, so I will first do b.a. 3 mins after logging in with no other progs launched.
The special slow programs are always slow, moving (on the same drive) / deleting (to the bin) is always slow, independently of anything, I would say. But, yes, sometimes even much more slower.
The test is just running (I didn't do it from that prompt but started it in the program, hope, that is right):b. when you are experiencing slow performance.
I have very many portable programs on J: (on the SSD where C: is), partitions.
Yes, the fan does not work properly anymore. I have a fan under the Notebook, outside of it at the moment temporarilly. That slows down the system of course as well (CPU throttled sometimes).
For the disc space see Sentinel.
That is here(?):Some people find poor performance is associated with 100% disk usage at low transfer rates e.g. 10MB/s. You can check your task manager, Performance tab.
aaa
Very sorry, I really do not know. May be there was no point since when it happens but it gradually becoming slower.History (almost never given by posters):
a. When was your PC last behaving acceptably?
b. What has changed since then?
(Installation/uninstallation/update/hardware change....).
Yes, very interesting post, thank you bratkinson. I guess, my system behaves the same. For example when Firefox loads pages the system gets slower as well. When it loads some more pages at the same time the system slows down very much. Or when a program starts. There are some programs slowing the system extremely when the do special tasks. So it hardly gets usable.
Actually I try to shutdown / restart the Notebook as less as possible, instead I let it hibernate. Beause it lasts quite a long time to restart all of the windows, programs I need / being open before restarting. But after some time the systems gets (even more) slower and problems start occurring, programs do not start anymore or such and / or do not work properly anymore. So then I have to restart (a complete newstart).
I stopped the test (slows down the computer respectively the computer often freezes for many seconds, etc.), because it seems to stuck at "0xF5, so it does not appear to go on anymore. The progam schows "1 minute" remaining time since an hour or so:
Last edited by Spoilo; 03 Mar 2022 at 08:18.
Thank you for posting the detailed info about your laptop. It took only a second to see that you have only 8GB of RAM in that computer. THAT is the problem! Upping the RAM to 16GB will provide a very noticable speed improvement.
In all likelihood, your computer has a lot of 'bloatware' that starts up automatically when you boot and takes up RAM, initially, before being 'swapped out' to page file on your C: drive. Useless bloatware comes with most new computers and downloading programs/apps will frequently toss in more. Adobe PDF Reader, for example, tries to throw in an anti-virus program and will, if one merely clicks 'OK' to everything that comes up. The end result is that all of those needless running programs need a couple of CPU cycles now and then to verify they are still 'ready to go' that requires access to the page file.
Another -big- computer slower-downer is the cloud. One friend complained to me that when he boots up his computer, it's a good 20 minutes before things start running pretty fast. The problem was he had 4 different, competitor cloud apps on his computer! OneDrive and Dropbox were two of them. He didn't realize that at start up, they would automatically synchronize themselves with his computer and that would consume 80-90% of all I/O bandwidth as well as internet bandwidth, leaving little for what he wanted to do. I asked him which ones he wanted removed and he said 'none'! Between his business and volunteer activities, each with different cloud servers, he needed them all. I did manage to get some of his 'horsepower' back by removing needless bloatware such as 'weather', 'news' feeds, etc.
Sometimes the bloatware that comes with a computer and downloaded 'freebie' bloatware can keep the computer busy 50% or more with no user applications running! In particular, competitive internet security software such as Norton 360, McAfee, and others. If they're running concurrently, they're literally 'fighting each other' for CPU and drive access. I've encountered a computer with 2 concurrently-running anti-virus/internet security products running! When the 1 year free subscription to Norton that came with the computer expired, he decided to download and try a competitive product, thinking that Norton would simply stop running. No, that's not what happened. What did happen is that both products would periodically do complete scans of the hard drive. Norton simply did not update any more, and should have been removed from the computer, which I did.
In short, it's been my experience that those with 'slow' computers are frequently unaware of the extensive bloatware and competitor products running on their computers. There's also a good number of built-in Windows applications that can be turned off and deleted as well. How many people want XBOX stuff running on their computer? It's up and sleeping unless you turn it off!
A good place to start is 'settings' and 'apps' and delete whatever is useless. One BIG caution though...be 100% sure you're not removing some 'side' application for a product you want to keep. One example is 'Microsoft Edge' and 'Microsoft Edge Update'. Deleting the update app will soon cause Edge to start failing.
In looking at your computer details, I see that the 1TB hard drive is connected via USB. The USB will definitely slow things down when accessing that drive. Performing a defrag (defragmentation) on that drive will provide some performance improvement. But given it's connected via USB, it'll take several hours to complete.
Thanks. Really need the task manager screenshots.
As to the disk transfer rate, you can see the limit by e.g. copying a large file (say 3Gb so you have long enough) from (say) desktop to desktop if checking C: or on another disk if checking that.
Then look at the Performance tab and you will see both that and the file explorer dialogue showing the transfer.
FWIW I have 8Gb on this 7 year old or so Lenovo t440s, lots of programs installed, no performance issues.
You can see your RAM usage if you look at your task manager... a cause of slowness would be excessive paging. If when you experience slow performance you see both high RAM usage and lots of disk activity, check for page faults to see if the problem lies there. If not, no need to add RAM.
Thank you very much for your help!
So the RAM. Yes, the RAM resources are very often used almost completely. But I would not have thought it would slow down the computer that much.
Is there a simple way to locate, find bloatware. I hadn't supposed Adobe would do such. Thank goodness I do not use Adobe Reader. Actually I would think I am careful so I would not get any bloatware.
20 minutes slowness because of the clouds, that is really a lot. There are very short times here the computer suddenly runs quite fast, I am always estonished that this is possible at all, but I do not habe any idea, of course.
I only use the Win virus program and its firewall. So nothing more. Besides of periodically MalWareBytes to scan the drive.
It's this one here, I assume:A good place to start is 'settings' and 'apps' and delete whatever is useless.
Yes, there really are a lot of programs I have never heard of and of course I never use. So then I can just remove those ones I do not use / know without causing any problems? There also is XBOX. And I see "Feedback-Hub", Update Assistent, GPL Ghostscript and such, I assume those ones I should not delete. Ah, sorry, now that I go on reading (should have read the entire paragraph first) I see you said to be cafeul, OK.
So when I buy the next Notebook I should do a quick foramt and then install the OS and all programs or is it enough to use the default installation and just remove all crap not needed?
Yes, the 10 TB WD driveIn looking at your computer details, I see that the 1TB hard drive is connected via USB.
is connected with USB. It will take a day or more, I assume.
I just tried that, copied a file on the USB connected 10 TB drive:As to the disk transfer rate, you can see the limit by e.g. copying a large file (say 3Gb so you have long enough) from (say) desktop to desktop if checking C: or on another disk if checking that.
Then look at the Performance tab and you will see both that and the file explorer dialogue showing the transfer.
And here on the SSD:
So it looks like there is no resource left for the SSD, just 0 %. Do I see it correctly? So it is simple like that? And system is so slow you cannot use it during that time.
But now, without transfering anything it looks so, quite a lot high use of that although I do not do anything:
It, the RAM, looks like that at the moment:FWIW I have 8Gb on this 7 year old or so Lenovo t440s, lots of programs installed, no performance issues.
Ah, so that's - may be - what I meant above, the big activity on the SSD without me doing something? How could I check for page faults?You can see your RAM usage if you look at your task manager... a cause of slowness would be excessive paging. If when you experience slow performance you see both high RAM usage and lots of disk activity, check for page faults to see if the problem lies there.
Thank you very much again.
Just considering your last screenshot:
- clearly certain things are active- so it's not a reference point but some arbitrary combination of whatever you have running.
RAM: you have many firefox tabs open- that consumes RAM.
Why is Everything using disk quite intensively?
As is Defender...
And you're downloading something with jdownloader.
So now by contrast, please log off, log on again and without launching additional programs about 3 mins after logging on post one or more screenshots of your task manager, Processes tab, organised each time by an appropriate column of interest by clicking on that column's header to organise it high to low.
Have you ever changed any of these settings?
Please note- the way to post screenshots so they expand when clicked on is thus:
This makes it easy to see detail.
I don't know why you posted lists of installed programs. What's running and the resource usage is what matters here- not how many programs you have installed.
I have any idea of how programs work, but may be it is because it is scanning / controlling the drives all the time for new items.Why is Everything using disk quite intensively?
Defender is the Antimalware Service Executable?As is Defender...
No, not that I could remember it.Have you ever changed any of these settings?
Very sorry about that. I would not have thought that, that's surprising. I understood it matters because the more programs / (unwanted) services run (in the background) the more the recources are used. And the more of the (unwanted) programs / services I do not need will be removed the better (for the speed of) the system. Sorry again.I don't know why you posted lists of installed programs. What's running and the resource usage is what matters here- not how many programs you have installed.
Ok, I will do at the next opportunity. There are some programs starting automatically so I just would close them, if that is OK. And then wait for 3 minutes.So now by contrast, please log off, log on again and without launching additional programs about 3 mins after logging on post one or more screenshots of your task manager, Processes tab, organised each time by an appropriate column of interest by clicking on that column's header to organise it high to low.
Some special programs slow down the computer extremely. One of the is this, PDF Xchange Editor (the same had happened with Microsoft Office programs), sometimes suddenly those numbers in the square are shown one after the other:
(Sorry, the links are not added after clicking that image icon in the toolbar of the post))
https://i.imgur.com/GlCgPy6.png
https://i.imgur.com/mMqPEmi.png
During this the computer almost cannot be used.
Last edited by Spoilo; 03 Mar 2022 at 20:00.
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