Tip re performance issues

@dalchina thanks for your feedback. I wrote the above based on my experience. It is entirely possible that the tips only apply to my system although I doubt it. For example re indexing, I read the docs too, unfortunately from where I'm sittting it sometimes runs even if the PC is heavily in use.

I would advice against disabling Superfetch. You will incur in a big performance loss if doing so. Superfetch should settle down after a bit.

tr00don said:

1. Disable Superfetch - you don't really need it

You do need it if you have 4GB of ram. I also needed it when I owned a system with 8GB of ram though it may vary.

After reading these posts about Superfetch I went looking for it as I was curious.
I could not find it after running services.msc is that because I am using as SSD for my operating systen ?

Think I found it. It looks like it's now called sysmain, and mine it set to automatic so I guess mine is running.

tr00don said:

Based on my experience with Windows 10, if your main storage is a HD, here are a few tips that you may find useful for improving the performance of your system:

- The HD seems the main bottleneck of a PC (not applicable is your system runs off an SSD). During periods of intensive HD operations the PC will become less responsive. These periods occur very often by default on Windows 10, for example:

1. on (re)boot Win 10 checks for updates; when found they are installed; after installation, some system processess continue to use the HD intensivelly for 20 minutes or more;
2. Superfetch periodically scans the HD;
3. Indexing (Windows Search) and Cortana periodically scan the HD;
4. Telemetry tasks run periodically and use the HD;
5. Application Compatibility tasks run periodically and use the HD;
6. Antimalware scan runs every time after installing new software and upon software launch.

- To minimize the impact of these activities on your system consider disabling some of them as follows:

1. Delay Windows updates; this is not possible by default on Windows 10 Home as the Policy Editor is not installed by design; however, there is a "workaround" - Google gpedit.msc installer and how to delay Windows updates, and follow the instructions; you can check for updates manually at any time; delaying updates resulted in a significant performance improvement for me at boot time;
2. Disable Superfetch - you don't really need it;
3. Disable Cortana or at least Web Cortana; minimize the number of files/folders on your HD that and indexed;
4. Disable Telemetry (several settings);
5. Disable Application Compatibility tasks in Task Scheduler (find instructions on the Web);
6. Try disabling some Antimalware locations, if possible (e.g., any folders containing large media files);
7. Minimize your PC communications with MS servers (Privacy settings);
8. Disable Windows Based Script Host in Task Manager|Startup items;
9. Disable OneDrive (look up instructions) and any other cloud service, unless you really need it;
10. Defragment your HD manually after each major software installation/update then set to Auto weekly. Keeping at least 30% of the HD partitions free also helps (move your media library/archive to a NAS).

For 2-4 try OOSU10, it should be easy to find.

If you have a RAID configuration, make sure that you use the latest Intel RST software for your hardware & Windows 10.

If you have at least 16 GB or RAM you can try setting the paging file size to 0. This works (I have had this setting on for the last 8 years) except for the odd legacy application limited by design to 3-4 GB of RAM that may complain about "low memory".

Last but not least, as of Dec 2018 try upgrading to v.1809; on my PC it's noticeably faster than the previous versions.

Hi there

most hardware RAID cards at consumer level aren't very good but if you do use RAID you can speed up the HDD's no end if you are willing to take a risk and use RAID 0 -- backup though because if you lose any HDD in the array the whole array is lost -- however modern HDD's are quite reliable so chances of losing the array won't be that high and if you have backup the problem doesn't exist.

RAID 0 aggregates all the HDD's in the array as a single HDD and optimises the I/O over all HDD's in the array so with say a 4 HDD array you can theoretically get > 4 X as fast I/O as a single HDD.

I use the software version on a Linux NAS ( using program MDADM) and it's super fast -- have been running one of these NAS's for over 9 months since last boot -- never a problem with a 4 HDD RAID 0 setup for my multi-media data. (BTW I hope if people have NAS systems they back those up too from time to time).

Cheers
jimbo

Don't forget to mention the apps that run in the background setting.