Hi, wondering what sort of resources are good for this? None of the tutorials linked in this forum seem to be directly about this topic, unless I missed something. In general my machine has been super slow, and I really don't understand enough about how Windows works to learn how to fix it. Thanks!
There's a reasonable chance the slowness is completely unrelated to Windows.
Might be purely a hardware problem that can't be "fixed" other than by replacing parts.
You could just start replacing parts and hope you replace the defective part eventually, but that would be foolish.
We'd need a lot more detail to go much farther.
You need to go into a lot of detail about the slowness.
When it occurs, slow by how much, when it began?
Slow always now or only when you do certain things?
Any hardware changes recently?
Any software changes recently?
Have you done virus and malware scans?
Have you tested any hardware components such as RAM or the hard drives?
Have you looked at Task Manager at all when it's slow?
Etc etc.
According to your system specs, you have a Dell Inspiron 5765 laptop.
Please fill in the specs of your computer and give us a description of what you mean by running slow.
I tried to find the Dell Inspiron 5765 manual but unsuccessful so far.
EDIT: According to Dell Inspiron 5765 Price (10 May 2019) Specification & Reviews । Dell Laptops your Dell Inspiron 5765 laptop may have originally a Linux: if that is the case, how did you get to Windows 10 and are you in dual-boot setup?
Hello gntsketches,
You might see if some of the items listed in the tutorial below may be able to help your performance,
Optimize Performance of Windows 10
Updated a few setting - not actually sure how to find all that info. Can you recommend a resource to understand my CPU? See my response to ignatzasonic for more details on the other bits.
Windows 10 was installed right out of the box - no Linux dual boot. Not yet, anyway!EDIT: According to Dell Inspiron 5765 Price (10 May 2019) Specification & Reviews । Dell Laptops your Dell Inspiron 5765 laptop may have originally a Linux: if that is the case, how did you get to Windows 10 and are you in dual-boot setup?
- - - Updated - - -
Maybe feeling a bit foolish: decided to uninstall iTunes and Carbonite, and it seems to have really made a difference! But I'll have to see how it goes over the next couple days, sometimes the issues come and go.
In general, the problem was that using the computer intermittently felt like walking through quicksand - super laggy to do basically anything, sometimes hanging for minutes or seemingly indefinitely. Simple keystrokes also were highly unresponsive.
Have Avast & Malwarebytes, they don't show any problems.
Task Manager lists a shit ton of programs, most of them I have no idea what they are. Often items are bouncing around quickly in there. There didn't seem to be any real connection between what was showing in task manager and the slowness issues - iTunes and Carbonite were not shown as using resources - I just disabled them on a whim when their popups came up.
Two questions:
- Windows auto-updates, and I gather that MS does a good bit of data harvesting. I don't actually object to the latter any more than I do from Google, Facebook, etc (which is to say, the average consumer like me is basically a helpless chump) but to the extent that these activities are actually slowing my system, I'd like to put a stop to it. Can you direct me to information about disabling or at least managing the auto-updating and surveillance features?
- In general, can you recommend resources to help me understand WHY slowdowns occur? Thinking purely at the software/OS level here (let's exclude hardware defects for the time being.)
Thank you!
- - - Updated - - -
Will check it. Thank you!!Hello gntsketches,
You might see if some of the items listed in the tutorial below may be able to help your performance,
If you have Window 10 Pro, I think you can delay updates for a considerable time, maybe 6 months. If you have Windows 10 Home, you have fewer options although I think the upcoming major update will give Home users more control if I remember correctly.
You can dig down into all menus within security and privacy settings and set all possible surveillance-related controls to off. I saw a a guide to that somewhere on these forums in the last 4 or 5 days. There's a dozen or two of them.
Yeah, we are largely chumps. All those on/off controls might be entirely bogus/dummy switches just so we can entertain the idea that we have control while Redmond chuckles. I don't use Facebook, Twitter, messaging, et al, so you are on your own there.
Slowdowns can have dozens of reasons I suppose, but they are going to affect disk activity, CPU load, RAM load, services, or processes in some way. You can monitor that using built-in Windows tools or additional tools from MS or third parties. I'm not an expert on using those tools, but Task Manager and Resource Monitor will give you a lot of insight about disks, CPU, RAM, and processes. You can run traces to record processes with high granularity if necessary.
Carbonite? Isn't that an online backup outfit? That would be one of the first things I'd look at. No telling what might be going on as it attempts to synchronize your data with some online server. Do you really need it, as opposed to local backup? For all I know, iTunes may have its own set of horrors. I gave up on it 10 years ago.
Do you have some unexplained services running, possibly at startup? Dig into Task Manager processes and services when your PC is slow, right away. Have you tried turning off ALL non-Microsoft services temporarily, and then maybe adding back 1/4 of them at a time to see if that 1/4 slows you down when re-activated?
Hi there
These days --assuming you have normal amount of RAM and even an average processor -- the only things that will hugely slow down a computer are :
1) SLOW Disks -- these will kill any machine stone dead whatever the speed of the processor
2) Too many applications running -- normally not a problem though
3) poor graphics for games
4) hideous slow 3rd party A/V (Anti Virus) Software -- particularly things like Macaffee and the like -- uninstall - you don't need it these days -- WD is perfectly more than adequate for the typical home user.
Get rid of any bloatware also that comes (or usually does) with a store bought machine -- simply backup machine first with Free Macrium or other free backup software and then do a fresh install of Windows -- your activation will be maintained with new install.
Cheers
jimbo
I recommend doing 2 easy things to start with:
1. Check the Startup tab in Task manager and disable anything there you don't have a reason for starting on boot. Reboot, any better?
2. Decrapify your machine. Make sure you nuke all trial versions of various software which Dell probably stuffed into your machine.
Quote
