Fall Creators Update poor performance/lagginess FIX

Hi,

ever since FCU update, I've been experiencing general slowness and lagginess of Windows, even in trivial things, like maximizing/restoring Explorer window, as well as some extreme performance regressions in professional software, such as 3ds Max, DaVinci Resolve or Photoshop. And it seems I am not alone.

Recently, one of my friends, who is a programmer, found a fix to this issue, for which I am eternally grateful to him.

SO! I will try to basically translate what he said:
With FCU, Microsoft has introduced some new crap with which they try to blindly patch exploits in softwares. These blind patches significantly reduce performance of some functions, and they are enabled by default system-wide. It is a questionable decision, but since Windows is seeding ground for all kinds of viruses, flash, acrobat and browser exploits, it's to some degree understandable.

But now comes the ridiculous parts: There's one system function, called GetPixel - which Microsoft stresses in their own documentation, you should never ever use, because it's slow as hell. This function is affected by one of these exploit preventions, making it further 10-100x slower. And guess what, Microsoft themselves use it in the Ribbon! Yes! That is right! The ribbon you can find for example in Windows explorer!

Furthermore, this function, and many others similarly affected are frequently used in some more complex, professional grade software, especially computer graphics softwares. But not only there; The fix to the issue was actually discovered by programmers who found that Tortoise Git runs several dozen times slower than how it did before FCU.

Alright, so with the explanation of the issue out of the way, here is how to fix it:

1, Hit start menu and type "Defender", it should bring up "Windows Defender settings" entry, so open it.

2, Another juicy part - if you use another AV software, like for example in my case - ESET, then you would naturally assume everything Defender related is disabled, and you would be wrong. If you use Defender, you will be brought to the Windows Defender Security Center straight away, but if you don't, you will end up on a Settings page saying that Windows Defender is not available because it's turned off. Click "Turn on Windows Defender Antivirus" - don't worry, your AV software will disable it again straight away.

3, Once you are in Windows Defender Security Center, Click App & browser control button

4, Scroll all the way down, to Exploit protection, and click Exploit protection settings text

5, Once on Exploit protection page, set Control flow guard (CFG) to OFF.

6, It will prompt you to restart your PC

7, After the restart, enjoy your smooth Windows experience again

8, Curse Microsoft for the rest of your life and be very skeptical about new feature updates.

Hope it helps! :)

I did a clean install of Windows 10 Pro Fall Creators Update x64 on both my pc's the afternoon it was released.
With both my pc's havpng a ssd and my registry tweaks to speed things up, I haven't notice any performance issues.
The only thing I've noticed is FCU doesn't like some software, that previous versions of 10 had no issues with.
It doesn't like Sapphire TRiXX for my video card and it doesn't like OpenDNS Updater, so I uninstalled both and just check if both companies have a newer version. So far neither do.
I've also notice a weird issue were my wired Ethernet connection takes one minute in FCU to have a usable internet connection.
Thee registry tweaks I'm talking about are:
HKEY_CurentUser_ControlPanel_Desktop_MenuShowDelay (set to 1 for a ssd)
HKEY_CurrentUser_ControlPanel_Mouse_MouseHoverTime (Set to 1 for ssd)
Default for each setting is 400.

essenbe said:

So, basically you are advocating giving up security for speed? Not something I would advise anyone to do and not something I think is wise. I have a similar system as yours and I have none of those problems. Just because you have issues does not automatically make it Microsoft's fault. There are a lot of other things that could cause similar problems.

The little benefit of added security (this particular exploit patch is targeted to very specific malware types) meant I was not able to use some of my software I used on daily basis to make living. 3ds Max for example would run at terrible framerates as long as I had scene explorer open, but I needed to have scene explorer open almost all the time, otherwise my productivity would drop significantly. It was really that bad.

For the first time in my life, since I started working, I realized how fragile my livelihood is. That all the software I need to create and finish projects is running on a single OS, which is becoming increasingly unstable and unreliable since W10 release, to the point it actually affected my ability to finish project, get paid for it, and pay my bills. This is no joke.

When you have some professional piece of software, you are usually able to get some professional support, eventual patch, or at least professional advice for a workaround. Do you know what I got when I tried to contact Microsoft support with this very specific problem? A guy, probably from India, who figured out my poor graphical performance is caused by too many files in Appdata\Local\Temp....

Yes, it makes it Microsoft's fault because:

1, You probably can not spot the issues because you don't really care about system smoothness
2, You probably can not spot the issues because you don't use any computer graphics profession software
3, The issue only started to occur after Fall Creators Update
4, The issue ceased to exist after disabling a feature introduced in Fall Creators Update
5, Many of my friends working in similar field reported similar issues, most of which were fixed by disabling CFG.
6, The performance regression affects even Microsoft's own Ribbon inside Microsoft's own Explorer shipped with Microsoft's own Windows.

The proof here is undeniable. I am all for security, don't take me wrong. But 10-100x performance drop for widely used function is not justified, no matter how important the security fix is. It's simply a poor execution. This thread is mainly here fore people who will run into the same problems, and will be equally as desperate as I did.

TairikuOkami said:

The software has to support CFG and enable it. So I guess, you can also disable it with a parameter?
Windows explorer is the most exploited shell by malware, so it makes sense, that it is enabled there.
Control Flow Guard (Windows)
P.S.: You can disable it per software.

Yes, I found that out already myself. About explorer - when CFG is enabled, there's visible jerkiness/lagginess in maximize/minimize/restore animations as well as scrolling lag when browsing folders with large amount of pictures.

I do not believe that any security measure should make something as trivial as a file/folder explorer perform poorly on GTX1080Ti, i7 5930k and 48GB of RAM. It's truly incredible that in the year 2017, I have an incredibly powerful hardware I've invested so much money into, yet I have a Windows version that can not even do 2D window animations and browse pictures smoothly. The performance is worse than many years ago, when I get GeForce 6600 and I was running Windows Vista.

It's as if everyone here was suggesting that not being able to run 2D rasterized file explorer on high end hardware smoothly in a year 2017 due to the exploit patches is completely normal and adequate.

If I had to project a trajectory from this trend, then in a few years of time, when I have 32-Core 64-thread CPU, and GPU with the 4x performance of currently insanely powerful GTX1080Ti, 24FPS animation and realtime feedback in Windows will be unachievable luxury.

rawalanche said:

Hi,

ever since FCU update, I've been experiencing general slowness and lagginess of Windows, even in trivial things, like maximizing/restoring Explorer window, as well as some extreme performance regressions in professional software, such as 3ds Max, DaVinci Resolve or Photoshop. And it seems I am not alone.

Recently, one of my friends, who is a programmer, found a fix to this issue, for which I am eternally grateful to him.

SO! I will try to basically translate what he said:
With FCU, Microsoft has introduced some new crap with which they try to blindly patch exploits in softwares. These blind patches significantly reduce performance of some functions, and they are enabled by default system-wide. It is a questionable decision, but since Windows is seeding ground for all kinds of viruses, flash, acrobat and browser exploits, it's to some degree understandable.

But now comes the ridiculous parts: There's one system function, called GetPixel - which Microsoft stresses in their own documentation, you should never ever use, because it's slow as hell. This function is affected by one of these exploit preventions, making it further 10-100x slower. And guess what, Microsoft themselves use it in the Ribbon! Yes! That is right! The ribbon you can find for example in Windows explorer!

Furthermore, this function, and many others similarly affected are frequently used in some more complex, professional grade software, especially computer graphics softwares. But not only there; The fix to the issue was actually discovered by programmers who found that Tortoise Git runs several dozen times slower than how it did before FCU.

Alright, so with the explanation of the issue out of the way, here is how to fix it:

1, Hit start menu and type "Defender", it should bring up "Windows Defender settings" entry, so open it.

2, Another juicy part - if you use another AV software, like for example in my case - ESET, then you would naturally assume everything Defender related is disabled, and you would be wrong. If you use Defender, you will be brought to the Windows Defender Security Center straight away, but if you don't, you will end up on a Settings page saying that Windows Defender is not available because it's turned off. Click "Turn on Windows Defender Antivirus" - don't worry, your AV software will disable it again straight away.

3, Once you are in Windows Defender Security Center, Click App & browser control button

4, Scroll all the way down, to Exploit protection, and click Exploit protection settings text

5, Once on Exploit protection page, set Control flow guard (CFG) to OFF.

6, It will prompt you to restart your PC

7, After the restart, enjoy your smooth Windows experience again

8, Curse Microsoft for the rest of your life and be very skeptical about new feature updates.

Hope it helps! :)

When I follow your directions I get no "Click App & browser control button" Any suggestions?
Thaks
Rick