Have you used a tool such as Autoruns or WhatInStartup to examine and manage what is starting when you boot the system?

Have you used a tool such as Process Explorer to examine what is running on your system?

Are all the drivers on the system up-to-date?

Do you have Windows 7 SP1 installed? Are all the Windows patches and hotfixes installed?

Joe

even though I’m a power user — I typically have 15-20 apps running including 2-4 VMs running in VMware

This is not conducive to speed. Tone it down a bit.

You mentioned bootup taking longer. You should refer to the Logon tab in Autoruns. That may give you an idea about what you could disable to improve the boot time. You could also install Soluto if you want a program to help diagnose the boot process.

Even when your CPU and RAM usage is not heavy you could still have other issues such as a slower disk drive, non or slow responding network devices, faulty RAM, or out-of-date drivers. All of these could contribute to a system being sluggish.

Joe

What Joe said in the last paragraph…would only add that you cannot go the “power user” route on a laptop spec’ed with a 1 TB, 5400 RPM drive…can’t even run one VM with any kind of proficiency and still have the host loaded up with active apps, much less 2 or 4. Its not the processor slowing you down…that’s why its only 10-20% utilized…everything else is slowing you down; utilization starvation I call it…everything has to balance; one weak link and you get bottlenecked.

I’d also be willing to bet that your GPU would be an issue in terms of “bottle necking” as well.
Laptop’s should not be run like you are doing.

I don’t think anyone is saying the performance you are getting is normal, something definitely seems wrong, my guess would be one or more very poorly performing drivers, thinking chipset maybe or if the pagefile is not set to system managed, sometimes I’ve fixed a slow system by merely allowing Windows to manage it. Hard to say for sure, I think we’re all guessing a bit (lot?).

I got a refurbished laptop (HP dv7-4183cl) with Windows 7. It was snappy and fast. Unfortunately it had hardware problems and HP very generously replaced it with a bigger, better, faster (I thought) laptop, a dv7-6199us.

Is this a clean install to the newer laptop, or was the HD cloned from the 1st one to the new laptop’s HD?
Better hardware doesn’t necessarily equate to better performance if the drivers are corrupt or the os install shoddy.

I would also be curious to know what is showing up in the event veiwer.

Be sure to check for BIOS and motherboard updates too.

Joe

Remove Old Drivers After Upgrading to New Hardware

The above link may also prove helpfull cleaning up older/outdated drivers.

There is always the clean install option available to you.

You should be able to download a Windows 7 64, bit SP-1 ISO file directly from MS for free and make some alterations that would alow you to use your own product key.
This would be the ultimate clean install.

Otherwise it looks like your going to be methodically hunting down drivers and software for an explanation to this sluggish behavior.

It seems manufacturers and a lot of “fluff” to their software lineups on new PC’s (I am attempting to be politically correct and use parental control of myself here when I say “fluff”). Most of this “fluff” is totally not needed. When I upgraded our PC’s to Win 7 (SonyVaio) I chose NOT to add the Sony “fluff” (Win 7 and Sony “fluff” were on 2 separate disks for the upgrade.) The PC’s work just fine, and in fact better than they did prior to ridding myself of this “fluff”.

A couple of things I would do:

1) Try PC Decrapifier(I’m not kidding, that’s the name) This app helps clear out “fluff” and trial versions.

2) Download the Win 7 iso file including SP1 from Digital Riverand use a generic version of Win 7 to reinstall your OS. This route would require reinstallation of all your apps, but would give you a pristine installation.

Either route may help solve some of your problems.

Try PC Decrapifier (I’m not kidding, that’s the name)

What do you think the first C in CCleaner stands for Ted? 😀

Its true, the only HP I purchased recently (a refurb) was so loaded with “C” it was significantly slower than my other “home loaded” systems, not to the point where I thought there was something major wrong but I didn’t have time to go on a “C” hunt (at least not that kind :p), so I blasted it with a new copy and its been running great ever since.

Official Windows 7 SP1 ISO from Digital River

Can I use OEM Windows 7 HP product key to install 64-bit OS off of retail disc?

LEGAL Windows 7 Download Links (Just like Vista before!!!)

Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

Above are the links for downloading legitimate Windows 7 iso copies, and some extra info if it should be required for OEM types.
As a power user myself, I have never been satisfied with the type of OEM reinstallation or recovery options offered. A pristine clean
install is alway prefered, especially with a new or even refurbished laptop.

Some have had great success with their OEM keys, some have had to contact MS to activate. It’s hard to say. I have had to call MS twic e for similar problems and this was very easy in my case.

I mentioned Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 in an earlier post, and I suggest that you download a trial. The free trial is fully functional, and the program may tell you more than most of us ever wanted to know about what is going on with the cores in our processors. It will even let you tweak things to suit yourself. You may find it a lot more fun than a system reinstall. I find it daunting but I haven’t really studied it, but with your knowledge, you might learn a lot from it in a short time.

One thing you can do to speed up your PC is to get rid of the eye candy. In windows 7, go into advanced System Settings (type advanced system setting in the start orb search box) and click on the settings button under system performance. On the Visual Effects tab, set “Adjust for best performance” and click OK. Alternatively, select custom and uncheck all the animation, transparent glass, fade, and translucent items. Your Pc won’t be quite as pretty but should run significantly faster.

Jerry

I take back what I said about never having seen an hourglass – I have seen one (briely) since I posted. Eye candy will slow a Win 7 computer, but with those specs it is a drop in the bucket. Something is very wrong with that computer or setup, and it is sad to see someone having that much trouble and blaming it on Windows 7. There are users who would love to have something even close to those specs but who are doing very well indeed with Win 7.

You could try Resource Monitor, to check what is using CPU, RAM and disk. I would probably think the disk and graphics adapter would be the most likely problem sources…

There are users who would love to have something even close to those specs but who are doing very well indeed with Win 7.

Indeed, I have a 1.67 GHz single core processor with an FX 5600 graphics card, running full aero glass, one gig of RAM and other than the obvious limits of a one core system (not much good for serious multitasking), it performs almost as well as XP.

Which reminds me, have you checked the WEI and run a reassessment to see if any of the components are coming up short as far as the W7 testing goes?

Ah, I hate this new laptop! It is a complete slug. I can type faster than it puts up the characters in most applications! The hourglass comes up all the time. I have since learned that a corei7 is actually comprised of 4 physical cores and 4 virtual. Is there any way to turn off the 4 virtual cores? Maybe it is some sort of weird contention problem between cores. I am out of ideas, I can’t help thinking I should have ordered a Corei5 instead.

OK, looks like I have it working much better now. It was a long combination of things, but I am willing to bet disabling all the Bluetooth elements removed some interrupt contention. Fortunately, I don’t need bluetooth on this laptop. Changes made :

1). Moved UAC down a notch from the company-preset highest setting to second setting.
2). Turned off a long list of services (Adobe Acrobat Update Service, Nvidia 3D, Superfetch, Remote Desktop config, Fax, Wireless Bluetooth (2 services), ActiveX Installer, BES Client, Bluetooth support services, and Parental Controls.
3). Removed all USB devices prior to boot (apparently there is a known loop with USB devices plugged in at boot which may cause perf issues).
4). Disabled Bluetooth Software pre-load
5). Upgraded to latest Nvidia drivers, disabled 3D Vision.
6). Upgraded BIOS.
7). Upgraded all drivers via Lenovo tool.
8). Upgraded Win7 via Windows Update including all Optional Updates.
9). Ran CCleaner.
10). Turned off Aero, went to a basic Win7 theme.

– I also tried a few things I reverted. I originally set to “Adjust for Best Performance” in Performance Options dialog box (Control Panel – System – Adjust Performance…) but Win7 ended up looking unacceptably ugly so switched back to “Adjust for Best Appearance”. There was a slight increase in perceived performance, but not enough to justify the ugliness.
– Turning off 4 of the cores via msconfig – boot – advanced, but that had no discernible impact. Went back to 8.

System is much snappier now, about what I had with XP. With the additional cores and RAM, I expect it will be quite a bit more stable. After I test this new config for a few days, I’ll turn Superfetch back on since in theory that should improve application loading performance and boot over time.

DD.

To drop down to 4 cores from 8, you need to adjust the BIOS. The CPU runs HyperThreading – similar to the good old days of the Pentium 4 HT CPU’s. The number of cores referred to in msconfig is a debug setting for boot up.

Drop down into the BIOS at boot up disable HT: the machine should show 4 cores, but might trip an activation request as it may appear to be a significant hardware change. No real issue – if it does trip the activation request, simply phone the number and re-activate.

It may make a difference in some specialised circumstances, but in most cases will probably make little discernable difference – no harm in trying though!

Ahhhhhhhhhhh! It’s all my fault!

I finally figured it out, and it was entirely my fault. All of the changes above did improve things, but the laptop seemed no faster than my previous XP laptop, so I was resigned to that being the best it could do despite the drastically upgraded hardware and much newer OS. I have a docking station for the old T61p laptop (XP machine) on a stand in my office. When I received the new laptop, I also replaced the docking station with a new one which fits a W510 Thinkpad, but I just used the same power adapter since the connector was identical. The cord was passed up behind my desk against the wall, so I just plugged in the old one since it was a pain to crawl under my desk to exchange them. After days of making changes, tweaks, etc., and yet another reboot, I needed to cold start the laptop. This time, a nice big message appeared on the screen “A power adapter with a lower wattage has been detected. Please use the power adapter which shipped with your laptop. Your laptop battery will charge at a slower rate and your computer will automatically lower the performance of your computer to adjust for the lower wattage.”

Learn something new every day. The new brick is rated 135W 20V, the old one only 90W 20V. I switched bricks, and presto, snappy performance after my next boot. Doh!

wow this was very educative.
Thanks for sharing

“I *do* push things RAM-wise. Right now Task Manager says I’m using 6.85GB out of my 8, and presumably Windows has grabbed the rest of it. But I don’t think RAM could be the issue, because e.g. boot-up seems slow too.”

“Procexp currently shows 165 processes running.”

Holy moley – you outta controley!!!

Typical factory install OS always has too much crap running. You don’t need ALL of it all the time. Think “clean & lean = fast machine”. The most processes I get running on a strong laptop are 85 (I do LOTS of installs/reloads for people). Get the free version of REVO uninstaller and go to work with it. Forget tuners and tweakers, there are many that will just make things worse. Even with the good ones you have to be a good judge of when and where to use them.

Because you don’t want to uninstall everything, just stop the useless 24/7 background processes. Use Anvir Task Manager Pro (free trial that lasts forever) and shut off as many ‘startups’ as you safely can.

Wanna be a power user? You need a powerhouse of a computer. Best choices are among the desktops, laptops are marginal by comparison. You can’t move an 18 wheeler load very fast with a 4 wheeler sedan.