Windows 10 perfect at first, now slow

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I upgraded to W10 as soon as it was made available to me, and was delighted to find that i experienced none of the problems that many users were talking about. It was literally perfect for several months.
Three weeks ago, I started to hear my fan running more frequently, and now all the time. Everything is slower, particularly Firefox. Shut down takes several minutes.
I wish I could identify some change in software or computer setup that coincides, but the only possibility is the addition of Adobe Premiere Elements 13 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 13 at around the time the slowdown started. However, these programs are not in the startup menu and are used less than once a week.

I hope someone can suggest a solution or diagnostic process based on the following info:

Things I have tried:
* remove from the startup menu all processes that are flagged as “heavy” users.

My software and frequently used services:
I have my Windows set up to run in old-fashioned desktop, not the touch-screen option.
* Dropbox Premium
* Office 365
* Firefox
* Evernote Premium

I do NOT use Cortana or anything similar. Keyboard and mouse only.

Protection I run:
* Defender
* Malwarebytes Ani-Malware
*Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit

Computer & system:
Lenovo laptop 64-bit x 64-based processor
i7-4700HQ CPU @ 2.4GHz
installed RAM: 8.0 Gb
Windows Edition: Windows 10 Home

Thanks
Patrick

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Install Ccleaner (available from filehippo,) and clean cache, registry, and examine all startup items, and programs.

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Thanks,djohnson. I should have mentioned that I did use CCleaner and followed the default cleaning process, including the registry. Made no discernible difference.

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Thanks,djohnson. I should have mentioned that I did use CCleaner and followed the default cleaning process, including the registry. Made no discernible difference.

I would not expect CCleaner to help at all –snake oil! Could you have a hardware problem?

Don

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Below is the CCleaner report on my Startup:
42847-CC-Startup

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Below is the CCleaner report on my Startup:
42847-CC-Startup

You can get rid of everything except for ccleaner, and malwarebytes. All the other stuff is useless.

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Really??
Dashlane is my online password manager, I use that all the time. Drobox is syncing every 15 minutes, I need that. And the Evernote clipper I use everyday to grab stuff off web pages. So I think I need to keep those.
But the rest can go? I know nothing so I’m going to trust you on this, but isn’t akamai, for example, some key part of fetching stuff off the web?
Thanks very much for looking at this for me.

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Below is the CCleaner report on my Firefox:

42848-CC-Firefox

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You mentioned fan speed; excess heat will slow everything down in an effort to produce less heat. When was the last time you cleaned the laptop?

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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What does Task Manager say about CPU and memory use? Right click on the Task Bar, bottom of screen, and select Task Manager > Processes.

cheers, Paul

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Thanks Paul. I have tried to do screen grabs of the task manager. Obviously it’s hard to grab at the moment of heavy processing, and the list is much longer than my screen, so stuff is missing.

42856-Task-manager

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I have tried to do screen grabs of the task manager

Use the Windows Snipping Tool and take a window snip, save as PNG and post.

cheers, Paul

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I had the same issue after upgrading to the 1511 version of Windows 10. Eventually traced it to Windows re-indexing all file on my 2 HDDs. You could try leaving the PC on overnight for a couple of nights. This is what I did. Seems like the indexing is only done when computer is idle. A couple of nights and the indices were done and I have a quiet PC again. Hope this might help.

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42857-Task-man-windows

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What does Task Manager say about CPU and memory use? Right click on the Task Bar, bottom of screen, and select Task Manager > Processes.

cheers, Paul

I had the same problem (wife’s computer), so tech support under pressure. TaSK MANAGER WAS GOOD AT IDENTIFYING THE BASIC PROBLEM – 100% DISK BUSY. I sorted the process list by clicking the Disk column header in task list. After a while, I noticed that Edge (browser) was almost always near the top of the list, although did not seem to have a higher Disk usage than anything else. After 2 days of down time and trying several Microsoft tools (did not understand the reports), and turning off every process I could think of, (computer so slow it was useless), I finally decided to switch to Chrome. After making Chrome the default browser, the problem did not occur again. … Just saying …

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Patrick, in Task Manager, if you move your mouse over any of the headings (e.g. Disk) and click it will sort by that column. You will then see the highest users of the (in the example) disk. Then all the relevant items will be on one page. Looks like you need to do it for disk and cpu.

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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Thank you, I will try to screen-capture this, during an operation which winds up the processor.

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Patrick, I just went through the slow down thing and I found that the big upgrade of Windows 10 didn’t install properly and therefore, nothing worked quite right, including slow downs in page loading, or net pages. I normally use FireFox, but I tried using IE and Edge and all had problems. I got tired of trying to fix it and because I have a service contract with Best Buy, I took it in and told them to fix it. And basically it was the upgrade, the redid it and now everything works well. You might want to look at that.

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Patrick, I just went through the slow down thing and I found that the big upgrade of Windows 10 didn’t install properly and therefore, nothing worked quite right, including slow downs in page loading, or net pages. I normally use FireFox, but I tried using IE and Edge and all had problems. I got tired of trying to fix it and because I have a service contract with Best Buy, I took it in and told them to fix it. And basically it was the upgrade, the redid it and now everything works well. You might want to look at that.

I have found out on my new i7/ 12 gig RAM/ 1T drive using AVG (paid version) was slowing the machine down drastically.
Like 90-100% HD activity all the time and 70-80% CPU usage. I was getting a pause and a lag opening programs etc.
uninstalled it using Revo and all is perfect now.
This did happen after I had the 1511 update installed. There have been other complaints on AVG many times before.
SO, watch your Virus programs. WebRoot does not do that.

ALl I’m running now is WIndows Defender, Malwarebytes, and CCleaner.

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Thanks to everyone for their input. Feedback:
1. (amateur) examination of the Task Manager doesn’t seem to produce an obvious culprit. I will post a new capture shortly, with sorted columns.
2. Andy Bridle: I have seen my disk running when the computer is idle for a long period, so I guess I may also have gone through the re-indexing. I don’t think this is the cause of my problem, however, because that process is supposed to pause while the computer is in use. But I will leave the computer on for a few nights anyway. Thanks.
3. DRN: I have never used AVG. Defender and Malwarebytes Anti-Virus and Anti-Exploit. From the start I wondered if Malwarebytes was the culprit, but the absence of confirmation from loungers is significant.
4. Oldgeezer: I will look into the upgrade issue, although I think my problems preceded that rollout.
Patrick

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Below are two captures of the Task Manager. Firefox seems to be by far the main memory user, and when it is leading a complex page the memory usage is around 48%. Thank you.

42885-ad242886-ad3

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I upgraded to W10 as soon as it was made available to me, and was delighted to find that i experienced none of the problems that many users were talking about. It was literally perfect for several months.
Three weeks ago, I started to hear my fan running more frequently, and now all the time. Everything is slower, particularly Firefox. Shut down takes several minutes.
I wish I could identify some change in software or computer setup that coincides, but the only possibility is the addition of Adobe Premiere Elements 13 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 13 at around the time the slowdown started. However, these programs are not in the startup menu and are used less than once a week.

————————–SNIP——————————————————————————————————————-

Computer & system:
Lenovo laptop 64-bit x 64-based processor
i7-4700HQ CPU @ 2.4GHz
installed RAM: 8.0 Gb
Windows Edition: Windows 10 Home

Thanks
Patrick

bbearren mentioned Fan Speed and CPU heat as an area to check. You thanked him but didn’t mention if you actually checked that the vent intakes and exhaust are clear of lint/hair/dust and if not, cleaned them. You can also open the laptop back and check the CPU fan and heat-sink for dust buildup.
My wife’s laptop displayed exactly the same problems as yours – (operating slowly, very hot exhaust plus sometimes it would suddenly shut off) – a physical dusting & cleaning of the air vents solved the problem.

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Not all but most laptop’s require a lot of disassembly to get to the CPU heat-sink and fan. Its a very difficult and delicate procedure and not recommended unless you really know what you are doing. I would stick to blowing out the vents with a can of compressed air.

Jerry

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I wish I could identify some change in software or computer setup that coincides, but the only possibility is the addition of Adobe Premiere Elements 13 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 13 at around the time the slowdown started.

I would uninstall and see if there is any change.

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When the machine is slow, you want to look at task manager–>Processes tab and see if any task is generating high CPU usage. If that is the same task each time, then you have ID’d the problem.

Your 8GB RAM should be enough for everything you seem to be running. Remember, Windows will swap tasks out of memory if it needs more. If it has to do this on a very frequent basis, then that will slow your computer down.

Another possibility is maybe your hard drive has errors and is recovering often. Check the SMART info and see what shows up.

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