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Another program I keep seeing is compattelrunner.exe, many many instances together.   See https://www.file.net/process/compattelrunner.exe.html  If you’re on 7 and not intending to go to 10, you don’t need it.  That tells you how to disable it, as well you might want to since “Although not a heavy CPU user, it can monopolize disk I/O for up to 20 minutes at startup”

Search that page for taskschd.msc then the instructions are right afterwards.

[If you’ve got an un-rebuilt Win 7 you might be able to find the update (KB2977759) and uninstall it?]

Just done it. Fingers crossed

WM
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Win7Pro SP1
new Dec 2011
rebuilt Jun 2016
& still going nicely

Doesn’t look like Panda has great detection rates.  I will be looking at other products though since Avast has become serious nagware – “we’ve found 2000 broken registry items and 14 security holes – so buy the full version”

WM
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Win7Pro SP1
new Dec 2011
rebuilt Jun 2016
& still going nicely

[WoollyMammoth]

Om my own machine’s slow-to-start problem, in spite of fixing the huge log files issue, from time to time it was remaining slow.

Looking at the Performance Monitor I found many (50+?) tasks associated with Avast AV with large read-write figures.  I have no idea why but turning the AV off before shutdown and then turning it back on well after starting up or only when I go on the net does make the machine a lot more responsive.

 

WM
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Win7Pro SP1
new Dec 2011
rebuilt Jun 2016
& still going nicely

• This reply was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by WoollyMammoth.

WSMartinM wrote:

It was the (huge) log files that were causing the problem.

Thanks for that, WoollyMammoth !

The PC is rejuvenated

Martin

Great. I love it when a plan comes together.

WM
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Win7Pro SP1
new Dec 2011
rebuilt Jun 2016
& still going nicely

[Elly]

One tip is, start Resource Monitor straight after you start the machine, and keep it running, then you can switch to it more easily and help catch stuff

WM
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Win7Pro SP1
new Dec 2011
rebuilt Jun 2016
& still going nicely

• This reply was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by Elly.

I had a couple of Win7 machines grind to a near halt.  I thought it was Avast, but the problem continued when I deleted it.  I even considered going to W10 (you know things are bad…)  Eventually I happened across an apparently known problem M$ have not fixed.

First question to you is, is the disk light on, possibly nearly permanently, while you’re waiting and at other times too?  Problem is, whatever’s going on almost certainly doesn’t appear as a Task yet the CPU % is high.   Because it’s probably a Service that’s causing the problem.

With the disc on (or even not), see what is being written to/read from the disc.  Do Ctrl-Alt-Delete and select Start Task Manager.  Select Performance tab, then Resource Monitor button.  Here you can noodle around to see what’s going on with your machine. Sorting the disc activity by different categories can help clarify. e.g. sort first Disk Activity window by Total B/s.  Then when you get a clue as to the area/folders of disk being used, then sort by File.

In my case I found a bunch of files being accessed at C:\Windows\Logs\CBS   Searching the net I found that there’s a known bug (possibly fixed in 10??!) where the machine builds ever-increasing .log files, then when they get too large, the opsys decides to compress them, into .cab files.  These log files and cab files take a huge amount of space (several GB not uncommon) and more to the point in terms of machine responsiveness, the task doing the compression seems to take an excessively high priority and thus slows the machine down.  From my observation, the disc light is usually flashing, but not always, as the task seems to quite and come back every now and then.

All I did was delete all the files in that directory except CBS.log and FilterList.log, problem gone.

Even if it’s not this, then the same Resource Monitor screens can with some imaginative sleuthing help you find what’s going on.

Good luck

WM
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Win7Pro SP1
new Dec 2011
rebuilt Jun 2016
& still going nicely

2 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, SueW

IreneLinda,

A thought, on a different track from the above posts – re your comment on the hard drive light?  Does the machine run slower when the noise is on?  It’s possible there’s nothing wrong with the disc and perhaps it’s a fan noise.  Depends where the temperature sensor is.

Couple of places to look (anyway): (you did say Win 7 ?)

• Ctrl-Alt-Delete to get Task Manager up
• Select Start Task Manager
• Go to Performance tab
• Toward the bottom of that window, click Resource Monitor
• Click the header bars on the left to open the sub-displays
• Open the Disk display in that manner
• Select the header of the Write column which will sort that in order of processes which are writing to the disc, max rate at the top.  If the machine isn’t really doing much, those figures should be relatively low (discs write fast of course, so 10,000 to 100,000 B/sec won’t be unusual.  What you’re looking for is a process or processes that are accessing files with very high B/sec figures.
• Even if not, those displays may help you troubleshoot

Let us know if you find anything

 

WM
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Win7Pro SP1
new Dec 2011
rebuilt Jun 2016
& still going nicely

Final word.  It settled down to starting OK, this was some time after the last Avast update.  Had also stopped doing MS updates.  Then I went and did a cleanmgr.exe (Disk Cleanup) and cleaned up everything including system files.  To my surprise (which I haven’t seen before) after this it went into “Configuring Windows xx% Do not turn off” on shutdown, then of course ditto on start-up, which now took ages – probably an hour at the 100% stage!, followed by “Clean-up in progress do not turn off”, which took about 3 hours and I thought had hung.  The total disc usage reduction was 3.8 GB (!) stated by Cleanup.  This does seem to have done something, the machine starts and shuts down quicker and the wifi also starts quicker.  Weird.

WM
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Win7Pro SP1
new Dec 2011
rebuilt Jun 2016
& still going nicely

Yes I have, thanks, but have not really got any clear answer as to why. The Woody site reports of multiple AVs having trouble with network connectivity is the closest I’ve got, hence my experiment (successful) with trying stopping Avast.  I may try a full uninstall and thorough purge of Avast followed by a reinstall.

WM
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Win7Pro SP1
new Dec 2011
rebuilt Jun 2016
& still going nicely

Good idea, I’ll try that next time I forget to stop Avast first and it hangs

WM
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Win7Pro SP1
new Dec 2011
rebuilt Jun 2016
& still going nicely

Update.  Updated Avast engine. No change.  Still re-starts fine if you shut down Avast before shuttign down the machine.  If you don’t shut down Avast first, there’s about a 40% chance of a hang on re-start.  I think it’s time to take it up with Avast…

WM
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Win7Pro SP1
new Dec 2011
rebuilt Jun 2016
& still going nicely

Thanks. Having had no startup hangs after stopping Avast before shutdown, I then had done the most recent Win 7 Avast update and reverted to not stopping Avast before shutdown.  All went well for about a week, then yesterday it hung again (it’s that random).  I will recheck the latest Avast update in a W7 context. Incidentally, down that link, there are problems installing the latest Avast + 1903.

WM
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Win7Pro SP1
new Dec 2011
rebuilt Jun 2016
& still going nicely

Turning Avast off before shutdown seemed to work for a while.  Then had a recent Avast engine update and have tried not turning it off, and so far looks to be starting the wifi OK on boot-up.  He said, tempting fate…

WM
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Win7Pro SP1
new Dec 2011
rebuilt Jun 2016
& still going nicely

Hmmm, thinks, gonnae hef ta change last line of ma sig!

WM
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Win7Pro SP1
new Dec 2011
rebuilt Jun 2016
& still going nicely

Cesar, thanks, will check.

Re this and the other, I don’t really see why either of these woudl lead to a change in behaviour.  So far the Avast shutdown before machien shutdown seems to be working.  Having just said that of course….  [/sods law]

WM
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Win7Pro SP1
new Dec 2011
rebuilt Jun 2016
& still going nicely