Slow Running Windows 7 Computer

[HansV]

I'm afraid I have no idea - sorry!

[hlewton]

Hans you're not the only one since my searches have all come up empty and the fellow who builds them also has no clue. The only thing I know for sure is it's happening. I thought at one point that I had it solved when running Vipre Rescue removed 1 threat but that quickly changed so I tried running it again and no help at all. It's just a pain to have to boot and them immediately reboot but so far that has been the only thing that works 100% of the time. Hope that doesn't change.

[Leif]

Well I wanted to revisit this because the computer still runs slow and it's not just Ccleaner that runs slowly. I have checked the CPU usage using the Task Manager when it is running slow and it shows nothing out of the ordinary as far as I can tell. The strange thing, and what I to mention again, is that if after the original boot up in the morning if I immediately reboot the machine everything runs super fast as it always did before this problem occurred. Any thoughts on why a reboot would make the computer run as it should? What could a reboot accomplish that the original boot up does not?

Is your 'first boot of the day' a cold boot (from power down) and your 'reboot' a restart without powering down?
If so, it sounds more like a hardware issue to me. Possibly.

[PJ_in_FL]

Well I wanted to revisit this because the computer still runs slow and it's not just Ccleaner that runs slowly. I have checked the CPU usage using the Task Manager when it is running slow and it shows nothing out of the ordinary as far as I can tell. The strange thing, and what I to mention again, is that if after the original boot up in the morning if I immediately reboot the machine everything runs super fast as it always did before this problem occurred. Any thoughts on why a reboot would make the computer run as it should? What could a reboot accomplish that the original boot up does not?

Is your 'first boot of the day' a cold boot (from power down) and your 'reboot' a restart without powering down?
If so, it sounds more like a hardware issue to me. Possibly.

I agree.

Back to my original suggestion, Passmark offers a free utility to check the health of the disk drives on your system.

Suggestions:
1. Download and run the DiskCheckup utility if compatible with the drives in your system (i.e. NOT SCSI or RAID).
2. Examine the system events for anything unusual using Event Manager
3. Open up your PC and, with appropriate ESD-prevention measures (e.g. grounded wriststrap, etc.), clean the dust out of the system, clean any filters and the blades of the fans, reseat the memory modules and cables, look for any capacitors (tall, cylindrical parts) that look expanded or have bubbled plastic outer coating indicating signs of overheating.
4. Take to you PC guy and get the best offer on a trade-in for an upgrade.

[DaveA]

Any thoughts on why a reboot would make the computer run as it should? What could a reboot accomplish that the original boot up does not?

Something just may be started once a day and the second boot it does not start up?

You might do a Task Manager list after the first boot and the another after the second boot and see what is different?
Check both Processes and Services.

[hlewton]

Well I wanted to revisit this because the computer still runs slow and it's not just Ccleaner that runs slowly. I have checked the CPU usage using the Task Manager when it is running slow and it shows nothing out of the ordinary as far as I can tell. The strange thing, and what I to mention again, is that if after the original boot up in the morning if I immediately reboot the machine everything runs super fast as it always did before this problem occurred. Any thoughts on why a reboot would make the computer run as it should? What could a reboot accomplish that the original boot up does not?

Is your 'first boot of the day' a cold boot (from power down) and your 'reboot' a restart without powering down?
If so, it sounds more like a hardware issue to me. Possibly.

Yes it is. It is after the computer has been off all night. If I power it down or reboot after the first boot up of the day, doesn't matter which, it will reboot fine. It seems this slowness only happens after the computer has been powered off for multiple hours like over night.

[hlewton]

Well I wanted to revisit this because the computer still runs slow and it's not just Ccleaner that runs slowly. I have checked the CPU usage using the Task Manager when it is running slow and it shows nothing out of the ordinary as far as I can tell. The strange thing, and what I to mention again, is that if after the original boot up in the morning if I immediately reboot the machine everything runs super fast as it always did before this problem occurred. Any thoughts on why a reboot would make the computer run as it should? What could a reboot accomplish that the original boot up does not?

Is your 'first boot of the day' a cold boot (from power down) and your 'reboot' a restart without powering down?
If so, it sounds more like a hardware issue to me. Possibly.

I agree.

Back to my original suggestion, Passmark offers a free utility to check the health of the disk drives on your system.

Suggestions:
1. Download and run the DiskCheckup utility if compatible with the drives in your system (i.e. NOT SCSI or RAID).
2. Examine the system events for anything unusual using Event Manager
3. Open up your PC and, with appropriate ESD-prevention measures (e.g. grounded wriststrap, etc.), clean the dust out of the system, clean any filters and the blades of the fans, reseat the memory modules and cables, look for any capacitors (tall, cylindrical parts) that look expanded or have bubbled plastic outer coating indicating signs of overheating.
4. Take to you PC guy and get the best offer on a trade-in for an upgrade.

I'll try all of these suggestions but the computer isn't even a year old yet so I don't think I need to trade it in but having the builder examine all the other stuff you mentioned may be well worth it.

[hlewton]

Any thoughts on why a reboot would make the computer run as it should? What could a reboot accomplish that the original boot up does not?

Something just may be started once a day and the second boot it does not start up?

You might do a Task Manager list after the first boot and the another after the second boot and see what is different?
Check both Processes and Services.

Is there a way to print these out? I just looked and don't see a print option.

[Rudi]

Have a look at these two options...

1. How to Print the List of Running Processes in Windows 7 & Windows 8
2. How to Print the Windows Task Manager

[hlewton]

Have a look at these two options...

1. How to Print the List of Running Processes in Windows 7 & Windows 8
2. How to Print the Windows Task Manager

Thank you I'll look at those links.

[hlewton]

I agree.

Back to my original suggestion, Passmark offers a free utility to check the health of the disk drives on your system.

Suggestions:
1. Download and run the DiskCheckup utility if compatible with the drives in your system (i.e. NOT SCSI or RAID).
2. Examine the system events for anything unusual using Event Manager
3. Open up your PC and, with appropriate ESD-prevention measures (e.g. grounded wriststrap, etc.), clean the dust out of the system, clean any filters and the blades of the fans, reseat the memory modules and cables, look for any capacitors (tall, cylindrical parts) that look expanded or have bubbled plastic outer coating indicating signs of overheating.
4. Take to you PC guy and get the best offer on a trade-in for an upgrade.

I'm not exactly sure what I am supposed to see but I ran the short self test with no errors and the status of the disk is listed at OK on the Devise Info tab and everything is listed as OK on the Smart Info tab. If there were something wrong does it jump out at you in red or anything like that?

[PJ_in_FL]

I'm not exactly sure what I am supposed to see but I ran the short self test with no errors and the status of the disk is listed at OK on the Devise Info tab and everything is listed as OK on the Smart Info tab. If there were something wrong does it jump out at you in red or anything like that?

Yes, parameters that are marginal or out-of-family will show clearly. If everything on the Smart Info tab shows "OK" then that's not the source of the slow down. Sorry to take you down that rabbit hole

Still may be flaky memory or other hardware. If the check of the running processes that Dave suggested doesn't show anything, then having the PC guy check the hardware may be the next step. If the PC guy is nice, he'll do a temporary swap out of the memory modules with similar modules to see if that changes anything. That would be my first step -- IF the insides of this "less than a year old" PC is really clean and not full of cat hair!

Good luck!

[hlewton]

I'm not exactly sure what I am supposed to see but I ran the short self test with no errors and the status of the disk is listed at OK on the Devise Info tab and everything is listed as OK on the Smart Info tab. If there were something wrong does it jump out at you in red or anything like that?

Yes, parameters that are marginal or out-of-family will show clearly. If everything on the Smart Info tab shows "OK" then that's not the source of the slow down. Sorry to take you down that rabbit hole

Still may be flaky memory or other hardware. If the check of the running processes that Dave suggested doesn't show anything, then having the PC guy check the hardware may be the next step. If the PC guy is nice, he'll do a temporary swap out of the memory modules with similar modules to see if that changes anything. That would be my first step -- IF the insides of this "less than a year old" PC is really clean and not full of cat hair!

Good luck!

LOL I'll guarantee there isn't a cat hair anywhere near it, not even a dog hair anymore since it's been 5 years since I had one. Still I'm sure there is dust of some sort in there as I always find when opening one up. Thanks for your help.

[hlewton]

I printed out the task manager’s list of running processes and to the best of my knowledge I believe I have identified a couple differences between the first boot up and a reboot. I have no idea if anything I have found is of any significance but I will try to list them here starting with listing the processes that are different then I’ll list the difference in the processes that are the same but with much different memory usage.

Running Slow there is 1 Extra instance of conhost.exe running with 5,852 memory usage.
Running Normal there are SearchProtocolHost.exe and SearchFilterHost.exe running.

I’ll list Slow Running vs. Normal Running memory usage for the following processes:
System 15,828 vs. 748
MsMpEng.exe 67,288 vs. 111,288
svchost.exe 247,780 vs. 183,236
SearchIndexer.exe 29,484 vs. 14,704

The svchost.exe listed above was chosen from those that were close to each other in the lists I was comparing. I am not sure if they are an exact comparison or not or even how I could have done that because there many of them listed and not all are listed in the same order from one boot to the other.

Again I certainly have no idea if any of this is significant but maybe some else does.

[HansV]

I don't think memory usage means a lot - it changes all the time.

[hlewton]

Thanks Hans but it didn't give anything else to list except PID, Session Name, and Session # and I have no idea if any of those would be useful or not.

[HansV]

In the Processes tab, select View > Select Columns.
Tick the check boxes for CPU and CPU time, then click OK.

CPU tells you how much of the processor capacity is used by each process (as a percentage of total capacity). By clicking on the heading you can sort on this column. Clicking the heading again reverses the sort order. Processes with a large CPU value use a lot of the processor capacity.

You will see one dummy process "System Idle Process". This is not a real process, it merely shows how much of processor capacity is NOT in use at the moment. So for instance 97% "usage" by System Idle Process is nothing to worry about - it means that 97% of CPU capacity is currently unused.

CPU time displays the total time used by each process since it last started. Again, clicking the header sorts the column. This enables you to see which processes use a lot of CPU time overall.

Remark: since most CPUs nowadays have multiple cores, total CPU time increases more rapidly that you might expect. For instance, if you have a quad-core CPU, total CPU time will increase by 4 seconds every second since each core counts as a separate processor.

[StuartR]

I wonder if SearchIndexer.exe could be your problem. Can you try turning off search indexing for a while and see if this cures your performance problem.

[hlewton]

In the Processes tab, select View > Select Columns.
Tick the check boxes for CPU and CPU time, then click OK.

CPU tells you how much of the processor capacity is used by each process (as a percentage of total capacity). By clicking on the heading you can sort on this column. Clicking the heading again reverses the sort order. Processes with a large CPU value use a lot of the processor capacity.

You will see one dummy process "System Idle Process". This is not a real process, it merely shows how much of processor capacity is NOT in use at the moment. So for instance 97% "usage" by System Idle Process is nothing to worry about - it means that 97% of CPU capacity is currently unused.

CPU time displays the total time used by each process since it last started. Again, clicking the header sorts the column. This enables you to see which processes use a lot of CPU time overall.

Remark: since most CPUs nowadays have multiple cores, total CPU time increases more rapidly that you might expect. For instance, if you have a quad-core CPU, total CPU time will increase by 4 seconds every second since each core counts as a separate processor.

I used the first method Rudi linked me to in order to print out what I used as a comparison and it was just a *.txt file. I can do the type of sort you suggest but I don't think I can then print it out unless I use the Print Screen function. However I do have one question - I have clicked the options you suggested and am wondering if these options will hold after rebooting? If so I guess I could create new *.txt files to examine.

[hlewton]

I wonder if SearchIndexer.exe could be your problem. Can you try turning off search indexing for a while and see if this cures your performance problem.

I just changed it to Disabled. It was set at Automatic (Delayed Start) I guess I'll see tomorrow if that helped. Thanks.