Windows 10 Win10 runs slow from startup

[Nomad of Norad]

Lately my elderly dad's machine has been taking a really, really long time to get started, and everything runs slow for a good while after startup. This is on an HP Pavilion HPE, model h8-1114, which originally had Win7 on it but that he let update itself to Win10. What should I be looking for? He's ready to mothball it and get a new machine, which is probably overkill since I figure it's just a matter of adjusting something internal.

 

[Sonny]

Had problems with upgrades and went and did a clean install. That made a world of difference for me. I don't know if that would be an answer for you but it might be worth a try. Maybe someone else here can give you a better solution than what I did. I am sure someone here can help you out that has more knowledge than me.

 

[Nomad of Norad]

Well, it ran fine for a good while, its just a few weeks ago it started doing this. I should have posted here about it earlier but I kept getting sidetracked.

 

[Neemobeer]

I would start by looking at the start up in the task manager. You may also have some viruses or malware creating the slow down.

 

[Nomad of Norad]

Is there some kind of diagnostics program from here? I know some places, when there's a problem under the hood (such as a malware that got implanted), they tell me "Run this program we provide and then paste the logs from that to here."

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

If you don't already have CCleaner installed, install and run it.
Run the registry check part too, and you can also use it to look at and disable startup items.

Download and run Defraggler, from the same people as CCleaner.
It will defrag the drives and then you can maintain it by running the file defragmenter once a week (it only takes a few minutes).

Run Malwarebytes to make sure that you don't have any malware.

And you can open the Command Prompt and run Sfc /scannow and see if it can clean up any problems.

Link Removed

Link Removed

Free Anti-Malware Detection & Removal Software

Mike

 

[Nomad of Norad]

Okay, I've done all that stuff... other than I haven't done the disable-startup-items thing and haven't done the sfc /scannow thing. It's still starting up really slow. The splash pane shows a long time, and then when the Win10 logo comes up, the whirling-dots animation goes very, very slow motion. Once it gets to desktop it seems to be regular speed, though.

On the other hand, about as I got to desktop, I spotted a little black notification thing slide out on the lower right saying something about a USB device that had been connected earlier hadn't been closed down correctly before it was disconnected, but the notice went away again before I could finish reading it. oO Could that have anything to do with the issues?

 

[HenkB]

That "Run this program" worries me. It must be removed.
Have you checked the Startup tab in the Task Manager? (Ctrl-Alt Del)
Have you checked the properties of the Edge /Chrome/Safary icons? (right click)
Have you checked the plugins of those browsers?

Are you behind with updates?

 

[Nomad of Norad]

That "Run this program" worries me. It must be removed.
Have you checked the Startup tab in the Task Manager? (Ctrl-Alt Del)
Have you checked the properties of the Edge /Chrome/Safary icons? (right click)
Have you checked the plugins of those browsers?

Are you behind with updates?

I think you misunderstood me on that "Run this program" thing. Back some years ago, there were various go-to forums for when you had, say, some particular malware infection on your machine, and they usually had some house program they'd give you which would go through your system and spit out a textfile listing all the stuff it saw as installed onto your machine, which you would then copy-paste into the forum, and then they'd look at that listing and say "Okay, go into the house program we gave you and checkbox THIS and THIS for removal, then give us the new textfile our house program spits out after that to see if the removal of those worked." THIS is the "Run this program" I was talking about.

"Run this program" = "Unpack our diagnostics app onto your machine and run it."

Except it doesn't seem this forum has such an in-house diagnostics program to install.

Anyway, as I have pointed out above, the machine shows the hardware splash-pane for several minutes, and THEN takes tens of minutes at the "Loading Windows" twirling-dots stage of things, with those twirling dots moving very, VERY slowly. Once it gets to the desktop... an eternity later, things seem to operate at regular speed.

 

[HenkB]

Glad to hear this, because those problem solvers most often introduced more troubles...

Network problems may also slow down start up. Are you on wire or are you using wireless? If on wireless try a cable.
Have you sufficient virtual memory located?
Are there unusual settings in bios (is it booting from the C: drive, is all memory present)
Are there any devices not properly installed? (see exclamation marks in Device Manager),
Are there disk errors? (I don't know your disk type, but many can be tested by Seatools)
If you are using an SSD, there should be free space left, if not it will be dead slow

If none of this helps try the suggestion of Sonny: clean install

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Do check the startup items, it could be that something in there is causing the slow start.
It may be that something is trying to start that just isn't configured correctly.

Otherwise, do as Bochane suggested and reinstall Windows 10, or at least try a refresh.
Backup all your important data first.

Mike

 

[Nomad of Norad]

This is one of those machines that started out as a Windows 7 machine, and that Dad let update itself to Windows 10. There aren't any reinstall disks here, either for Win7 OR for Win10.

To answer a couple of bochane's questions, though: The machine is on a wired Ethernet connection. And no, the drive in the machine is a conventional HDD, not an SSD. I haven't really looked at the other elements, though.

 

[HenkB]

Reinstall may be done without install disks through Settings > Backup and Repair > System Repair

But is not it an update that is being installed?

Henk

 

[Nomad of Norad]

Upon hitting Esc to get to Startup Menu, I've found even THAT wants to be abysmally slow.... as in watch the ANSI-text menus draw on the screen slow enough that you watch each line of text that comprises the interface change one line of text at a time. Anyway, the BIOS screen I see there identifies itself as being by American Megatrends. I don't see any obvious menus in the BIOS dropdowns that mention anything about "virtual memory" settings. When I go to File > System Information, it tells me the processor speed is 3100 MHz, and that I have 8192 MB DDR 3, and that Channel A and Channel B each have 4096 MB. When I go to Storage > Device Configuration, it shows the Hard Drive first, then the others. In Storage > Boot Order, it looks like its set to boot from / check for USB devices first (such as USB Floppy / CD) before going to the SATA drive. Is there a specific pane I should be checking in there to see what "amount of virtual memory" I might have the BIOS launch limited to somehow? oO

Anyway, I've exited out of there with "ignore changes" and am letting it (very very slowly) boot into Windows again.

Edit: well, the only exclamation-point I see in Device Manager is one item under Universal Serial Bus controllers, where it mentions Unknown USB Device (Port Reset Failed).

As for space on the HDD, C: drive shows 43.6 GB used, with 875 GB free, out of a total of 918 GB. D: drive (the HP_RECOVERY partition) shows 10.7 GB used, 1.49 GB free, out of 12.2 GB total. Both of these are NTFS.

If I go to C: Properties, Tools tab and, under the Error checking section click the Check button, it immediately says "You don't need to scan this drive. We haven't found any errors on this drive. You can still scan the drive for errors if you want." I take that to mean there's no problems with the drive.

 

[HenkB]

I am about out of options.

Booting slow, when Windows has not been started, means that the hardware in your system is slow. The only thing, as far as I can see, because hardly nothing is being displayed yet, that can be slow is the disk, including its interface. If the SSD is OK, (maybe it can be tested on a different system) it may be a BIOS update. But I am only guessing.

The virtual memory setting is not in BIOS. It can be changed trough ‘Advanced System Settings' (Windows key + X > System > Advanced System Settings: tab Advanced)

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

If you haven't already tried this start Windows in Diagnostic Mode, (loading only basic drivers and software) and see if the computer still boots slowly.

In the run box type msconfig and in the general tab select "Diagnostic Startup" then click OK and reboot.
See if the problems still persist, it they do then there's a good possibility that it's some kind of hardware issue.

You could start by looking for bad ram or something of that sort, but it could be anything.

There is software that will run diagnostics on the drives, probably you can get them from your drive manufacturer.

Mike

 

[Nomad of Norad]

Well, I walked into the room today to find Dad was partway thru having the machine reinstall Win7 from the factory-restore partition... Grrrrr.... why does he do these sorts of things without asking me if its a good idea or not first? oO Evidently he was poking around in the machine on his own, looking for something, ANYthing, that would make the machine stop being slow... and it asked him something like "Do you want to restore back to Win7?" and he said "Uh, that sounds like it might work, let me try that." >>facedesks<<

I could have already told him that reverting to bare-bones Win7 from scratch wouldn't fix the issue, since BIOS itself was going slow as heck, too, and that's not even something loaded off the hard drive.

Anyway, it's still running slow as heck. Windows slide out slowly, the animations in Solitaire run in slow motion, etc etc. But now I have to reinstall again all things we'd had in place and configured for years, such as Thunderbird and Firefox and the like. >>facedesks again<<

edited to add: I've gone to the Advanced System Settings from within System and it seems Processor Scheduling is set to Programs, and virtual memory is set to 8174MB. (Visual Effects tab is set to "What the computer thinks....", and Data Execution Prevention tab is set to essential Windows programs only.)

Edit2: I am running the Windows Ram Diagnostics routine now.

Edit3: And after the requisite 2 scan passes, it found no troubles with the ram.

 

[HenkB]

Has ever been tried what happens if the Optimized Setting are loaded in Bios? Does it make any difference?

 

[Nomad of Norad]

Well, I did one other thing I should have done weeks ago... I disconnected every USB connection from the machine except the keyboard and mouse. It didn't show any difference in behavior until after I restarted the machine. Problem is, the machine wanted to then do a bazillion Windows updates... but when I finally get booted back into the machine again, everything was right snappy. Oo

It's possible one of the updates sorted it, but I doubt it. Somewhere else I'd seen someone describing a situation exactly the same as mine. His machine was being horrendously slow... until he noticed he had his iPod connected to it via its USB cable. Even tho his iPod wasn't doing anything, just sitting there connected, somehow this was causing his computer to go horrendously slow until he disconnected the iPod's USB cable from the computer. I don't have an iPod connected, though I do have a third-party iPad synch cable (that isn't connected to any iPad) on a USB hub along with some other things. I'm going to have to go through the various USB devices in a process of elimination to see which one might be causing the issue. Or maybe it was just that the USB cables seemed to be not quite snug in one of the USB hubs, such that they seemed to be a mite wiggly. Oo

The strange thing is, I hadn't changed anything back there. That unconnected iPad synch cable had been on the USB hub for ages without trouble, and far as I can remember we hadn't changed anything with the other USB cords in ages either. Just flipping strange. Oo

 

[HenkB]

Being on a distance, I never had found it.

Great!