Windows 7 Windows 7 slows to a crawl with 3rd-party apps installed

reghakr

Essential Member
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I've done a torture test on my Windows 7 32-bit machine. it consists of a Nvidia Geforce 6100 nForce video, Nvidia nForce Networking Controller, Hitachi 200GB drive TSST Corp CD\DVDRW drive, , AMD Athalon 64 Processor 3800+.

I have installed 106 programs, although not all are 3rd-party programs. the 3rd-party programs are installed to a separate partition.

Boot up time has slowed to 1 minute 40 seconds. On my initial "clean" install, boot time was 30 seconds before the icons appeared on the desktop.

Obviously I am very disappointed and believe Microsoft specs are just for running Windows with no 3rd-party apps installed.

My Windows Vista 32-bit has 180 programs installed, again, not all 3rd-party programs and it boots the same exact time as the Windows 7 machine....1 minute 40 seconds.

Has anyone else installed this many apps and did it slow your system down considerably?
 
I've been noticing inconsistent booting but especially shut down times. I don't have nearly that many apps installed though. Many of my apps do run at start up most just temporarily then they go quiet and wait to be needed if i do a selective startup i get consistently short boot times (these are subjective i'm not stopwatching or anything but i suppose i could). I also leave my system on for many days at a time as i'm usually running my processor intensive tasks while i'm asleep. I assumed that was responsible for my inconsistency. The general length of boot i always assumed was due to programs running at startup and taking processor cycles all at the same time thereby slowing boot. You however are far more knowledgeable than i so please shoot out the holes in my theory if you wish it can only further my education.
 
I have 45 installed. I think it is natural that the boot up time will increase a little, although yoyur appears to have increased beyond "little".
Of course, I am aware that you are an experienced user, so, in many cases, as you are aware, when you install programs, they automatically add to the "Startup" which can best be viewed in Msconfig. I remove all of mine as they become installed, as none of them are needed resident. You and I have agreed before that we are a pair of customising "Nutters" but, fwiw, here is a shot of my MSconfig - startup. You can see what was, and what now is


.View attachment 1470
 
I would expect it to be mroe of a factor of startup processing for each installed package, rather than number of packages. IF things like photo programs do nothing at startup, then then only really take up disk space and a few icons on display. It they also require services running, then that another addition to startup time.

The boot time for my XP vs Win7 is about identical. XP has many many icons and W7 only a few.

Ed
 
I have observed this

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I've done a torture test on my Windows 7 32-bit machine. it consists of a Nvidia Geforce 6100 nForce video, Nvidia nForce Networking Controller, Hitachi 200GB drive TSST Corp CD\DVDRW drive, , AMD Athalon 64 Processor 3800+.

I have installed 106 programs, although not all are 3rd-party programs. the 3rd-party programs are installed to a separate partition.

Boot up time has slowed to 1 minute 40 seconds. On my initial "clean" install, boot time was 30 seconds before the icons appeared on the desktop.

Obviously I am very disappointed and believe Microsoft specs are just for running Windows with no 3rd-party apps installed.

My Windows Vista 32-bit has 180 programs installed, again, not all 3rd-party programs and it boots the same exact time as the Windows 7 machine....1 minute 40 seconds.

Has anyone else installed this many apps and did it slow your system down considerably?




I have observed that, as I add more and more applications, the boot time as well as application loading time and function processing time all slow down noticeably. (In general, the computer just runs slower) In the "What is your boot time?" thread, I listed my boot time which was getting close to 2 minutes. It is now over three minutes with a few additional applications since that thread was current. For instance, I have a "magic Jack" telephone that takes over a minute to load all by itself. My HP D1420 printer takes a very long time to load, too.

It slips my mind at the moment, but I had something over 100 installed applications (in "programs" in the start menu) when the "boot time" thread was current. I also am getting more Vista-like screen freezes requiring a re-boot as I load up on applications. I really see too much Vista-like performance in Windows 7.

My computer specs are listed with my avatar if anyone wishes to compare theirs with mine. My machine is near the lower end in " computer horsepower".
 
Are we all expecting too much? Can anyone confirm OSx's behavior in this situation? How about Linux? Maybe I'm just a little timid but that is alot of programs and so many are written to by default run at startup at least momentarily. I think with this much going on conflicts are inevitable. I suppose this is the holy grail of OS design: how to make a necessarily complex system work properly with multiple third party applications that are absolutely not designed to work amongst each other yet still need to be set up to share the same environment. I notice that Reghakr isn't posting about hangs or major problems just lengthened boot times and he is running the 7100 RC as am i. I see that most that have system specs filled out and are experiencing problems not just lengthy boots are running various interim builds.Perhaps Reg can post back to verify if he is experiencing any more sinister problems as he is actively testing this.

I have forty five programs installed and thirty two of those have some type of startup entry. I'm of the opinion that this is what is contributing to my inconsistent boot up/shutdowns.And this is probably true for others as well. Believe me I'm shocked to be defending MacroShaft but i believe this is more related to improperly written code by third party vendors rather than shortcomings of windows.
 
I am beginning to wonder if most of the W7 claims about performance are somewhat marketing based and not so realistic based. Any user with a current system will have lots of stuff installed and probably lots of stuff in their startup processing chain. When W7 is installed, its not an upgrade but a fresh/new install. As a result almost nothing is installed and little in the startup chain. So it may not be surprising that it seems zipper to many who just came from a 100 icon, 45 programs installed previous version of windows.

However after you finally find all your CDs or download files, and get all those other 44 programs installed, all of a sudden it’s way slower.

Most all of the real world tests I have tried, where I can measure some aspect of performance between XP and W7, there has been little different in performance. In more than half the cases W7 was slightly slower.

TextureDnB may be right in that some of this is due to poorly written code for W7, however given our dependence on the applications we need and use, it really doesn’t matter. If we need them, and no update is available, then W7 may bog just like XP does.

Ed
 
For those referring to startup programs, I only have my Anti-Vitus, spyware detector, and personal freewall.

No other programs running at startup.

I believe I've already mentioned this and my Vista computer is the one with two extra startup entries,.
 
Check your "load"

I have some truck driving experience so I am going to describe what is happening here in truck driving terms. (I think it is a reasonable parallel.) The more freight you load onto any given truck, the longer it is going to take to get it up to speed and the slower it is going to be climbing hills. An empty truck just sails along while a fully loaded truck doesn't "just sail" so well.

This is basically what is happening with our computers. This doesn't just apply to start-up because when you open a document or application, Windows searches the entire harddrive to find the item you have requested. The more "stuff" you have on the harddrive, the longer this search takes. There are some ineffective bloatware programs built into Vista and Windows 7 that is intended to relieve this situation, but are quite ineffective and probably actually counter- productive. Prefetch is the biggest offender that comes to mind. Regardless of how much "horsepower" your computer has, the more bits you have on your harddrive, the slower it is going to run. (It is also true, of course, that the more processing power you have, the faster it is going to run the same number of bits on your harddrive.)

Can any of you with much more expertise than I have, contest this explanation?
 
Yeah even xp slowed down once you install more programs, simple as that.

It isn't just to do with a program starting at start up, its in your reg, so for a slower comp like yours it simple can't handle that about me (information) in its brain so speak.

May i ask what gets you up to 100 programs? I just can't imagine it. Must have a few me the same type me program i'm sure..
 
I haven't taken count of exactly how many apps (3rd party or otherwise) that I've installed but I know there are at LEAST 100+ on my main PC (specs are listed).. I haven't noticed any increase in boot time or shut down time.. ;)

It's for reasons like this that I strongly urge people to perform a clean install.. ;)

I find if you do a clean install and efficiently partition your hard drive(s) and do NOT install things like browser toolbars (for example) then things will run consistent for the most part.. ;)

I don't know, maybe it's just me but I really haven't noticed the problem you guys are describing.. However, now that more then 1 or 2 people are saying they have this problem, I will purposely install as many apps as I can to try to duplicate this problem.. I'm very curious now to see what's going on.. I'll report my results back in this thread..
 
Radenight,

Try downloading RevoUninstaller

This will tell you exactly how many programs are installed and maybe more importnat, allow you to uninstall the apps you are going to install.

I have my hard drive partitioned:

C: 30GB
D: 60GB
E: 100GB

All my 3rd-party apps are installed to the E: drive along with all my videos, music, pictures, documents, etc moved from the C: drive.

And, of course, I've done a 'clean" install:)
 
Thats a lot of programs. Its always going to slow down as your HDD fills up and as your registry becomes larger. Buy an SSD, eliminates this all together. Defrag. A good place to look for startup and shutdown errors is by typing Event Viewer in start menu.

I have always maintained on this site that the performance increase from Vista to 7 is negligible.
 
Here is mine

In order to compare apples to apples, I took a revo-uninstaller screenshot of my installed programs per reghakr's suggestion. Of course all applications that are part of windows are in addition to these. I counted 107 programs that Revo Uninstaller is willing to uninstall. (a fine uninstall program, by the way, been using it for a couple of years or so) This does not include any memory intensive or huge GB programs except for Adobe Photoshop. I wonder how much effect installing Autocad 2005 would have.

This does not represent a couple of year's worth of program accumulation. This collection has come about since installing build 7260. It was a format and install clean. If I go 2 years without a "format & reinstall", I would probably have in excess of 200 programs.
 
How does revo uninstaller differ from the normal Programs and Features in Windows? I prefer. Microsoft's Autoruns - more detailed.
But back to the point. You got me pondering. I rarely sit and watch and time my boot process, as it is no real concern to me. But of course, if something is significantly slowing the boot up, then it must axiomatically be using resources
I keep a "raw" installation on the hard disk, as well as the OS I am testing, so became curious. I timed the Raw installation. Bootup 50 seconds. The very used installation 50+/- .
I have no idea how you have your spy program, or antivirus configured, but is it possible you have either on a full scan everytime you start?
 
davehc.

RevoUninstaller examines the installation first gathering information of files, folders, and registry entries created.

It then creates a restore point, runs the actual programs uninstaller, then you click Next to locate any registry entries and/or files and folders left behind.

It's not totally foolproof, but it cleans the computer far better than the programs uninstaller.

Give it a try, I think you'll like it:)

I believe there's truth in John's analogy also, but the major complaint about Windows Vista was the slowness and now that is happening to me on the Windows 7 machine. I admit it is a cheap machine, but definitely meets Microsoft's specs for running Windows 7. I even installed Dreamscene on it and it ran flawlessly.

BTW, I am currently not running Dreamscene, this was on a prior build. My build is the official RC from Microsoft.
 
I think that, the advice you and I often give to others, is becoming appropriate - reinstall. I would not support your idea of an inferior machine. I contiue to use my old (but once superior, Laptop for all my Windows 7 experiments - 1.6 CPU and 2 GBs ram and a dated 7600 graphics card. But Phew, reinstall 100 programs!!!!!!!
 
Hello davehc,

I understand what you're saying about the "clean" re-install.

However, I did this as an experiment to see if the large amount of applications slowed down Windows 7.

You and I probably keep the cleanest machines as we've previously discussed and I apologize for my far over the top comments during that discussion.

I've turned off many services set others to manual, captured every install with Regshot and even went so far as to delete duplicate files in the installation directory that already existed in the c:\windows\system32 directory. I made sure they were the exact same version and file size before deleting them.

As for all my installs, I'm a sucker for graphic applications, DVD rippers and converters, and video and audio converters.

I visited Giveaway of the Day - free licensed software daily. Today: Simpo PDF Creator - Simpo PDF Creator works as a virtual printer in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or any other Windows application. It is a ... and just started installing a program a day.

I can live with this until I get my copy of Windows 7 Pro, but I'm still wondering if the slowdown will occur with a large amount of applications installed.

I know I've read there is a maximum registry size for Windows Servers, but I don't know if there is one for Windows 7.

I paid $399.00 for this E-Machine complete with a 22" widescreen monitor and if I can find a comparable deal with Windows 7 pre-installed, I'd purchase another one in a heartbeat.
 
I've been browsing around and I cannot find any link to a (significant) slowdown, connected with having a large number of programs, apart from my previous comment regarding MsConfig.

With your knowledge, you would have picked up on something that was hanging there, so I doubt I can teach you to "suck Eggs" Doesnt' the Task Manager indicate a runaway program ?

Otherwise I agree. If you have the patience, wait for the final edition.
 
The truck analogy only goes so far. It’s more like a second truck running right beside us, where we only get some wind backlash.

Stuff parked on a disk that has no startup processing or services is mostly just taking up space. There may be a few more icons and folders, but that part is probably pretty small.

Yes, defrags and clean up checks run longer as more stuff arrives, but that really doesn’t affect start up that much. It is amazing how many programs stick stuff in your startup area. I have a small tool I use every day to track that, and turn most all off.

Ed
 
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