Hi,

I have one Win10 laptop. Other laptops have earlier versions of Windows.

A good friend asked me, why is a program he uses, very slow on his
Win10 PC?

Note: He does not use any anti-virus apps except Window's Defender.

He said he has ample memory and his PC is not slow, but he did not
know the exact specs.

I told him to make sure there is nothing running in the background he
doesn't need. I know you can see a list of running tasks via Task Manager,
but I don't know how you can determine which are not necessary.

Thank You in advance, John

On Fri, 29 Jul 2022 15:35:19 -0400, jaugustine@verizon.net wrote:

>Hi,
>
> I have one Win10 laptop. Other laptops have earlier versions of Windows.
>
> A good friend asked me, why is a program he uses, very slow on his
>Win10 PC?
>
> Note: He does not use any anti-virus apps except Window's Defender.
>
> He said he has ample memory and his PC is not slow, but he did not
>know the exact specs.
>
> I told him to make sure there is nothing running in the background he
>doesn't need. I know you can see a list of running tasks via Task Manager,
>but I don't know how you can determine which are not necessary.
>
> Thank You in advance, John

What is the program in question? It could just be a bad program or
app. I would look at the memory and processor usage while using the
app. If one has adequate hardware he should not have to worry about
closing background programs and utilities to run a program.

On Fri, 29 Jul 2022 14:04:32 -0600, totsob <totsob@NOSPAMyahoo.com>
wrote:

>On Fri, 29 Jul 2022 15:35:19 -0400, jaugustine@verizon.net wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>> I have one Win10 laptop. Other laptops have earlier versions of Windows.
>>
>> A good friend asked me, why is a program he uses, very slow on his
>>Win10 PC?
>>
>> Note: He does not use any anti-virus apps except Window's Defender.
>>
>> He said he has ample memory and his PC is not slow, but he did not
>>know the exact specs.
>>
>> I told him to make sure there is nothing running in the background he
>>doesn't need. I know you can see a list of running tasks via Task Manager,
>>but I don't know how you can determine which are not necessary.
>>
>> Thank You in advance, John
>
>What is the program in question? It could just be a bad program or
>app. I would look at the memory and processor usage while using the
>app. If one has adequate hardware he should not have to worry about
>closing background programs and utilities to run a program.

Also get him to find out the exact specs, tell you, and post them
here. He may say he has ample memory, but none of can determine
whether it *is* ample unless we know how much it is and what the
program that's *very slow" is..

And what does " very slow " mean? Get him to tell you numbers and post
them here, even if they are approximate.

<SNIP>
>>What is the program in question? It could just be a bad program or
>>app. I would look at the memory and processor usage while using the
>>app. If one has adequate hardware he should not have to worry about
>>closing background programs and utilities to run a program.
>
>
>Also get him to find out the exact specs, tell you, and post them
>here. He may say he has ample memory, but none of can determine
>whether it *is* ample unless we know how much it is and what the
>program that's *very slow" is..
>
>And what does " very slow " mean? Get him to tell you numbers and post
>them here, even if they are approximate.

Hi,

I sent him an email requesting that information and the name of the
program.

He said when he gets back from his trip (out of town), he will let me
know.

When I find out, I will post.

Again, Thanks, John

On 7/29/2022 3:35 PM, jaugustine@verizon.net wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have one Win10 laptop. Other laptops have earlier versions of Windows.
>
> A good friend asked me, why is a program he uses, very slow on his
> Win10 PC?
>
> Note: He does not use any anti-virus apps except Window's Defender.
>
> He said he has ample memory and his PC is not slow, but he did not
> know the exact specs.
>
> I told him to make sure there is nothing running in the background he
> doesn't need. I know you can see a list of running tasks via Task Manager,
> but I don't know how you can determine which are not necessary.
>
> Thank You in advance, John
>

Simple.

It's Windows Defender.

For data-full applications, you can create Exceptions in Windows Defender.
For example, I have something I use for USENET. I have an Exception
to tell Windows Defender to not scan the data folder for it. Then,
if there are any reads or writes, Defender is not scanning them.

I can ONLY do this, if the data type is safe. HTML is turned off.
The content is not particularly executable, in the conventional
sense. Is what I am doing risky ? Absolutely. But the most obvious
risk is not there. There are still un-quantified non-obvious risks.

*******

A performance demo.

Get a copy of Hashdeep. It is a checksum calculator.

Let's say I generate checksums for all 400,000 files on C: .

Hashdeep runs 8x faster if Windows Defender is turned off.
Since the application is data-full, and does more reading
than calculating, it is sensitive to the interference from
Windows Defender. Windows Defender sniffs every... damn... read.

Say instead, I am doing SuperPI and calculating PI to one
million digits. Windows Defender does not affect that.
Windows Defender scans superpi.exe when I first double-click
it, but does not interfere with the calculation part.

I'm only making up these examples, to try to distinguish
among them. Your mileage may vary.

*******

The Spectre/Meltdown mitigation reduces compute performance.
Retpoline was discovered recently to not be enough, but
Microsoft was already doing some sort of funky stack return
which is OK.

Just breathing slows down a computer now, so you have
to withhold your breath :-/ You may think you just
bought a 5GHz processor, but in a sense... you did not...
Taxes, taxes, everywhere.

*******

If you want more guesses, we'll need ProgramName please.

Process Monitor from Sysinternals, is as much as 60x slower
than it used to be. This is either a problem with the
procmon.exe code, or with the ETW subsystem. And this is
just a terrible turn of events, as it means I cannot
make huge traces and work on them.

Paul

On Sat, 30 Jul 2022 10:11:21 -0400, jaugustine@verizon.net wrote:

><SNIP>
>>>What is the program in question? It could just be a bad program or
>>>app. I would look at the memory and processor usage while using the
>>>app. If one has adequate hardware he should not have to worry about
>>>closing background programs and utilities to run a program.
>>
>>
>>Also get him to find out the exact specs, tell you, and post them
>>here. He may say he has ample memory, but none of can determine
>>whether it *is* ample unless we know how much it is and what the
>>program that's *very slow" is..
>>
>>And what does " very slow " mean? Get him to tell you numbers and post
>>them here, even if they are approximate.
>
>Hi,
>
> I sent him an email requesting that information and the name of the
>program.
>
> He said when he gets back from his trip (out of town), he will let me
>know.
>
> When I find out, I will post.

OK.

> Again, Thanks, John

You're welcome. Glad to help.

><SNIP>
>>>What is the program in question? It could just be a bad program or
>>>app. I would look at the memory and processor usage while using the
>>>app. If one has adequate hardware he should not have to worry about
>>>closing background programs and utilities to run a program.
>>
>>
>>Also get him to find out the exact specs, tell you, and post them
>>here. He may say he has ample memory, but none of can determine
>>whether it *is* ample unless we know how much it is and what the
>>program that's *very slow" is..
>>
>>And what does " very slow " mean? Get him to tell you numbers and post
>>them here, even if they are approximate.
>
>Hi,
>
> I sent him an email requesting that information and the name of the
>program.
>
> He said when he gets back from his trip (out of town), he will let me
>know.
>
UPDATE:

I mis-understood my friend. He said the program, "N1MM" (a Ham radio
logging program) is NOT slow.

He said, when he "Restarts" his Windows 10 computer, it takes awhile
(slow).

FYI: The total Physical memory is 4G bytes.
The CPU is an AMD 2GHZ, 4 core.

Task Manager reported 70 tasks running.

Note: My Win10 Dell Inspiron 1520 (when new had WinXP) Task Manager
reported 50 Tasks.

I told my friend, when I restart my Win10 laptop, it takes a while too.
Restarting a WinXP or Win7 PC, my experience, is much faster.

John

On 8/1/2022 12:32 PM, jaugustine@verizon.net wrote:
>> <SNIP>
>>>> What is the program in question? It could just be a bad program or
>>>> app. I would look at the memory and processor usage while using the
>>>> app. If one has adequate hardware he should not have to worry about
>>>> closing background programs and utilities to run a program.
>>>
>>>
>>> Also get him to find out the exact specs, tell you, and post them
>>> here. He may say he has ample memory, but none of can determine
>>> whether it *is* ample unless we know how much it is and what the
>>> program that's *very slow" is..
>>>
>>> And what does " very slow " mean? Get him to tell you numbers and post
>>> them here, even if they are approximate.
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I sent him an email requesting that information and the name of the
>> program.
>>
>> He said when he gets back from his trip (out of town), he will let me
>> know.
>>
> UPDATE:
>
> I mis-understood my friend. He said the program, "N1MM" (a Ham radio
> logging program) is NOT slow.
>
> He said, when he "Restarts" his Windows 10 computer, it takes awhile
> (slow).
>
> FYI: The total Physical memory is 4G bytes.
> The CPU is an AMD 2GHZ, 4 core.
>
> Task Manager reported 70 tasks running.
>
> Note: My Win10 Dell Inspiron 1520 (when new had WinXP) Task Manager
> reported 50 Tasks.
>
> I told my friend, when I restart my Win10 laptop, it takes a while too.
> Restarting a WinXP or Win7 PC, my experience, is much faster.
>
> John

Replace HDD with SSD.

Enable Fast Boot at OS level (kernel only hibernation).
Not a good choice for people who boot both Win and Linux.

Enable Quick Boot at BIOS level.

I bet you can cut down on the delay just a bit.

About the best you can do is ten seconds, five
seconds if you overclock (according to Tomshardware).

The Windows Defender critical file scanner can give the
appearance of slow startup, but then for most users,
they don't really know when boot has "officially stopped"
and it is other crap that has taken over.

Some services have delayed start on purpose. Some services
wait two minutes before they start, to avoid the "chatter"
right after boot finishes.

And tasklist /svc

can help you list what is running. My Win11Home supports that.
In the past, only a Pro SKU supported the listing of services
via the /svc option. But it's worth a try, to see if you've got it.

*******

On Windows 10, SuperFetch is the "SysMain" service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_I/O_technologies#SuperFetch

When an SSD is present, all of that function is pointless.
Perhaps the service could just be disabled.

How an SSD helps, is on seek time. Sequential transfer rate isn't
the whole story. Thus, if you fit a SATA III SSD to a SATA II port,
it's still plenty fast enough.

Paul

On Mon, 01 Aug 2022 12:32:30 -0400, jaugustine@verizon.net wrote:

>><SNIP>
>>>>What is the program in question? It could just be a bad program or
>>>>app. I would look at the memory and processor usage while using the
>>>>app. If one has adequate hardware he should not have to worry about
>>>>closing background programs and utilities to run a program.
>>>
>>>
>>>Also get him to find out the exact specs, tell you, and post them
>>>here. He may say he has ample memory, but none of can determine
>>>whether it *is* ample unless we know how much it is and what the
>>>program that's *very slow" is..
>>>
>>>And what does " very slow " mean? Get him to tell you numbers and post
>>>them here, even if they are approximate.
>>
>>Hi,
>>
>> I sent him an email requesting that information and the name of the
>>program.
>>
>> He said when he gets back from his trip (out of town), he will let me
>>know.
>>
> UPDATE:
>
> I mis-understood my friend. He said the program, "N1MM" (a Ham radio
>logging program) is NOT slow.
>
> He said, when he "Restarts" his Windows 10 computer, it takes awhile
>(slow).

My personal view is that the attention many people pay to how long it
takes to boot is usually unwarranted. Assuming that the computer's
speed is otherwise satisfactory, it is not generally worth worrying
about. Most people start their computers once a day or even less
frequently. In the overall scheme of things, even a few minutes to
start up isn't very important.

Personally I power on my computer when I get up in the morning, then
go get my coffee. When I come back, it's done booting. I don't know
how long it took to boot and I don't care.

However if you do want to address it, it may be because of what
programs start automatically, and you may want to stop some of them
from starting that way. On each program you don't want to start
automatically, check its Options to see if it has the choice not to
start (make sure you actually choose the option not to run it, not
just a "don't show icon" option). Many can easily and best be stopped
that way. If that doesn't work, run MSCONFIG from the Start | Run
line, and on the Startup tab, uncheck the programs you don't want to
start automatically.

However, if I were you, I wouldn't do this just for the purpose of
running the minimum number of programs. Despite what many people tell
you, you should be concerned, not with how *many* of these programs
you run, but *which*. Some of them can hurt performance severely, but
others have no effect on performance.

Don't just stop programs from running willy-nilly. What you should do
is determine what each program is, what its value is to you, and what
the cost in performance is of its running all the time. You can get
more information about these with Internet searches and asking about
specifics here.

Once you have that information, you can make an intelligent informed
decision about what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of.