Well that's about what I was expecting you'd see...
First, start with getting her more memory, I'm amazed it'll even run and
start a browser with only 4gb of ram. Firefox/Chrome alone uses a good
8-20gb of ram at a time for my normal usage, anything else will just sit in
swap/pagefile (which is why your disks are running overtime). I'd say no
less than 16gb for any reasonable modern use, or if her I'd divorce you for
less.
Second, get rid of the spinner disk, or at least move it to a role as a
secondary drive for storage. Putting the OS on any SSD will make it feel
like lightning comparatively. If you can, put an m.2 directly in a pci-e
slot with a slot adapter, that'll be your fastest choice, or any sata-based
SSD as a fallback.
Between ram and new ssd, it should rip even with an older processor.
You can probably reinstall the dell image clean downloading it from dell
and keep using the oem key (they're baked into the hardware), but they're
usually riddled with crapware and demos.. You're better off getting a clean
win10 build for $7 bucks from gkeys.
-mb
On Thu, Jul 13, 2023 at 9:38 AM Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss <
plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
> Thank you to all who replied.
>
> I spent over an hour on trying to figure this out.
>
> I opened the Event Viewer and discovered the system was using 94% of
> memory and 100% of the disk in idle mode.
>
> This computer is running Windows 10 pro with 4GB of ram and and 4 cores
> and 4 threads. Is has a rust spinner.
>
> This is my wife's computer and she uses it for limited email, some
> google searching, and mostly to watch YouTube. This computer gets used
> very little.
>
> It has been slow from the beginning.
>
> One of the issues was once the computer went into sleep mode it would
> take forever to wake up so I turned off sleep mode.
>
> What I found was hundreds of things running in the background. Not sure
> why and it was unclear what was the memory hog.
>
> I was puzzled what was going on with the HD. Disk properties showed
> 825GB of 915GB free. I tried to scan and it said the disk had issues.
> So I let it troubleshoot and it fixed it in about 10 minutes. It did not
> report what the actual issue was.
>
> I monkeyed with the background processes and got the memory usage down
> to 86%.
>
> I know next to nothing about managing windows so I do not want to monkey
> with it much more.
>
> At this point I am thinking of creating a reinstall disk or USB and
> while I'm at it instating a SSD. Newegg has some really good deals on
> SSD.
>
> Since this is a Dell computer I suspect the Win install will not
> complain about the different HD.
>
> Will an OEM install require a key?
>
> Any thoughts are most welcome.
>
> Keith
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 2023-07-07 17:06, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> > Thank you so much!! Might be a couple days before I can work on it
> > again. I'll let you know how things go.
> >
> >
> > On 2023-07-07 15:40, Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> >> Task manager and/or Resource Manager should show you where your
> >> bottlenecks lie, but sounds like either disk (spinner vs ssd), memory,
> >> or cpu is getting pegged. This should show you what processes are
> >> using said cpu/memory/io, either kill them, or feed them more hardware
> >> resources. The sysinternals tools like process explorer and such are
> >> also helpful in seeing applications and/or system processes freaking
> >> out, including more hidden ones.
> >>
> >> If still a spinner disk, the best thing you could do is get her any
> >> SSD to run the OS and primary apps on alone.
> >>
> >> Could be windoze is just trashed after a while with applications
> >> coming and going, upgrading, breaking stuff, etc. Might be worth
> >> trying a clean restore of the system and/or wiping the disks with
> >> zero's to reset state ala fragmentation or if ssd, needing a reset
> >> with secure erase.
> >>
> >> -mb
> >>
> >> On Fri, Jul 7, 2023 at 2:29 PM Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss
> >> <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> This is mostly off topic given this is a Linux List.
> >>>
> >>> I have two separate work areas in my house. I have my home office
> >>> which
> >>> is doing well. I am using my Linux Ubuntu desktop to send this
> >>> email.
> >>> My Linux machine is hardwired. This is my main box. I also have a
> >>> Win
> >>> 10 Pro laptop that I use to make and edit YouTube videos. My
> >>> editing
> >>> software only works on Win and MAC. This laptop is connected via
> >>> WIFI.
> >>> No Problems. The O/S loads reasonably fast. My video editing
> >>> software
> >>> loads reasonably fast and the rendering process takes a bit but not
> >>> too
> >>> bad. This is a 6 year old HP - nothing fancy and it works.
> >>>
> >>> My wife's office in another spare bedroom and she has a Dell
> >>> mini-tower
> >>> Win 10 ... I want to say pro as well.
> >>>
> >>> Here is where I need help. My wife's dell is very slow and has
> >>> trouble
> >>> with loading Firefox and it takes a while to load YouTube videos.
> >>> Even
> >>> windows takes a while to load which make me think it is a local
> >>> problem
> >>> (the Dell box).
> >>>
> >>> I am reaching out because I do not know how to troubleshoot this
> >>> issue.
> >>>
> >>> Any help much appreciated.
> >>>
> >>> Keith
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