Slow Windows Box

[techlists at phpcoderusa.com]

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 at 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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