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by Tim Zurowski on Mon Jun 18, 2018 10:32 am
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I am still using Win 7x64. My system is an Intel Core i7-3820 @ 3.60GHz with 32 GB RAM. Getting a bit old now, but still a very capable machine and still more than enough for my needs. I always said I would not upgrade to Win 10 unless I started having issues or was finding that Win 7 was no longer functioning properly. Now I can't say for sure that Win 7 is the definite culprit here, but I am now having PC freezing and slow down issues that did not happen 6 months ago. Sometimes my system will completely freeze for over a minute and even up to 3 minutes. I keep a very clean and well maintained machine, so I am thinking that it could simply be driver and software updates that are not sitting well with Win 7; or older software without updates that are not sitting well with Win 7 updates. Maybe I should have stopped downloading Win 7 updates 6 months ago? 

Anyway, apart from my issues, my real question is would an upgrade to Win 10 be a good idea for me now? I have never done an upgrade install for an OS and have always preferred to do a fresh clean install. My fear of a clean install for me now is that it is going to be a tremendously onerous task to rebuild and reinstall my whole system from scratch, and I only have the one PC, which I really cannot be without for more than a day or two. My fear of doing an upgrade over Win 7 is that the same issues will remain. So should I try the upgrade install from Win 7 to Win 10, or should I do a fresh clean install with Win 10? I suppose I could try the upgrade install and if it doesn't work well, then do the clean install.

Any advice and/or thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. :)
 

by Mark Robinson on Mon Jun 18, 2018 11:30 am
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Tim Zurowski wrote:I am still using Win 7x64. My system is an Intel Core i7-3820 @ 3.60GHz with 32 GB RAM. Getting a bit old now, but still a very capable machine and still more than enough for my needs. I always said I would not upgrade to Win 10 unless I started having issues or was finding that Win 7 was no longer functioning properly. Now I can't say for sure that Win 7 is the definite culprit here, but I am now having PC freezing and slow down issues that did not happen 6 months ago. Sometimes my system will completely freeze for over a minute and even up to 3 minutes. I keep a very clean and well maintained machine, so I am thinking that it could simply be driver and software updates that are not sitting well with Win 7; or older software without updates that are not sitting well with Win 7 updates. Maybe I should have stopped downloading Win 7 updates 6 months ago? 

Anyway, apart from my issues, my real question is would an upgrade to Win 10 be a good idea for me now? I have never done an upgrade install for an OS and have always preferred to do a fresh clean install. My fear of a clean install for me now is that it is going to be a tremendously onerous task to rebuild and reinstall my whole system from scratch, and I only have the one PC, which I really cannot be without for more than a day or two. My fear of doing an upgrade over Win 7 is that the same issues will remain. So should I try the upgrade install from Win 7 to Win 10, or should I do a fresh clean install with Win 10? I suppose I could try the upgrade install and if it doesn't work well, then do the clean install.

Any advice and/or thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. :)
Hi Tim,

As long as you asked for any advice, here goes. Mine will definitely not be of a technical nature, but it might help.

I did an update install from Win 7 64 to Win 10 64 on two similar Dell XPS desktop machines. Both worked out faultlessly, and did not upset any functionality of previously installed software. (Photoshop, Capture NX-D, View NX-1,Quickbooks, etc) 

Also, with Win 7, I had a favorite wireless keyboard that wouldn't work no matter what. It worked perfectly with Win 10. I am typing on it now.

With Win 7, I could never successfully update the drivers for my video cards. Win 10, no prob.

My vote, go for it. Others will undoubtedly have more scientific opinions.
Mark Robinson
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by Tim Zurowski on Mon Jun 18, 2018 12:25 pm
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Thanks Mark . . . . . that does help a lot :) I too cannot update the drivers for my video card anymore. It is a NVIDIA geforce GTX 650 Ti. Perhaps it too would update with Win 10. Although, I am not opposed to getting a newer (better) video card.

Question for you: before you did the update install, were you having any issues/problems with Win 7? My main concern is that the issues I am having with Win 7 might carry over to Win 10?
 

by E.J. Peiker on Mon Jun 18, 2018 12:30 pm
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I don;t know what you have already done to get the Win 7 machine working properly again but here would be my steps:

0. Reboot
1.  Run chckdsk /r from the command line on your C drive.  This may take some time
2. Reboot
3. Update or install the latest version of ccleaner
4. Run ccleaner's registry clean 3 times.  Each time have it delete the bad registry entries
5. Run ccleaner's  Cleaner module
6. Rebbot
7. Run Windows Disk Cleanup module - leave the thumbnails box unchecked
8. Run Windows Disk Cleanup module again this time click on the Clean System Files button.  (this one could take as much as a half hour to complete)
7. Defrag the C: drive and all of your data drives
8. Next make sure you aren't running programs in the background that don't need to run all the time.  These are things like Acrobat Reader, Bridge (the default is for Bridge to run in the background all the time which is a big resource hog.  Turn that off in Bridge preferences.
9. run msconfig and under the startup tab, uncheck stuff that doesn't need to run at start-up.  Often there are multiple entries for exactly the same program which means something is using up more resources than it needs to. (keep track of items you turned off so you can turn them on again if there is a problem)
10. Over time, more and more services are turned on, all hog resources.  Go to BlackViper.com, find your OS and turn off all of the stuff under their SAFE column http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/black-vipers-windows-7-service-pack-1-service-configurations/ (keep track of items you turned off so you can turn them on again if there is a problem)
11. Reboot

Your system should now be running as if you had just bought it and installed the programs that are on your computer.
 

by Mark Robinson on Mon Jun 18, 2018 12:39 pm
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Tim Zurowski wrote:Thanks Mark . . . . . that does help a lot :)  I too cannot update the drivers for my video card anymore. It is a NVIDIA geforce GTX 650 Ti. Perhaps it too would update with Win 10. Although, I am not opposed to getting a newer  (better) video card.

Question for you: before you did the update install, were you having any issues/problems with Win 7? My main concern is that the issues I am having with Win 7 might carry over to Win 10?
Cannot recall any significant problems  with Win 7, other than an occasional need to manually turn off/restart, or the ones I previously mentioned. I liked Win 7, but have generally been more satisfied with Win 10 once I found my way around the system. 

I can't imagine Win 7 problems migrating to a new OS, but could be wrong. Good luck.
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by Stuart Clarke on Mon Jun 18, 2018 1:47 pm
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Tim Zurowski wrote:I am still using Win 7x64. My system is an Intel Core i7-3820 @ 3.60GHz with 32 GB RAM. Getting a bit old now, but still a very capable machine and still more than enough for my needs. I always said I would not upgrade to Win 10 unless I started having issues or was finding that Win 7 was no longer functioning properly. Now I can't say for sure that Win 7 is the definite culprit here, but I am now having PC freezing and slow down issues that did not happen 6 months ago. Sometimes my system will completely freeze for over a minute and even up to 3 minutes. I keep a very clean and well maintained machine, so I am thinking that it could simply be driver and software updates that are not sitting well with Win 7; or older software without updates that are not sitting well with Win 7 updates. Maybe I should have stopped downloading Win 7 updates 6 months ago? 

Anyway, apart from my issues, my real question is would an upgrade to Win 10 be a good idea for me now? I have never done an upgrade install for an OS and have always preferred to do a fresh clean install. My fear of a clean install for me now is that it is going to be a tremendously onerous task to rebuild and reinstall my whole system from scratch, and I only have the one PC, which I really cannot be without for more than a day or two. My fear of doing an upgrade over Win 7 is that the same issues will remain. So should I try the upgrade install from Win 7 to Win 10, or should I do a fresh clean install with Win 10? I suppose I could try the upgrade install and if it doesn't work well, then do the clean install.

Any advice and/or thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. :)
Hey Tim,   I actually just went through the same thing.   There is a microsoft.net update that was crashing my win7 big time and slowing everything down.  i was at the point of a full upgrade but it was not in the budget (timing belt and water pump along with a broken rear shock ate that up)  So the route i went I picked up a 1Tb ssd Samsung 860 evo for $330   Then did a fresh install of win 10 on it along with all programs and all of my lightroom files (catalogue and caches and PS scratch disc).   It feels like I got a new computer the overall speed in anything disc related is amazing and I will happily put off the rebuild until next year.  I was able to find a download to thumbdrive option on the microsoft site to get a free copy of win 10,  just unplug all the drives (sd cards included ) and install on the ssd, very quick and simple, best part was my win7 C: drive could be plugged back in so if I couldn't get something to run in the short term could reboot from that drive.  The only issue that was a bit of a mind bender was getting lightroom to recognize all the new drive letters.  I have the same files on two drives that I initially picked the wrong drive and  made the mistake of hitting merge, if that comes up do not do it.  I had to start over once I realized it and took 10 minutes.    
 

by Tim Zurowski on Mon Jun 18, 2018 3:10 pm
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E.J. Peiker wrote:I don;t know what you have already done to get the Win 7 machine working properly again but here would be my steps:

0. Reboot
1.  Run chckdsk /r from the command line on your C drive.  This may take some time
2. Reboot
3. Update or install the latest version of ccleaner
4. Run ccleaner's registry clean 3 times.  Each time have it delete the bad registry entries
5. Run ccleaner's  Cleaner module
6. Rebbot
7. Run Windows Disk Cleanup module - leave the thumbnails box unchecked
8. Run Windows Disk Cleanup module again this time click on the Clean System Files button.  (this one could take as much as a half hour to complete)
7. Defrag the C: drive and all of your data drives
8. Next make sure you aren't running programs in the background that don't need to run all the time.  These are things like Acrobat Reader, Bridge (the default is for Bridge to run in the background all the time which is a big resource hog.  Turn that off in Bridge preferences.
9. run msconfig and under the startup tab, uncheck stuff that doesn't need to run at start-up.  Often there are multiple entries for exactly the same program which means something is using up more resources than it needs to. (keep track of items you turned off so you can turn them on again if there is a problem)
10. Over time, more and more services are turned on, all hog resources.  Go to BlackViper.com, find your OS and turn off all of the stuff under their SAFE column http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/black-vipers-windows-7-service-pack-1-service-configurations/ (keep track of items you turned off so you can turn them on again if there is a problem)
11. Reboot

Your system should now be running as if you had just bought it and installed the programs that are on your computer.
Have done all of that stuff EJ, including the Black Viper stuff, with the exception of defragging my OS drive. I have always been under the understanding that it is not a good idea to defrag a SS drive. Should I do it anyway? I will also check to see if Bridge is running in the background, even though I am pretty sure I stopped that awhile back. I am actually pretty good and pretty savvy at keeping a lean clean running PC. I also have use CCLeaner for many years. 

Is there by any chance that that known Windows update that causes slow downs got installed on my PC? If yes, can you tell me which number it was so I can uninstall it?

I can't be certain, and I know that the Nikon software can be problematic, but I am suspicious that it is View NX2 and/or NXD that may be the culprits. The problems seem tro happen after I use either of them, but this was never a problem in the past.

Just a quick note that you added a "c" to chkdsk /r   When I run it, it says: "chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process" So when I schedule it to run at system restart, nothing happens??
 

by E.J. Peiker on Mon Jun 18, 2018 4:44 pm
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You can defrag an SSD as long as that drive has hardware based TRIM which almost all of them made in the last 5 or 6 years have and most in the last 8. But that won't likely fix your problem.

I would not run any Nikon software at all ever ;)

But unless it is running as a TSR it shouldn't have an impact. Definitely make sure that no Nikon SW is loading during startup using the MSCONFIG command.

If you run chkdsk at system restart, it runs before windows ever loads...
 

by E.J. Peiker on Mon Jun 18, 2018 4:49 pm
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One other thought, if your C: drive is getting pretty full, you could see a big slowdown. Also if you are forcing a big swapfile which means using the disk as RAM due to a lot of programs running or something hogging a lot of system memory, the system will slow to a crawl.
 

by Tim Zurowski on Mon Jun 18, 2018 6:07 pm
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Thanks EJ . . . . . a few things to note:

- I would like not to run any Nikon software and I did completely remove Capture NX-2. I also removed NXD, but it made no difference. If I could find a viewing and culling program that I like as much as View NX2, I would switch, but I have tried a bunch and none work as well as View NX for me. I tried Lightroom, Breeze Browser, Bridge, NXD, etc. and don't like any of them for that purpose. In fact I don't even like having Lightroom installed on my PC (and it isn't).

- I don't know how to determine if my SSD has hardware based TRIM. Can you tell me how to determine that?

- My C: Drive is a Samsung 250 GB with only 55 GB free. Is that enough free space?

- I rarely run more than 2 or 3 programs at a time, and none should be huge RAM users other than perhaps Photoshop when I do stacks of 30+ files.

- Lastly, my PC is not slowing to a crawl, but rather completely freezing up. When it freezes, I have to wait a few minutes before I can do anything at all with it. Once it frees up, it is as fast and smooth as when I first built it.

- I have 32 GB of RAM in it. Right now Task Manager says it is 31711 with 7813 cached, 9032 available and 1405 free. That is with only Chrome open while I am at this site. Next time I do a big stack, I will try to check and see where the RAM usage goes. I would have thought that 32 GB could handle anything I could throw at it. At least it did since I built it years ago.

- No Nikon Software is loading at all. And I have double checked the Adobe software that was running and turned a couple off.
 

by Tim Zurowski on Mon Jun 18, 2018 6:49 pm
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Just had another complete freeze up and it was after doing a stack of over 35 RAW files in Photoshop. So I just checked the RAM usage after the freeze up and now it says: Total 32711, Cached 2304, Available 29637, Free 27403. Is there anyway to see the past usage of RAM while the PC was frozen? Unfortunately I cannot get into Task Manager when things are frozen up. :(
 

by E.J. Peiker on Tue Jun 19, 2018 12:47 pm
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It's pretty clear from what you wrote that you are running out of memory and it is going to a swap file and during that operation it freezes up.  A 32GB system that only has only 9GB available to run programs and only 1.4GB available with only Chrome running has some serious things eating up memory.  That is clearly the issue here.  You definitely need to go into MSCONFIG and start unchecking things that don't need to be running all the time.

One question, are you using Win 7 Home or Professional.  If it's Home, it explains everything and the problem is that Home can only address 16GB.  If that's the case, I don't believe you can upgrade to Professional anymore and you would need to go to Win 10 Pro (not Home).

If it's Pro then you need to figure out where all the memory is going by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del and selecting Task Manager and then Processes and look at the memory usage for all the running processes.  By comparison, I am also running Win 7.1 (Pro) with 32GB and I currently, as I write this, have Chrome(with 7 open tabs), Capture One Pro, Affinity Photo, Photoshop CS6 (with one 42mp image open and 100 history states active), Outlook, and Task Manage open, and I still have 15.4GB free...
 

by Tim Zurowski on Tue Jun 19, 2018 4:00 pm
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That's the thing, I have run msconfig and have assessed the processes in task manager, and there is nothing showing that is using high amounts of RAM. Also you need to read the second figures I posted to see what the typical RAM usage is. I have no idea why it read what it did after my first post. That was after doing a stack in Photoshop, so perhaps there was a bit of residue usage hanging on for awhile after?? Here are two screen shots from just now:
Image
Image
No idea why Chrome has so many processes running, but that is only when it is open. I am using Win 7x64 Professional.
 

by E.J. Peiker on Tue Jun 19, 2018 4:23 pm
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OK, that's totally different than what you wrote, here you have 25GB of RAM free. Next time the system freezes, immediately take a look at the memory and see if there is some process that is eating it all. My system looks the same when Chrome is open.
 

by Tim Zurowski on Tue Jun 19, 2018 6:44 pm
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Not if you look at my second post with a revision to the usage. As I mentioned, there is no way for me to access task manager and see the usage when it freezes. Then when it unfreezes, and I can get in, the usage goes back to normal and there is no indication at all what may be the culprit, I have been checking it for months, and as I say, there is no indication at all. This is why I am stumped about it and feel my last resort is to either do a clean fresh install of Win 7 again or move on to Win 10. I guess my last thing would be to uninstall all the Nikon software and see if that makes a difference. Like I said, I have a sneaky feeling that View NX2 may be the culprit, since it can no longer be updated, but everything else has been. Is it possible that Windows and other updates have made View NX2 incompatible now?
 

by E.J. Peiker on Tue Jun 19, 2018 7:12 pm
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If you do uninstall View, don't just run the uninstaller. Get a deep uninstaller that takes out everything related to the app like Revo Uninstaller.
 

by KK Hui on Wed Jun 20, 2018 12:27 am
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Tim Zurowski wrote:... I have a sneaky feeling that View NX2 may be the culprit, since it can no longer be updated, but everything else has been. Is it possible that Windows and other updates have made  View NX2 incompatible now?
Tim,
I'm running Windows 10 (ver 1803) with Nikon View NX2 (ver 2.10.3 64bit) without any problem whatsoever.
I fresh installed Windows 10 (Home) when it was on free offer then and am happy. It's very stable so far.
Was on Wins 7 previously.
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by E.J. Peiker on Wed Jun 20, 2018 8:52 am
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KK Hui wrote:
Tim Zurowski wrote:... I have a sneaky feeling that View NX2 may be the culprit, since it can no longer be updated, but everything else has been. Is it possible that Windows and other updates have made  View NX2 incompatible now?
Tim,
I'm running Windows 10 (ver 1803) with Nikon View NX2 (ver 2.10.3 64bit) without any problem whatsoever.
I fresh installed Windows 10 (Home) when it was on free offer then and am happy. It's very stable so far.
Was on Wins 7 previously.
Note that the update to 1803 has been bricking some systems.  Two in my family alone, one a Microsoft Surface laptop that the MS store says was wiped clean by the update and another an Acer that appears to have suffered the same fate.
 

by Robert on Wed Jun 20, 2018 10:35 am
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I'm wondering why running SFC/Scannow is rarely mentioned for improving performance. (Start>Search>Type CMD>rt click cmd.exe and select Run as Admin> type sfc/scannow and let run until done.) I found advice for this and it greatly improved performance on my Win 8.1 OS, it especially boots up much more quickly now despite having done all the other steps mentioned above previously.

I know some online say SFC/scannow isn't necessary on Win 8.1 but the proof was in the pudding as they say, as it made a huge difference in my PC performance.
 

by E.J. Peiker on Wed Jun 20, 2018 11:00 am
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Robert wrote:I'm wondering why running SFC/Scannow is rarely mentioned for improving performance. (Start>Search>Type CMD>rt click cmd.exe and select Run as Admin> type sfc/scannow and let run until done.) I found advice for this and it greatly improved performance on my Win 8.1 OS, it especially boots up much more quickly now despite having done all the other steps mentioned above previously.

I know some online say SFC/scannow isn't necessary on Win 8.1 but the proof was in the pudding as they say, as it made a huge difference in my PC performance.
While it's a good step and it's fantastic that it solved your problem and an item that I should probably add to my list earlier in the thread, it has almost never found anything in my use even on systems that clearly had major problems.  That's because the problem is rarely Windows OS system files but is almost always caused by misbehaving apps, registry entries, or just too many things installing themselves and running all the time hogging system resources.
 

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