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Windows 10 overhead

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:51 am
by Wildflower-nut
The guy who worked on my new laptop told me that windows 10 can be speeded up by removing some of the background (overhead) programs that window 10 had added.  Any thoughts?  My new dell laptop should be faster but it actually seems slower than my 5+ year old windows 7 laptop.

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2019 1:32 pm
by E.J. Peiker
Any version of Windows can be sped up but what you can and can't remove depends on your use. A good place to start is to go to BlackViper.com and utilize the safe settings.
http://www.blackviper.com/service-confi ... gurations/

Also make sure you go into your startup programs and disable things that you don't need available all the time. There are many programs that set themselves up in the background as running even though you may not need them and are OK launching them when you do. Some examples of this include things like Acrobat Reader, Adobe Bridge, and various others. Of course some things like your anti virus, graphics configuration, network stuff you do need. Just use common sense and keep track of what you did so that you can undo it if something stops working.

Also when a computer is new, it takes some time for it to index everything for fast search. Once that is complete, the system will speed up.

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2019 7:52 am
by E.J. Peiker
The other thing that slows systems dramatically is that Win 10 in it's default configuration uploads just about everything you do to Microsoft, every file, every keystroke, almost everything. You can turn all that off during initial set-up. Here's how you do it after the fact:
https://support.office.com/en-us/articl ... n-US&ad=US

Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2019 4:07 pm
by Wildflower-nut
Thanks. I'll work on it.

Bob Hutson

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 9:34 am
by E.J. Peiker
Interestingly enough, Puget Systems just sent out a new newsletter that addresses slow boot times that might be of help:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/suppo ... -Fix-1531/

Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2019 3:51 pm
by goldingd

Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2019 12:09 pm
by Wildflower-nut
Thanks. I've got more reading to do.

Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2019 6:48 am
by E.J. Peiker
My biggest beef with Win 10 performance is the start-up time.  My Win 7 machine which uses an old style SSD takes 23 seconds from the end of the BIOS POST and my much faster Win 10 system with an m.2 SSD that is 7 times as fast takes 42 seconds to the non-optional pin-entry screen and then another 3 or 4 seconds from pin-entry to full load.  This is with identical application and utility pre-load and Windows settings.  After that, the Win 10 system is clearly faster at everything but then again, that's due to the dramatically faster hardware.  I would bet with identical hardware, Win 7 would be significantly faster than Win 10 even with all of the overhead stripped out of Win 10.  Win 10, like the latest versions of OS-X and iOS is bloatware taken to the next level.  If only we had all of the imaging apps we use in Linux form, the choice would be very easy...

Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2019 2:39 pm
by E.J. Peiker
I was just working on my Windows 10 Surface Pro 6 when all of the sudden it slowed to a crawl.  I went into the Task Manager to see what was going on and noticed that Skype was absolutely hammering my system.  I never even launched Skype nor have I ever used it on this system.  I could not find Skype in Start-up programs or in System Services - Microsoft has this program running completely in the background.  I then looked at my CPU usage history and it turns out BY FAR my number one thing hitting my CPU going back one month is Skype.  Similarly my number one thing hitting my WiFi is Skype. Since the only time I would ever use Skype is via my phone anyway, I went into my Applications and right clicked on Skype and selected uninstall.  Immediately my WiFi load and CPU load dropped dramatically.

The next biggest thing hitting my system is Cortana which I actually disabled during start-up yet it still hammers the system.  Investigating further, even though Cortana was off, there is a Permissions and History area in Cortana Settings that has a bunch of things turned on that it's doing in the background even though Cortana use is disabled on the system.  Turing all of that off remedied that.  Like I said, the level of bloat in Win 10 is off the charts.

Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2019 3:45 pm
by photoman4343
EJ, I have a desktop with Win 10 Pro and it has a Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500 GB. RAM is 16GB. From the time I push the on button it takes about 17-18 seconds for the PIN ENTRY to appear. After I enter the Pin it is about 1-2 sec for the final Win screen to appear.

I have Lenovo ThinkPad 15 inch laptop with win 10 pro and a 1 TB SSD. RAM is 32 GB. Its times are about the same as the desktop with win 10 pro.

My digital photo desktop with win 7 pro on it,with a 250 GB SSD, (Samsung 840 Pro series SCSI) and 16 GB RAM takes about 42 sec to get to the password box. Once the password is entered, about 2 sec for the final windows screen to appear.

Both the laptop and the digital desktop have Adobe products loaded. The other desktop has word and other Office products loaded. The laptop also has Office products loaded.

I have not downloaded the latest Win 10 version 1903 to either the desktop of to the laptop. All other updates have been loaded.

Could the 1903 version be causing the time differences?

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 4:21 am
by E.J. Peiker
Yes I think it could be 1903 or later because I have an old laptop and Surface Pro that are well before 1903 and those fire up very fast. More investigating to do.