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Tips for speeding up Windows PCs
Home › Forums › AskWoody blog › Tips for speeding up Windows PCs
Tagged: AskWoody Plus Newsletter, benchmarks, PC performance, Solid-state drives, SSDs, System cleanup
- This topic has 31 replies, 14 voices, and was last updated 1 month, 2 weeks ago.
Viewing 18 reply threads-
AuthorPosts
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November 1, 2020 at 8:15 pm #2308775
Tracey Capen
AskWoody MVP -
November 1, 2020 at 10:27 pm #2308813
bharney
AskWoody PlusI’m using a Toshiba laptop that was purchased around 2008, as I recall, with Windows Vista, 2gb RAM and a 160gb HD. It has been upgraded to Windows 10 Pro and was slow but usable most of the time, so long as I did not have very many things open. I just upgraded to a Samsung 2TB SSD and what a difference! It boots in about 15-20 seconds now, and I have Chrome and Firefox open with about 2 dozen tabs open between them, plus a few other programs, and rarely do I have any hestitation. I checked to be sure that Windows is not defragging, via the registry query that was in a recent AskWoody newsletter. I’d tell what that is, but apparently we cannot search the newsletter archive.
Powerbasic, no software bloat programming for Windows.
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November 2, 2020 at 10:47 am #2308944
MrJimPhelps
AskWoody_MVPI’m using a Toshiba laptop that was purchased around 2008, as I recall, with Windows Vista, 2gb RAM and a 160gb HD. It has been upgraded to Windows 10 Pro and was slow but usable most of the time, so long as I did not have very many things open. I just upgraded to a Samsung 2TB SSD and what a difference! It boots in about 15-20 seconds now, and I have Chrome and Firefox open with about 2 dozen tabs open between them, plus a few other programs, and rarely do I have any hestitation. I checked to be sure that Windows is not defragging, via the registry query that was in a recent AskWoody newsletter. I’d tell what that is, but apparently we cannot search the newsletter archive.
If your computer is running well with only 2GB of RAM, that is amazing. Usually you need at least 4GB in order for it to be usable. Are you running 32-bit Windows, or 64-bit? If you are running 32-bit, then that could explain why it is running as well as it is with only 2GB of RAM installed.
I don’t think the amount of memory has any effect on your ability to search the newsletter archive.
Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 8.1 running in a VM1 user thanked author for this post.
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November 2, 2020 at 3:06 pm #2309069
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November 2, 2020 at 3:30 pm #2309081
bharney
AskWoody PlusSorry, should’ve said that I’m using Windows 10 Pro 64-bit. Yeah, I’m also amazed how it performs with just 2gb RAM.
However, if I want to run HD youtube videos, I have to close most everything else, otherwise I don’t get a good continuous play, and still get a periodic halting.
BTW, previously I tried a 512GB flash drive (thumb drive) by SanDisk for $99. It was awful. I got constant messages re an incomplete ZIP archives. Windows must be doing some kind extra checks on removable drives because I don’t get that with the SSD installed in place of my old internal HDD with the same ZIP files. That flash drive was very slow, with sometimes long pauses. My laptop has USB 2.0 ports and copies to and from an external USB HDD perform very well.
Powerbasic, no software bloat programming for Windows.
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November 3, 2020 at 8:40 am #2309245
Canadian Tech
AskWoody_MVP
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November 2, 2020 at 12:39 am #2308819
anonymous
Guest1) Clean Windows 10 2004 install from empty volume (never in-place upgrade)
2) Scrub through all the startup files (services, reg keys, startup folder, tray, msconfig boot) and turn OFF many unnecessary services
3) Turn OFF all visual effects expect smooth fonts (can’t live with Windows 3.X fonts)
4) Turn OFF indexing
5) Install VLC / configure with hardware acceleration
6) Enable Edge video hardware acceleration edge://flags and confirm edge://gpu
7) Enable ONLY H.264/AVC1 videos from YouTube via enhanced-h264ify plugin
My ten year old 1Ghz (Dual Core) laptop Toshiba Satellite C655D is useful. DVDs play smooth and it can even play 1080 HD videos from YouTube full screen without skipping!
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November 2, 2020 at 9:30 am #2308917
bbearren
AskWoody MVP1) Clean Windows 10 2004 install from empty volume (never in-place upgrade)
I always use in-place upgrade.
2) Scrub through all the startup files (services, reg keys, startup folder, tray, msconfig boot) and turn OFF many unnecessary services
Having setup Startup with Windows 7 Pro and running only in-place upgrades, I haven’t found this step at all necessary.
3) Turn OFF all visual effects expect smooth fonts (can’t live with Windows 3.X fonts)
I don’t do this, either. Not that I haven’t tried it, but it does not produce measurable improvement in performance/efficiency/speed.
4) Turn OFF indexing
This, I do, because I don’t need or use Search.
5) Install VLC / configure with hardware acceleration
I’ve tried VLC, but I don’t care for the interface and don’t see any measurable improvement over Windows Media Player, which is still my default. I prefer to rip my DVD’s and Blu-ray discs with MakeMKV Beta to my NAS as .mp4 files. Using that and Plex Server on my NAS, Plex Player on my TV’s, I can watch from anywhere.
6) Enable Edge video hardware acceleration edge://flags and confirm edge://gpu
I don’t use Edge at all. Firefox is my default browser.
7) Enable ONLY H.264/AVC1 videos from YouTube via enhanced-h264ify plugin
Not an issue.
Create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates, in case you need to start over!"When you're troubleshooting, start with the simple and proceed to the complex."—M.O. Johns"Experience is what you get when you're looking for something else."—Sir Thomas Robert Deware1 user thanked author for this post.
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November 3, 2020 at 5:04 am #2309205
anonymous
GuestStep 1: Needed for clean install otherwise lots of accumulated garbage all over the volume and registry.
Steps 2 and 3 : Make a HUGE performance difference for 1 Ghz machine with 3 Gig of RAM! Step 2 has to be done otherwise the machine is non stop HD swapping. Step 3 is needed otherwise the 1Ghz CPU is pegged/lagging resizing a window.
Step4: We agree and it a huge performance improvement both for memory and CPU usage.
Step 5: Windows Media skips due to excessive memory usage. Again I have 3 Gigs of memory! VLC uses far less memory for DVD playback.
Step 6: Firefox performance is dismal and videos skip compared to Edge Chromium due to memory usage.
I’m sure you have modern i7 Skylake+ or later with 16GB of RAM so of course these steps make no measurable difference on modern machines. Here is link to the old laptop specs from the manufacture: https://support.dynabook.com/support/staticContentDetail?contentId=3054414
I listed the steps I needed to make an ancient 10 year old laptop work very well playing DVDs and modern videos.
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November 5, 2020 at 3:18 am #2309691
doriel
AskWoody LoungerVLC is nice and slim tool, which allows me to play at 200% volume (extremely usefull with small laptop speakers), thats the main reason why I install them on NTBs. It can also convert/roatate/crop video.
Inceredibly usefull and compact tool.Dell Latitude E6530, Intel Core i5 @ 2.6 GHz, 4GB RAM, W10 1809 Enterprise
HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29
1 user thanked author for this post.
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November 2, 2020 at 5:45 am #2308874
gregcbrown
AskWoody Plus-
November 2, 2020 at 5:51 am #2308877
gregcbrown
AskWoody Plus -
November 5, 2020 at 3:12 am #2309688
doriel
AskWoody LoungerBasicaly said: Time estimation was never good in Windows as a whole. I saw 0sec remaining for quarter an hour on the display while copying files or when performing Defender scan.
But in this case, it took 62 seconds – thats pretty accurate 🙂 I ran that command from CDM with elevated rights. May be stupid question, but did you run that command with administrator rights?Windows 1809 17763.1518 Enterprise 64 bit.
Dell Latitude E6530, Intel Core i5 @ 2.6 GHz, 4GB RAM, W10 1809 Enterprise
HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29
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This reply was modified 3 months, 4 weeks ago by
doriel.
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This reply was modified 3 months, 4 weeks ago by
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November 2, 2020 at 7:30 am #2308884
agoldhammer
AskWoody PlusMy experience is the same as @gregcbrown. I ran it twice and it just hung. Win10 2004
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November 2, 2020 at 8:43 am #2308897
bbearren
AskWoody MVPWith each update and upgrade of our Windows machines, overall speed seems to take another hit.
This has not been my experience. Nearly all of my routine maintenance is taken care of using Task Scheduler, and I don’t have performance/efficiency/speed falloff with each successive upgrade/update.
Having kept records of performance through various software/hardware updates/upgrades, my systems have only improved. And by improved I mean measurable improvement, not just “feels like” improvement.
Create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates, in case you need to start over!"When you're troubleshooting, start with the simple and proceed to the complex."—M.O. Johns"Experience is what you get when you're looking for something else."—Sir Thomas Robert Deware1 user thanked author for this post.
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November 2, 2020 at 9:17 am #2308899
anonymous
GuestIf perfmon /report fails to display, you can still view the report from within perfmon:
1. Press the Win+R keys to open Run, type perfmon into Run, and click/tap on OK to open Performance Monitor.
2. Expand open Reports, System, and System Diagnostics in the left pane of Performance Monitor. (see screenshot at link below)
3. Under System Diagnostics, click/tap on a report that was created (collected) on the date and time you want to view.
To View a System Diagnostics Report in Performance Monitor [TenForums.com]
3 users thanked author for this post.
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November 2, 2020 at 1:40 pm #2309030
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November 2, 2020 at 6:40 pm #2309124
MrJimPhelps
AskWoody_MVPI’ll bet you could find 8GB of RAM for your computer really cheap on Ebay. I’ve done that on a few computers. I paid about $20 each time.
BTW, previously I tried a 512GB flash drive (thumb drive) by SanDisk for $99. It was awful. I got constant messages re an incomplete ZIP archives. Windows must be doing some kind extra checks on removable drives because I don’t get that with the SSD installed in place of my old internal HDD with the same ZIP files. That flash drive was very slow, with sometimes long pauses. My laptop has USB 2.0 ports and copies to and from an external USB HDD perform very well.
This external USB drive is intriguing:
It is really small, costs about $50, and it’s about the same capacity as your thumb drive.
Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 8.1 running in a VM -
November 2, 2020 at 7:38 pm #2309132
anonymous
GuestUnless you’ve never gone into Windows and actually swipe the screen phone style, that MS article is useless. It starts by giving a “secret” shortcut to Programs and Features (uh, oh, revealed control panel in path by mistake, AAAIIIEEEE!!!), then tells you to first remove extra AV programs, then, oh, forget it!
🙂
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November 3, 2020 at 8:37 am #2309243
Canadian Tech
AskWoody_MVPI have done this on literally hundreds of Windows 7 computers. I can say with confidence with great success. I have done this so many times that I detailed the procedure and posted it in this forum:
Most important is to do a complete re-installation of Windows 7. https://www.askwoody.com/2019/canadian-tech-how-to-rebuild-a-win7-system-with-minimal-snooping/
I most cases, performance will be very much improved by replacing the hard drive with either a SSD or a 7200rpm drive. To ensure the future of your system, make a system image after all updating is done according to my procedure and before any data or dynamic applications are installed. By NOT installing all the garbage that came with it on the OEM system, you will be improving performance.
In all cases, the systems perform afterwards at least as well as they did when new, and in many, if not most cases even better.
I have 120 win7 client machines that run extremely well day in day out. Actually what I call Final State. They are in effect steady state, unchanging systems that change little. My clients are delighted. NOt one of them has had a Microsoft update in 3 1/2 years now. Not a single instance of any kind of a problem. Not one! After 5000 computer use months now.
CT
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November 3, 2020 at 9:35 am #2309269
sb06794
AskWoody PlusI ran the suggested tool Perfmon /report while reading the article. It said “collecting data for 60 seconds…” but it was still collecting data 5 minutes later…
I’ll kill it and try again…
I’m also having the Resource and Performance Monitor hang and never finish. Does anyone know why ours is hanging and the author’s is not? I’m running Windows 10 Home 20H2, 64-bit, and Kaspersky Free anti-virus.
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This reply was modified 4 months ago by
sb06794.
1 user thanked author for this post.
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This reply was modified 4 months ago by
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November 3, 2020 at 9:57 am #2309275
joep517
AskWoody MVPHave you tried using the Perfmon app as described at How to Generate System Diagnostics Report in Windows 10 to generate and view the report rather than just the command line?
--Joe
1 user thanked author for this post.
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November 3, 2020 at 4:40 pm #2309369
sb06794
AskWoody PlusThanks Joep517. Your suggestion of following the How to Generate System Diagnostics Report in Windows 10 article worked perfectly. That description should have been included in the original article!
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November 5, 2020 at 3:03 am #2309685
doriel
AskWoody LoungerThanks for the article, nicely sumarized!
Recently, a colleague replaced a relatively new 1TB hard-disk drive with a 500GB SSD in an eight-year-old MacBook Pro.
I would NEVER NEVER NEVER run Win10 with classic HDD. Just never.
Dell Latitude E6530, Intel Core i5 @ 2.6 GHz, 4GB RAM, W10 1809 Enterprise
HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29
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January 15, 2021 at 2:38 pm #2334637
IreneLinda
AskWoody PlusNathan, thank you so much for this helpful, easy to understand article. As you can tell, it’s taken me quite a while to sit down and read it!
The best hint you offered for me was the advice to turn off defragmentation on our 9 year old Windows 7 HP laptop with an SSD. I’d installed the new SSD about 3 years ago and couldn’t figure out why its rating dropped from 100% to 90%. I’d installed a new HDD in my PC about 4 years ago and it was still getting 100% ratings.
Well, now I know. Duh. Wish there had been a note in the SSD package warning me about that. Or maybe it just means non tech types should not attempt such tech tasks! 😉
Regardless, thank you so much. Defrag is now off, thanks to your instructions, and I’ve even gone in a stopped a few more startup items. It was interesting to see that some I’d stopped several years ago had reinserted themselves into activate at startup column! Sneaky.
With appreciation,
Linda
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January 15, 2021 at 3:22 pm #2334643
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January 15, 2021 at 3:24 pm #2334644
Canadian Tech
AskWoody_MVP-
January 15, 2021 at 3:37 pm #2334645
joep517
AskWoody MVPEverything I can find says Windows 7 is supposed to detect an SSD and make the appropriate changes to defrag and superfetch. Defrag is not turned off but is changed to do what Microsoft is calling optimization.
Here’s an old article which may help – The real and complete story – Does Windows defragment your SSD?.
--Joe
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January 16, 2021 at 2:06 am #2334732
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January 15, 2021 at 3:40 pm #2334648
Canadian Tech
AskWoody_MVP -
January 15, 2021 at 4:47 pm #2334664
RebusCom
AskWoody PlusI’ve installed SSD’s on a number of Win7 machines. I have not seen an instance of Win7 making adjustments. My strategy is to disable the defrag service.
Indeed, and don’t count on Win7 to perform TRIM on it’s own automatically following a conversion from HD to SSD.
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January 16, 2021 at 3:43 am #2334758
Paul T
AskWoody MVPWindow 7 understands and manages SSDs correctly, but if you upgrade an HDD to SSD you have to ensure W7 knows by running Windows Experience Index.
Do not turn off defrag.
cheers, Paul
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