3
I own a pretty powerful laptop (Gigabyte Aero 14), equipped with a quad-core Intel i7-6700HQ @ 2.60GHz, upgraded to 32 GB DDR4 RAM, and a Samsung 950 Pro NVMe 512 GB SSD drive. It's also equipped with a GTX 970m GPU.
All in all, I would expect every action I take on this machine to be close to instant. But it's not:
- clicking the explorer icon in the taskbar takes 1 or 2 seconds to open the explorer window
- opening Chrome takes 2 to 3 seconds
- sometimes, I can even "feel" a lag when opening a text file on my desktop in notepad
Boot time is correct (~15s to get to the login screen), but really not as fast as I would expect from this machine, especially with the insane NVMe SSD.
By comparison, my previous laptop was nearly 5 years old (but was in the same price range when I bought it), had a much older processor, less and slower RAM, and a SATA SSD, but felt as fast for everyday use.
I feel like my 5 years newer machine is not really much faster, expect for games where the newer GPU makes a big difference. If it wasn't for the 3D graphics horsepower, it feels a bit like a waste of money to upgrade my PC nowadays.
Why is that? What keeps Windows 10 from being faster on a faster machine? How can a simple explorer window take more than 1s to open on a damn fast machine?
Note that my OS, drivers, and BIOS are all up to date. I use an antivirus software, ESET Nod32, which has a solid reputation for performance. And I was using the same antivirus on my older laptop.
Benjamin
Posted 2017-03-06T02:34:53.870
Reputation: 629
I don't have your machine to test this. But others have said that superfetch sometimes doesn't play nice with SSDs: http://dottoremoe.com/diskfix/ and https://www.technipages.com/windows-enable-disable-superfetch Looking forward to seeing other responses as I'm not convinced this is the right answer.
– Sir Adelaide – 2017-03-06T03:08:08.460There are many things that can cause that delay. Antivirus ? Likely. Some windows services too (defrag should be off for SSDs). – Overmind – 2017-03-06T09:59:06.727
disable the Windows Defender. this slows down Windows a lot – magicandre1981 – 2017-03-06T17:43:04.077
@magicandre1981 Windows Defender is already disabled. It's been disabled by Nod32. – Benjamin – 2017-03-06T22:52:12.597
install Windows Perf tools from Win10 SDK (https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/windows-10-sdk), download this profile (https://www.dropbox.com/s/o89gunjrplhnfu2/slowWindowsShell.wprp?dl=0), open cmd.exe as admin, run wpr -start slowWindowsShell.wprp -start ReferenceSet -fileMode, capture now the slowness. after you did the slow operations, go back to cmd and run this: wpr -stop C:\slowWindowsShell.etl zip the ETL + ngenpdb folder and share it (onedrive). I'll try to analyze what is slow.
– magicandre1981 – 2017-03-07T16:27:18.860@magicandre1981 Thanks, I tried that, but that's a huge amount of data collected (550 MB) in just a few seconds, and I have to admit I'm a bit worried to share this data as I'm not comfortable with Windows Perf Tools, and as such I don't know what sensitive data the output may contain... – Benjamin – 2017-03-07T16:58:29.620
I only see names, no content. yes, ETW generates a large amound of data. so don't run it very long. otherwise I can't open it in WPA. upload the zipped ETL to my dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/request/EF3lC59C15iK82mkPuaB here only me can see the data
– magicandre1981 – 2017-03-07T17:22:44.477have you captured the data? – magicandre1981 – 2017-03-09T16:46:57.620
@magicandre1981 I have, but I struggle with the idea of sharing something I have no internal knowledge of. Probably too cautious here, but... that's me :) – Benjamin – 2017-03-09T21:53:48.350
in this case, try to analyze the data for your own (CPU, memory) with WPA: https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Defrag-Tools/Defrag-Tools-42-WPT-CPU-Analysis, https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Defrag-Tools/Defrag-Tools-154-Memory-Footprint-and-Leaks#time=22m37s. Because you don't share the files, I voted now to close the question as "too broad"
– magicandre1981 – 2017-03-10T17:36:40.420