Windows 10 Performance Unusably Poor After Period of Disuse

Question

It's been a bit since I've worked with Windows so there may be an obvious solution here but I'm completely stumped.

We bought a couple of extremely capable (both i7, 32GB RAM, SSD, GTX 1080 though one branded Dell, the other Alienware) machines to run VR stations at work and both of them seem to suffer from the same problem—if we leave them off for a few days, performance is unusably bad. When I say unusably bad, I mean that quite literally—the UI will freeze and lag for several full seconds every five to ten seconds so that you can't accurately click on icons or navigate menus. Downloads will just timeout. We usually give up, leave the machine up and running, and come back to it the next day to find it performing perfectly well and it will generally continue to do so until its next period of disuse. I later realized we'd been having this same problem running Windows 10 via Bootcamp on a reasonably powerful iMac, but had chalked it up to a Bootcamp problem.

Is this just an issue with Windows 10? I've googled around and can't find a lot of people talking about it if it is. Is it perhaps Windows Update related? Any advice for tracking this down for someone who's been out of the Windows game basically since Windows 7 was new?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Two likely causes

1. Windows Defender may be running a system scan at the same time as a third-party antivirus. After updating to Windows v. Version 10.0.16299.19, I've found that Defender, previously disabled, was restarted by the update. Obviously, there will be conflicts with two AV's simultaneously scanning the disk. Reconfigure Defender, and then reconfigure Windows Defender Security Center to avoid warning notifications.

2. Windows Updates are pending. Let them complete, and the system should run well afterwards.