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I installed Windows 8.1 (x64 Enterprise) on a 5 1/2-yr old Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop. I'm seeing sporadic extended periods (a couple minutes up to 10-15 minutes) where Windows Explorer is consuming 50-70% CPU time while apparently doing nothing, and it brings the system to a crawl.
System configuration: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, dual core, 2.0GHz 3 GB ram 256G SSD for the C: drive 320G second drive. (yes, this laptop has 2 drive bays!) (C:\Users is redirected to the second drive via a directory Junction) Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS graphics (not sure how much video memory)
I am running a fair number of processes during this time - 2 instances of MetaTrader (a forex trading platform), Chrome with a number of tabs open (which seems to spawn 6-8 processes), Outlook and Excel). I know I'm running a somewhat dated CPU, but I didn't notice these issues when I was running (32-bit) Windows 7.
Is this expected behavior running the 64-bit version of Windows 8.1 with limited memory? Can I expect additional memory to help significantly? (I'm planning to replace the 1G SODIMM card with 4G, bringing the total memory to 6G. I could go to 8G if it would help.) Is there anything else that can be done to improve performance besides buying a newer laptop?
daveh551
Posted 2013-12-10T13:07:21.407
Reputation: 811
Adding additional memory will really not help with CPU usage. – Ramhound – 2013-12-10T13:39:10.070
Could the issue be linked to Intel Speedstep/Power management tech? I have found that often CPU usage may be considered to be higher as the CPU is in a low power C State. Perhaps check your BIOS settings related to CPU power management and also try changing the power plan in Windows to "High performance" to see if that makes any difference. – Robula – 2013-12-10T14:00:42.757
capture a xperf trace while you have the high CPU usage: http://pastebin.com/pgE11HRD
– magicandre1981 – 2013-12-10T18:15:02.780Maybe check if stopping the search indexer helps at all. – David – 2013-12-10T19:58:29.333
A little more research: Opening the resource monitor and looking at the disk files that explorer is accessing,it appears to be scanning all the files, or at least all the user files. I suspected this was Windows Defender, but I have turned that off, and it continues to do it. David, I also tried stopping SearchIndexer, but it just respawns until I set Windows Search to manual startup. However, it still doesn't help the Explorer CPU utilization (around 95%). – daveh551 – 2013-12-19T10:48:47.577