windows 7 becomes unberable slow, what could I do?

Question

I'm using windows 7 professional edition, 32 bits. At the beginning it's quite OK, but not it becomes unbearably slow: it takes around 31 minutes to start up!

After I typed in the windows id and password, it still takes more than 10 minutes to really log in. Seeing the "welcome..." page, I pressed Ctrl + Alt + Delete and popped out the Task Manager, however, the CPU usage is only 1% and Memory usage is 34%.

These are the details:

Processes: 78
CUP Usage: 1%
Physical Memory: 34%

Physical Memory (MB)
Total:      2942
Cached:     798
Available:  1743
Free:       1005

Kernel Memory (MB)
Paged:      248
Nonpaged:   58

System
Handles:    18306
Threads:    916
Processes:  77
Up Time:    0:00:35:40
Commit (MB):    1263/5882

Then I go to check the services running, also could not find any suspicious services. Below are the running ones:

AtherosSvc
Background Intelligent Transfer Service
Base Filtering Engine
Check Point Device Auxiliary Framework
Check Point ESME Client
CNG Key Isolation
COM+ Event System
Computer Browser
Cryptographic Services
DCOM Server Process Launcher
Desktop Window Manager Session Manager
DHCP Client
Diagnostic Policy Service
Diagnostic Service Host
Diagnostic System Host
Distributed Link Tracking Client
DNS Client
Extensible Authentication Protocol
Function Discovery Resource Publication
Group Policy Client
IKE and AuthIP IPsec Keying Modules
Intel(R) Capability Licensing Service Interface
Intel(R) Dynamic Application Loader Host Interface Service
Intel(R) Management and Security Application Local Management Service
Intel(R) Management and Security Application User Notification Service
IP Helper
IPsec Policy Agent
Machine Debug Manager
McAfee Framework Service
McAfee McShield
McAfee Task Manager
McAfee Validation Trust Protection Service
Multimedia Class Scheduler
Net Driver HPZ12
Netlogon
Network Connections
Network List Service
Network Location Awareness
Network Store Interface Service
Offline Files
Plug and Play
Pml Driver HPZ12
Power
Print Spooler
Program Compatibility Assistant Service
Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
Remote Registry
RPC Endpoint Mapper
Security Accounts Manager
Security Center
Server
Shell Hardware Detection
SSDP Discovery
Superfetch
System Event Notification Service
Task Scheduler
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
User Profile Service
Validity VCS Fingerprint Service
Windows Audio
Windows Audio Endpoint Builder
Windows Event Log
Windows Firewall
Windows Font Cache Service
Windows Management Instrumentation
Windows Modules Installer
Windows Search
Windows Time
Windows Update
WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service
Wired AutoConfig
WLAN AutoConfig
Workstation
ZAtheros Bt and Wlan Coex Agent
ZAtheros Wlan Agent

As the notebook is under the protection of McAfee and "Check Point Endpoint protection", it's unlikely this is caused by virus.

Since the browser is not even started, the slowness is not caused by the plug-ins.

The "heavy" softwares I installed are Oracle database client, Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Express Edition (but disabled), and Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 Express Edition.

It shall not be a hardware issue. My notebook is a Dell Vostro, with 4 Intel Cores of i5-3337U @ 1.80 GHz and 4 GB RAM. And at the beginning it runs ok.

What could be the reason and what can I do?

Answer 1

31 minutes to boot, you definitely have a problem! You appear to have enough RAM and CPU to work comfortably.

When my computer gets unbearably slow and I see very low CPU usage the culprit will always be disk drive usage. I suggest you start the Resource Monitor and click the Disk tab. You are probably going to see a lot of activity. The reason could be a misbehaving program, or a bad disk.

Answer 2

"Slow" is of course a relative term.

Running Windows 7, I recommend uninstalling everything McAfee and going with Windows Defender and Microsoft Security Essentials (free for Win7 users). That's going to be the highest overhead on your input/output operations (such as writing to disk).

Speaking of writing to disk, the single biggest upgrade you can make for your computer is to get a Solid State Drive (SSD) to contain your operating system and most-used files. For Windows, a 128GB SSD is usually great for that purpose. Just reinstall your operating system and all your files on the drive once you get it hooked up and installed. Here's a video.

You can re-use the Windows license that came with your computer for the new installation, and once you're sure everything is working, you can delete the old installation files. As for where to put the old hard drive, well, you can get a hard drive bay to replace the DVD drive you may or may not be using, or you can go with an external hard drive enclosure kit.

Short of following those suggestions, though, just make sure that your drive is frequently optimized and that you're not running out of storage space (File Exporer => Right Click the drive => Properties to find information about both of these).

Hope this helps.