Computer slowdown, any suggestions?

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prfesser

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Ten days ago my computer (X1 ThinkPad, 512GB SSD) accessed the web fine and fast. About a week ago access was slowed enormously. Downloading .PDF files used to run at 100KB or even megabits per second, now it's on the order of 20K/sec. Loading a dozen posts from TRF used to take no more than a second. Now it sits in wait mode for an extended time, and sometimes it entirely stops loading some of the tabs. Graphics/images in particular take forever. It randomly speeds up occasionally, but those occasions are becoming rare. Uninstalling programs is slowed.

I have (of course!) turned it off and on again several times. Likewise I've reset the cable modem and the router several times. No joy.

I'm running Avast free antivirus and Avast Cleanup Premium. No virus has been found by Avast, and the Cleanup doesn't seem to help.

Suggestions for a plan of attack? I was computer literate about 25 years back but have been unable to keep up with technology changes.

Many thanks! -- Terry
 
First isolate to where the issue is.
- Does it effect all computers/devices in the house?
- Does it effect only wired/wireless devices
- Does it effect only 1 device

Once isolated, then you can start cause determination.
- Does it only effect web (browser) or all network access (email, streaming, etc.)

From there, suggestions on cause and resolution should be easier.
 
Yeah, that. I'd have bet it's your internet connection, except that you wrote "Uninstalling programs is slowed"; slow internet shouldn't affect that, but it's well worth checking. Assuming it's only the one computer:
- Does it only effect web (browser) or all network access (email, streaming, etc.)?
Is there any change to performance that's not related to internet access? You mentioned slow uninstalls. Try a long, complicated rocket simulation. Try opening a gigantic document, or updating a gigantic spreadsheet, or any other really big task that you've done enough in the past to know about how long it should take. (Detailed thermodynamic analysis of a complex chemical reaction?)

And there are a couple of other things to check, and things you can try.

I assume you've gone over whatever may have been installed shortly before the trouble started? Something could be there eating up resource time and not be detected. If there's anything new on the system, uninstall it. Check that nothing was installed without your knowledge; any such thing ought to be flagged (or ought to have been stopped) by Avast, but it could happen anyway.

Boot in safe mode and see if that helps.

A drastic version of this is to search the whole system for files dated later than a day or two before you noticed the problem. Be sure the search includes hidden and system files. There are likely to be a lot. Flag for investigation anything you don't recognize. Yes, drastic. Try the other stuff first.
 
It's getting weird. I have a new tablet that seems to work just fine, and the SSD isn't half full yet, so I figured it was the computer. For ***** and grins, I switched off WiFi access and switched on hotspot on my phone. Computer works faster through my crappy phone with two bars of signal. Switch off hotspot, switch on WiFi, and now it seems to work almost normally.

Hypothesis: the router got scared when I switched to hotspot; it was afraid I wouldn't hook it up again. So it's stopped misbehaving (for the time being). Conclusion: Electronic devices know how to be evil and play with my head. o_O:rolleyes:🤪

I'll keep looking for a cause and apply a few of your suggestions. Thanks all!

"They're coming to take me away, ha ha, they're coming to take me away, hoho, heehee, haha. To the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time, and I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats. And they're coming to take me away, ha-ha!" --- Terry, channeling Napoleon XIV
 
Hmm, data. I wish I knew what it meant.

Though it does point quite suggestively at the WiFi router. You've said that you reset the cable modem; do I assume correctly that those are actually the same device? By "reset" do you mean pushed the button? You might try switching that off and on again. Cable modems sometimes don't like that and it may take a while to reestablish its own connection to the outside. But after that, maybe you'll have thrown enough of a scare into it keep it behaving for the long term. ;)
 
More than likely a conflict on 802.11 wifi channel. Someone nearby set up a new wifi and it picked the same channel you were using. By switching networks, you then forced a new channel. Resetting the router doesn't always select a new channel.

It doesn't explain the slow response of install/uninstall of software tho unless it has to do that via an app store which is online.
 
Ten days ago my computer (X1 ThinkPad, 512GB SSD) accessed the web fine and fast. About a week ago access was slowed enormously. Downloading .PDF files used to run at 100KB or even megabits per second, now it's on the order of 20K/sec. Loading a dozen posts from TRF used to take no more than a second. Now it sits in wait mode for an extended time, and sometimes it entirely stops loading some of the tabs. Graphics/images in particular take forever. It randomly speeds up occasionally, but those occasions are becoming rare. Uninstalling programs is slowed.

I have (of course!) turned it off and on again several times. Likewise I've reset the cable modem and the router several times. No joy.

I'm running Avast free antivirus and Avast Cleanup Premium. No virus has been found by Avast, and the Cleanup doesn't seem to help.

Suggestions for a plan of attack? I was computer literate about 25 years back but have been unable to keep up with technology changes.

Many thanks! -- Terry


Terry:

One thing about Windows is that techs have job security, due to the troubleshooting Windows computer require. I do computer service on the side, but I personally use Linux on my computer and laptop.

I suggest you download Linux Mint to a USB flash drive and run it as a Live CD mode, and you'll be surprised how fast your computer will run. You'll be running the Operating System from a USB drive. If you have seen the ads for Xtra-PC this is what they are doing.

Of course you need to download Linux Mint from a computer that works at normal speed, not your computer.

One other suggestion is to replace the ethernet cable from your Modem to your computer- it may be damaged, and that's why your speed has deteriorated.

Nilo
 
Windows Registry System is a pig's ear and can cause a lot of slowdown problems. Eusing have a good, free (donate if you want to) Registry cleaner that backs up your current Registry before making any changes.

Helps with my system, but as always YMMV.
 
Windows 10? POS, hate it. I have slowdown problems, particularly with all browsers. The only solution I've found is to set my apps to restore previous session and restart the computer. Also not consistent, sometimes things work, other times the exact same things don't. (Desktop and laptop.) Bring back Windows 7 and update it.
 
re-install windows 7.. or dos 3.3...

(I'm in the same boat: 25 yeas ago I was fairly good at these things. today: they have renamed, replaced, removed, and made the whole thing "user friendly" for a totally new mind-set..)
 
open task manager by right clicking on taskbar,, and click on the startup tab and see what's loading during startup....you can disable what you don't need or want.

while in task manager, click on processes, then on the cpu column to toggle the processes(ie programs,apps) that are using the most cpu.....
from start, settings, system ,storage, run storage sense and or from start run type cleanmgr, click ok, select clean system files, and select in the box what you want to clean off your disk
from start run type : dfrgui.exe and see if you need to do an analyze or optimize on your ssd. ie a trim
 
Okay Terry,
here is my troubleshooting list for internet issues on systems running Windows 7. On Windows 10 systems, the tips below for the most part will work but the system settings at the bottom of my list will be much harder to locate and implement. M$ in it's infinite wisdom has made each iteration of Windows harder and harder for the end user to manage.

1) Unplug your gateway by removing the power cord from wall or from the back of the gateway. Count to 30 then restore power.
--- This will clear the gateways routing tables. When the tables fill up, it can slow down your WAN connection.

2) Boot your computer into Safe Mode.
--- Booting into Safe Mode will clear/reset the Windows Prefetch cache file.

3) While still in Safe Mode run utilities like disk defrag (Auslogics offers a nice defragger) and CCleaner.
*Note: If you have never used CCleaner before and/or are daunted by all the options within it, I can PM you pre-configured ccleaner.ini and winapp2.ini files that CCleaner uses to store it's settings.
---Within CCleaner, run the registry utility first. After that run the disk cleaner utility.

The 3 steps listed above will take care of the majority of issues that usually effect Windows internet connections.

Other things within Windows that can adversely effect Windows:

A) Temp folders.
---Windows has always been notoriously bad at housekeeping and it's overly full temp folders are prime examples of this.
User Temp Folder (One for each user account): C:\Users\%%user%%\AppData\Local\Temp
Windows System Temp Folder: C:\Windows\Temp
--- I use a batch file, launched via Task Scheduler, to clean my temp folder at user login.
*Note: I edited my environment variables to point my user & system temp folders to use the same folder I created at C:\Temp. This makes it easier to manage temp files and to troubleshoot issues related to those same files. I will include it at the end of this post.
To edit environment variables, launch Control Panel, click System, then click Advanced System Settings and finally click the Environment Variables button.

B) Windows pagefile.sys file.
--- By default this file is managed by Windows. As such it will vary in size based on system demands. The problem with such a scheme is that the pagefile can become quite fragmented, which can impede system performance. Also, because Windows keeps varying the size of the pagefile with writes, erasures and rewrites constantly, it will eventually do so at a critically bad moment. That wrong instant will reward you with a Windows BSOD (Blue/Black Screen of Death), aka a system crash.
*The best way to mitigate the chance of a BSOD is to disable Windows ability to dynamically manage the size of the pagefile.

To edit pagefile size, launch Control Panel, click System, then click Advanced System Settings, click the Settings button in the performance section. In the new popup window click the Advanced tab, and finally in the Virtual Memory section click the Change button. A new popup window will appear.
Now within the Virtual Memory window, click the radio button for Custom Size, note the Recommended size (In MBs) for the pagefile at the bottom of the window, and input that number in the both the Initial Size box and the Maximum Size box. Then click the Set button. Finally click OK button for each popup window to close it in secession until all are closed. Windows will give you a popup warning you that your computer needs to reboot, click the Reboot button to finalize your changes.

My Temp folder cleaner batch file
Code:
Title Temp Folder Cleaner

@ECHO OFF
CLS

:CLEAN
C:
CD C:\TEMP
IF EXIST acro_rd_dir RD /Q acro_rd_dir
ATTRIB -R /S /D
DEL /A -S -H /Q /S C:\TEMP\*.*
MD C:\1234
CHOICE /N /D N /T 1
CALL ROBOCOPY "C:\1234" "C:\TEMP" /MIR
RD C:\1234

:End
Exit
 
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Many thanks to all for the suggestions. I'm sure I'm not the only one who will benefit from them.

The computer is (mostly) running normally, though it seems to clog at some sites.

And I'm going to cross my fingers and try Linux soon.

Best -- Terry
 
I was / am always baffled that Windows / M$ never had a built-in registry cleaner..

Like, M$ have this attitude that their system is perfect, and needs no maintenance. yet there are myriads of 3rd party utilities to sort this out & clean this crud up..
 
+1 on the pagefile. Most of my performance issues over the years I can attribute to paging issues. 'Puter runs fine one day where you are at the upper limit of pagefile acceptability; some program automatically updates, the new code is a pig for any number of reasons (added features, bad code, you name it) and system performance gets thrashed. If you've studied queuing theory you know that once you hit the queuing threshold, your performance can decline exponentially.

There are two main ways to handle paging issues. One, delete the old pagefile and create a newer, bigger one to eliminate the fragmentation. The other way is to use an SSD vs. a spinning hard drive. With no read/write head to move latency is reduced to the speed of the SSD; fragmentation has virtually no impact on read/write response rate. I've gone all SSDs in my devices and only use spinning hard drive in my NAS devices, which are primarily used for backups and streaming media (hence, latency is not really an issue, as long as the read side is adequately buffered).

I also use Revo uninstaller to remove any programs. It will automatically cleanup the registry and the hard drive of the leftover junk. The free version is good enough. Finally, if you must use a hard drive, get a good defragmentation program and run it weekly overnight. Good defraggers can also defrag the pagefile on reboot. I've used PerfectDisk for at least 15 years.
 
Question to y'all; based on my experience and totally not a computer geek life, does how many scripts a website/webpage runs impact its loading speed/time?

Thanks to my set of the various possible effects of autism I have to run several script and GIF and other blockers to cut down on how many things are happening, sounding, moving, flashing, on web pages or the internet would be unusable.

The browser add on for scripts sometimes shows a website running a list of scripts which is longer on-screen than a C6-5, sometimes even twice as long.

And my impression is that there is a cause and effect of more scripts running on page = more time to load page.
 
2 more general comments:

M$ seems to be catering to the 20% of uber-users (or is trying to push us all in that direction); the ones who make their laptop / tablet / phone a part of their daily lives; scheduling & appointments, contacts & communications management, gaming, socializing, etc.. Like, look at all the garbage that comes with WIn10 now that you "can't remove"... (How many actually use 'Cortana'?) What happened to the business environment which Windows has 80% of the market share?! (I have Win 10 on my work desktop, why do I need to have 'X-box' installed?! I remember when the IT dept. would strip all this stuff out before you got your company PC)

M$ seems to be doing a lot of catch-up, and is failing badly at trying to copy their competitors: Making a phone, making an 'android' type OS (for said phone) - [oh yeah, that's what WIn 10 is supposed to be: an OS for all platforms] Cortana to compete with Siri, Edge to compete with Chrome, Maps to compete with google maps, etc.. They should go back to being a basic OS, with either a 'Home' or 'Business' package added on top. And all these "extras" downloaded as needed from thier 'app store' (another failed attempt to copy Apple & Google!)

Lastly, yeah, the ads recently are getting annoyingly flashy & poppy & distracting. But I guess that's the idea / intent.. Most / all are powered by Google, so I just hit the 'X' in the corner..
 
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M$ seems to be catering to the 20% of uber-users (or is trying to push us all in that direction); the ones who make their laptop / tablet / phone a part of their daily lives; scheduling & appointments, contacts & communications management, gaming, socializing, etc.. Like, look at all the garbage that comes with WIn10 now that you "can't remove"... (How many actually use 'Cortana'?) What happened to the business environment which Windows has 80% of the market share?! (I have Win 10 on my work desktop, why do I need to have 'X-box' installed?! I remember when the IT dept. would strip all this stuff out before you got your company PC)

I would greatly prefer WordPerfect---it was the first PC word processor I used and it had cornered the field about 25 years ago---but since Pearson publishing and my chem co-authors use Word as a de facto standard, I have no choice. I know that Libre Office is supposed to handle Word files but there are always tiny differences. The larger the file, the more differences show up.

Best -- Terry
 
Question to y'all; based on my experience and totally not a computer geek life, does how many scripts a website/webpage runs impact its loading speed/time?

Thanks to my set of the various possible effects of autism I have to run several script and GIF and other blockers to cut down on how many things are happening, sounding, moving, flashing, on web pages or the internet would be unusable.

The browser add on for scripts sometimes shows a website running a list of scripts which is longer on-screen than a C6-5, sometimes even twice as long.

And my impression is that there is a cause and effect of more scripts running on page = more time to load page.
Scripts are not the only* things that negatively impact browser performance. Websites that employ heavy use of Flash elements, Java or other languages to "Enhance the user experience" can reek havoc. Also, the browser itself plays a role in performance. Browsers based on 32bit code tend to be slower the same browser coded in 64bit. And, many browser addons/plugins that advertise performance improvement actually have the opposite effect.

*Edit: Omitted the word only by accident.
 
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A couple of things. I know reinstalling Windows is a PITA but if you download the latest version if Win 10 it doesn't have all of the bloatware that previous versions had. And do a custom manual install right from the start. Don't link it to a Microsoft account. Do disable all of the tracking/reporting apps. Once installed look to see what "features" are starting at boot up and if you don't need them disable them. Install the latest drivers for all of your hardware.

A great alternative to MS Office is LibreOffice. Libre Writer is much superior to MS Word imho. I use Opera as my web browser. It's a Norwegian piece of software.

For your current situation you can try this. Open up a Command Prompt. (DOS box.)
Type:
ipconfig /release

After that is done type:
ipconfig /renew

After this type:
ipconfig /flushdns

Windows keeps a record of all of the name to IP Addresses of all of the websites you go to. A cache. If it is corrupted or if things have changed on the web doing a /flushdns should clean & speed things up.

And I highly recommend giving your computer a static IP address.
 
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I would greatly prefer WordPerfect---it was the first PC word processor I used and it had cornered the field about 25 years ago---but since Pearson publishing and my chem co-authors use Word as a de facto standard

Pardon a slight brief topic diversion...
prfesser reminded me of the old days.

History: Back in the 80's I was an IBM System Support Rep and part of the OS/2 developer program.
At that time, WordPerfect was BY FAR the most used word processor and Lotus 123 was the most popular Spreadsheet. They owned the market. Word processing and Spreadsheets were the two biggest apps used on the desktop. Database was there but nowhere near as important.

When OS/2 was introduced Microsoft was still trying to gain significant market but really could not dent WordPerfect's penetration. Serious word processing people used WordPerfect, a few maybe Wordstar or Multimate.
Excel was just an also-ran at that point.

Then WordPerfect Corp. (SSI) and Lotus Development Corp. made a tragic decision.
Both companies decided to straddle the OS market and develop for both OS/2 and Windows.
OS/2 had just released their graphical user interface (GUI) and it was superior to Windows 3.1 and 95.
Microsoft on the other hand went all-out with the Office toolset for Windows and after severing the OS/2 co-development agreement with IBM put all their effort into the Windows and Office products.
If you were going to develop for Windows you needed to be all-in or you could not keep up with the rapid pace of Windows API changes (strategic??). Thus, WordPerfect and 123 both suffered schedule, quality and feature issues.
That affected both sides of their game and we now know the ultimate winner of that battle.
Hint: it ain't us.

Consider the reality of that emerging new technology market.
If the Biggest and Best word processor and the number one spreadsheet had decided to go all-in with IBM and OS/2, today's reality would probably be a LOT different. What OS do you think would have been most in demand? At the time those two applications were 90% or more of what people used a PC for.
Who would have followed MS down the path if it meant not being able to use the two most important (at the time) desktop applications?
It would have been a different world!

Several years later I worked in a consulting role for many law firms who needed to switch their word processing over to MS Word from WordPerfect because that is where the corporate world and most of their customers were, and support for WordPerfect was all but gone.

If you want to see true hatred aimed at yourself, try telling a group of a hundred legal secretaries (and a few attorneys) that you were taking their WordPerfect away and forcing them onto Word.

Lotus died on the vine after a few more missteps by Mitch in trying to dethrone Microsoft.
Does anybody remember Lotus Sympathy (Symphony)?
Talk about slow your computer down...
 
I remember OS/2 and WARP (I also remember getting an "update": 21 3.25"disks.. OS/2 came with 22..) I also remember working a lot on Wordperfect too..

I started on Wordstar in high school. I think I was one of the only ones who did some homework & reports on a 'real' word processor (and on a CP/M machine, with 8" floppies!)
 
I remember running OS/2 on some IBM machines. It was a good and reliable OS. For years I used Lotus SmartSuite on Windows & liked it, especially Organizer. But then MS started taking over, the 800 pound gorilla. When I started working at colleges as an IT guy they were already entrenched in the MS world. Now that I am retired and can't get Office for free I use LibreOffice which is a very nice suite. The only thing it lacks is an equivalent of Outlook, which I consider MS's best program. Give LibreOffice a try. It runs on Windows, Mac, & Linux.

And it will open up any MS document and you can save anything you create in a MS format.
 
I remember running OS/2 on some IBM machines. It was a good and reliable OS. For years I used Lotus SmartSuite on Windows & liked it, especially Organizer. But then MS started taking over, the 800 pound gorilla. When I started working at colleges as an IT guy they were already entrenched in the MS world. Now that I am retired and can't get Office for free I use LibreOffice which is a very nice suite. The only thing it lacks is an equivalent of Outlook, which I consider MS's best program. Give LibreOffice a try. It runs on Windows, Mac, & Linux.

And it will open up any MS document and you can save anything you create in a MS format.
Yeah that and Open Office used to be decent. I haven't tried it in several years though.
Smart suite was a decent product, just never really gained a foothold. The word processor was Ami Pro (converted from Samna) wasn't it? My wife liked that one.

I have nothing against Linux except it still locks-out the non-IT oriented when it comes to basic stuff like drivers and network tweaking. Anything outside of install and use requires IT-savvy users. Nonetheless it does keep marching on and improving. I guess under the hood on Windoze is no treat either.

I like Outlook too. Feature rich! I use it to this day. The one thing I fault them for is their threading model. To often the product waits while a background task executes.
 
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I remember OS/2 and WARP (I also remember getting an "update": 21 3.25"disks.. OS/2 came with 22..) I also remember working a lot on Wordperfect too..

I started on Wordstar in high school. I think I was one of the only ones who did some homework & reports on a 'real' word processor (and on a CP/M machine, with 8" floppies!)
Yep, and Wordstar preceded WordPerfect I believe. They allowed embedding/inserting codes within the document with keystrokes, something WordPerfect was wise to copy early on. That was one of the main things secretaries missed and complained about with Word.
 
I would greatly prefer WordPerfect---it was the first PC word processor I used and it had cornered the field about 25 years ago---but since Pearson publishing and my chem co-authors use Word as a de facto standard, I have no choice. I know that Libre Office is supposed to handle Word files but there are always tiny differences. The larger the file, the more differences show up.
I have been using WordPerfect since around 1985 or so. Still have it, and refreshed a couple of years ago to an updated version, paid. In fact it was so loved by me I have never used a pirate version, always paid. Microsoft cornered the market by making Word free with their OS, hence the majority of users today use Word, including where I work.

Speaking of spreadsheets, the first one I used was Visicalc.
 
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