Windows 7 Ultimate X64 extreme lag

Hello, I've been having a problem ever since I installed my W7 2months ago.

My configuration is:

MOBO: Intel DH55TC
CPU: Intel Core i3 540M
RAM: 2GB Kingmax DDR3 @1333MHz
GPU: nVidia 250 GTS
HDD: 80GB Seagate Barracuda (1 year old)


My problem revolves around the fact that everything is moving like my P2@200MHz I had 7 years ago.

I am running a triple boot between Linux, OSX and W7.
I have a licensed copy of Windows (student/employment program)
Having OSx on board also means that my transfer mode is set to AHCI in BIOS. But wether I turn ahci on or off, the problems are still there. Enabling AHCI in W7 required of me to make a registry modification that I found on these forums.

It's like my pc is better only at UNItasking, the games are running great, maxed out options etc. But let's say I have Firefox opened and I run a 2MB installer for some miscelaneous software, doesn't matter what it is, any concurrent process to the actual opened one, be it FF or Word or Photoshop makes everything lag, that 2mb app that I am talking about takes about 3 4 minutes to install, when on my second pc (AMD 3000+ x2, 2GB RAM@800MHz), the same piece of software install in about 30seconds, next's and license agrement included.
It's not that it's moves slowly, but all the apps are hanging, FF stops responing, the app install pauses, just stands there, I can still open the start menu and select an application, which starts after 1minute or so.

I have tried that with and without antivirus, same deal.
The HDD can't be broken because the last Windows it had on it was still a W7 but in a AMD configuration. I formatted it and installed W on this machine.
The RAM is OK, OSX and linux are blazing fast compared to my W7, when on my older pc (the AMD mentioned above) W7 moved blazing fast and the Linux and OSX moved slower.

Anyhow, I am totally out of ideas, I am thinking of buying more RAM (low budget right now) but I am certain this is not the cause to all that is happening.

I am a experienced to very experienced PC user, I tried to cover here some of your possible questions, but I am sure I overlooked something.

Please, pitch in, have any of you had this problem? I can't seem to find anything completely related to my issue in Google.


Thanks, Arthur

I personally think its because of how much ram you have installed for 32 bit its minimum of 1 Gig for 64 bit its a minimum of 2 Gigs so youre using the bare amount. Can I ask why youre trying to run 64 bit instead of 32 bit

Now, I have 4GB DDR3@1333MHz, Corsair GOLD VALUE, new HDD, same mobo and CPU, and in AHCI mode it lags EXTREMELY, while formatting a usb stick, the entire system hanged, uttorent downloaded with 97kb/s, instead of 7-8MB/s(usual, local tracker), and winamp stuttered a lot. As soon as the usb stick finished formatting, utorrent started flying and so on, back to the usual lag.

This is really weird, I run beside this one, a Core2Duo E2200 2x2GB with 3GB DDR2@800MHz and a 9 year old hard disk, fully set up for design, and IT FLIESSS, comparing to this Core i3 ....

As I told you before, the hardware is not messed up, on another HDD, I run OSX Snow Leopard, 10.6.5 and IT ALSO FLIES....

And yes, this is the third windows install, on the second harddisk. Same lag, same shit,

I searched the internet for a connection between the AHCI mode and lag, some people have that, BUT I HAVE NOT FOUND a explication or a clue on how to make it work like it should. That is just wrong.

If anyone has new info, please help!

New config:


MOBO: Intel DH55TC
CPU: Intel Core i3 540M
RAM: 4GB Corsair GOLD VALUE DDR3 @1333MHz
GPU: nVidia 250 GTS
HDD: 160GB Western Digital (1 month old)

I just had to do a reinstall (Win7 Ultimate x64) on my HP DV7 laptop because I was having a problem where the system event notification service (SENS) would fail to start up and basically made my system extremely slow. I researched possible fixes to keep from having to reinstall, but no attempt to fix the existing installation would work. At least I was able to back up the data I needed to before the reinstall.

You should take a close look at the event logs to determine if there are any warnings or error messages that can help narrow down the cause of the performance problems. Also start the task manager and open the processes tab and add CPU usage, mem usage, VM size, i/o reads-writes and check 'show processes from all users'. That should help show what processes, if any, are hogging system and CPU resources.

Another thing to try if nothing shows in the task manager is to start the system in safe mode w/ networking and try just using the system and see how it performs. Safe mode w/ minimal services can help identify what services or other processes started automatically during normal boot are causing problems. If safe more performance is reasonable than start looking at the other services and processes that are started in addition during normal boot (run msconfig and look at the services and startup tabs).