Windows 7 Sluggish

[icemanind]

Hey all,

I am trying to find out why my computer is running soooo sluggish. I have Microsoft security Essentials installed and ran a scan the other day and it found nothing. I also ran AVG, Ad-aware and Search and Destroy. All 3 found no virus or adware or trojans.

My system just seems to run sooo sluggish. When I click on a program (any program) to open it, the hard drive light pegs solid and it takes like 15 seconds to open. I'm talking even opening something as simple as wordpad or paint.

Here are my system specs:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.89 ghz
Memory: 4GB
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Video: NVidia GForce 9800
Hard Drive: Hitatch 2TB SATA 32mb cache
Optical Drive: Liteon Blu-Ray reader/DVD writer/CDROM Drive

If anyone has any suggestion on how to boost performance or what could be causing the issue, I'd apprecate it!

 

[madtownidiot]

is it a relatively new installation? what has changed in the time since you 1st installed windows? Was the installation an upgrade or a custom installation? Can you post a screenshot of running processes

 

[icemanind]

Actually, I installed it around January 2010, so a lot has probably changed. It seemed to be a gradual slow down.

 

[madtownidiot]

With a HDD that size, chances are system files have been mixed in with media files and documents in a way that slows everything down more every time you defrag the hdd. What I would do in your case is reinstall windows, this time partitioning the hdd so that windows goes on a 100GB partition, saving the rest for media and personal files. Keeping media files, downloads, program installers, and personal documents on a separate partition (or HDD) from system and program files will make your system much faster because everything is closer together and can be read much faster. Barring that, if you want to speed up your system again, do a thorough cleaning of your HDD.
I would start by running ccleaner, first cleaning using all the default settings, then deleting restore points to free up space. Delete the windows.old file if you have one. Follow up by using disk cleanup to get rid of anything ccleaner missed. Get rid of any programs you don't use, and then defragment your HDD, using JKDefrag GUI (works more efficiently than the windows defragmenter) All of that will take longer than reinstalling windows, but will speed up your system significantly (although not nearly as much as reformatting and repartitioning your HDD in the manner suggested above.
A couple more simple ways to speed up your system. open the group policy editor and enable the turn off all balloon notifications and the turn off autoplay settings. Then disable hibernation (windows key > type cmd in the search box> right click run as administrator > type powercfg.exe /hibernate off > type exit)
I would also check for software conflicts. Are you running more than one antivirus or antimalware application? Are there any unknown devices in Device Manager? Do you have any running processes taking up 90-100% of your cpu time? ..hope some of this helps

 

[Faladu]

Have you changed or added ANYTHING to the system right before this major blowup started?
(hardware, software, a driver?)

Nothing else help yet?

Try BoostSpeed by auslogics (free trial at auslogics.com) and see what it scares up for you.
Not a bogus program, it's a suite of utilities, including performance related tweaking and investigation tools, basically what you need, fairly priced, I bought it 1.5 years ago, it's come in handy uncountable times.

As far as multiple partitions go, that's cool and all, but it can't save you performance wise if a scaling virtual memory (pagefile.sys) is on the same hard drive as the OS, it's going to be jumping around all the time, and it's a good excuse to get a second hard drive, I haven't been down to 1 hard drive since 1992, before that it was: NO hard drive!

Run that boostspeed frontend thingamajigger and see what it finds, I'll be surprised if it doesn't help troubleshoot this.

I also recommend keeping OS on about 40 gig partition and do how you like with the rest, so a wipe and drop of the OS when it becomes necessary is a lot less painful.

So mine kind of looks like this:

C: Windows 7
D: Games
E: Multimedia
F: Utilities
G: Downloads

 

[windows7theme]

With a HDD that size, chances are system files have been mixed in with media files and documents in a way that slows everything down more every time you defrag the hdd. What I would do in your case is reinstall windows, this time partitioning the hdd so that windows goes on a 100GB partition, saving the rest for media and personal files. Keeping media files, downloads, program installers, and personal documents on a separate partition (or HDD) from system and program files will make your system much faster because everything is closer together and can be read much faster. Barring that, if you want to speed up your system again, do a thorough cleaning of your HDD.
I would start by running ccleaner, first cleaning using all the default settings, then deleting restore points to free up space. Delete the windows.old file if you have one. Follow up by using disk cleanup to get rid of anything ccleaner missed. Get rid of any programs you don't use, and then defragment your HDD, using JKDefrag GUI (works more efficiently than the windows defragmenter) All of that will take longer than reinstalling windows, but will speed up your system significantly (although not nearly as much as reformatting and repartitioning your HDD in the manner suggested above.
A couple more simple ways to speed up your system. open the group policy editor and enable the turn off all balloon notifications and the turn off autoplay settings. Then disable hibernation (windows key > type cmd in the search box> right click run as administrator > type powercfg.exe /hibernate off > type exit)
I would also check for software conflicts. Are you running more than one antivirus or antimalware application? Are there any unknown devices in Device Manager? Do you have any running processes taking up 90-100% of your cpu time? ..hope some of this helps

I completely agree with that. I also recommend to always keep the Windows in a separate drive and the rest of the media and work files in a separate drive. In fact, I make at least 3 partitions in every computer I purchase. I keep C Drive for Windows and nothing else. I keep the size of the C Drive a lot smaller too compared to the rest of the two drives. On D drive I keep my normal work and other important files and on E drive I keep my media files and other not much important files. This also helps in keeping my files safe as I format only C drive in case there is any problem and I have to reinstall Windows. I keep D and E drive as it is and so no files are lost.