Windows 8 random slowdowns

[NEVER85]

Over the last 3 days I've had about 3 separate instances of serious slowdowns with my computer that has Windows 8 Pro installed. Chrome would literally take 2 minutes to load when it would normally be instantaneous. This would apply to pretty much any app I tried to launch. It seems to happen at completely random times, no matter what I'm doing, and the only way I could fix it (for about 24 hours anyway) is to do a hard reboot. There haven't been any of the usual causes of a slowdown present on my system.

- CPU usage was at 0-2%, before and during the slowdowns

- RAM usage was at its normal 15-20%, before and during the slowdowns

- I have an SSD so there wouldn't be any of the normal HDD issues present, i.e. disk thrashing, plus SSDLife says it's 100% healthy

- Mulitple malware scans came up clean

- Couldn't find anything odd running in Task Manager, after waiting a good 2 minutes for it to load

- CPU/motherboard temperatures were fine according to Speccy

So I'm pretty much at a loss. This never happened on Windows 7, and this was an in-place upgrade to Windows 8 instead of a clean install. Normally I would clean install the OS but honestly I had too many things configured the way I wanted that I didn't want to have to do over again. I thought maybe that would be related to the problem but I did this upgrade nearly 3 weeks ago and have only had this problem for the last 3 days. Anybody have any suggestions? Thanks.

[Silversee]

I just did a "PC Refresh" in Windows 8 and it was surprisingly easy and excellent. This tool preserves all of your Metro apps, your user accounts and data, and your synced settings (IE favorites, pinned sites, Start screen, desktop personalization, etc.), while completely resetting your desktop environment to a pristine out of the box state. It even leaves an HTML file on your desktop with a list of removed apps, so you can decide what to reinstall.

If you can't sort your problem some other way, I would not hesitate to try this. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

(Also, do give IE10 a fair shake... Chrome is not an automatic install for me anymore...)

EDIT: One caveat is that this may not fix an issue if it is caused by a out of date or incorrect device driver. Since you did an in-place upgrade, you may have some drivers hanging around that are not fully compatible with Windows 8. I'd just install any Windows 8-specific chipset, AHCI, audio and display drivers, and also any BIOS updates available from your manufacturer...

[+chorpeac MVC]

I have a complete system freeze once a day or so, where my hdd light is seriously blinking. I have an ssd as well. I haven't been able to pinpoint it to anything, as I can't do anything while it is happening. No key or mouse input will register. However, it only lasts about 30-40 seconds. I think it might be an AV update or something like that. Weird though.

[NEVER85]

EDIT: One caveat is that this may not fix an issue if it is caused by a out of date or incorrect device driver. Since you did an in-place upgrade, you may have some drivers hanging around that are not fully compatible with Windows 8. I'd just install any Windows 8-specific chipset, AHCI, audio and display drivers, and also any BIOS updates available from your manufacturer...

I'll look into this. Thanks.

[NEVER85]

Ok I noticed something in Event Viewer. There are literally thousands of errors in there from just today, all with "Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-EventTracing/Admin" as a log name, and "Session "" failed to start with the following error: 0xC000000D" in the description, and this error has literally been occurring every 15 seconds since I hard rebooted this morning.

[Aergan]

Try running the following to scan and repair system files in an administrative command prompt:

sfc /scannow

Sounds like a device driver installation has messed something up. Have you recently installed any drivers for a previous version of Windows?

[NEVER85]

Try running the following to scan and repair system files in an administrative command prompt:

sfc /scannow

Sounds like a device driver installation has messed something up. Have you recently installed any drivers for a previous version of Windows?

No nothing. The only driver I installed recently was the 13.1 Catalyst driver for my Radeon HD 6870.

I believe I found the cause. It was Panda Cloud Antivirus. I uninstalled it, removed every last trace of it and the errors in Event Viewer have stopped, and I haven't had another random slowdown yet either *crosses fingers*, so hopefully it's resolved now.

[ajua]

I'm experiencing something very similar. The last 3 or 4 days, once a day my PC with Win8 Pro runs normally and I don't notice any slowdowns until I try to open a program. They take 1 or 2 minutes to load like OP said. All indicators like SSD, CPU, RAM are all normal while this is happening. The HDD LED on my case doesn't blink like crazy, just as usual.

These slowdowns are happening around 8 or 9pm and they only cease until I reboot the computer, which takes like 3-5 minutes to start the reboot.

The newest thing on my system is AMD Catalyst Drivers 13.2 Beta 5. I will dig into the event viewer later tonight.

[Detection]

A lot of problems with 8 are caused by the fast boot setting, it doesn't get a chance to fully restart when you shutdown and boot up using that

I disabled it on my PC when I had 8 installed and have disabled it on my laptop when I realised it was acting up and still had it enabled, cures many bugs that fast boot leaves because of its hybrid fake shutdown

[ajua]

A lot of problems with 8 are caused by the fast boot setting, it doesn't get a chance to fully restart when you shutdown and boot up using that

I disabled it on my PC when I had 8 installed and have disabled it on my laptop when I realised it was acting up and still had it enabled, cures many bugs that fast boot leaves because of its hybrid fake shutdown

I have been running Win8 Pro on my desktop since september without any problems until very recently. My laptop also has Win8 Pro but I haven't experienced this slowdown thing on it.

It should be traced to something else other than the fast boot I think. I will keep looking.

[+DKAngel Subscriber²]

i also havent expoerienced anything with slowdowns at all since running windows 8 either and 9/10 it actually isnt windows fault

[Detection]

I have been running Win8 Pro on my desktop since september without any problems until very recently. My laptop also has Win8 Pro but I haven't experienced this slowdown thing on it.

It should be traced to something else other than the fast boot I think. I will keep looking.

Well the way to test if it is a fast boot issue is to give it an actual 'restart' and see if it feels any better, that's how I narrowed down some of the problems I was having

[ajua]

Well the way to test if it is a fast boot issue is to give it an actual 'restart' and see if it feels any better, that's how I narrowed down some of the problems I was having

The weird thing is that everything works as expected. The slowdown comes from nowhere (apparently) and the 4-5 times it has appeared it was at night.

I already powered off the computer a few times to rule the fast boot out. There isn't any error entries in the Event Viewer at the times the launching of apps slowdown. Extracting files also seems to take a long time in these times. Perhaps it something related to hard disks or RAM.

[Detection]

The weird thing is that everything works as expected. The slowdown comes from nowhere (apparently) and the 4-5 times it has appeared it was at night.

I already powered off the computer a few times to rule the fast boot out. There isn't any error entries in the Event Viewer at the times the launching of apps slowdown. Extracting files also seems to take a long time in these times. Perhaps it something related to hard disks or RAM.

My Win 8 laptop gets a 50% CPU usage when either defrag or search-indexer kicks in, I was also getting a network issue using a load of CPU yesterday, task manager showed "No Network" although the internet was fine, I clicked on the wireless icon and it changed to "Limited" then disappeared and CPU usage was back to normal

I don't use the laptop much, but I feel as if the problems started since the last time Windows Update installed a few things

[ajua]

My Win 8 laptop gets a 50% CPU usage when either defrag or search-indexer kicks in, I was also getting a network issue using a load of CPU yesterday, task manager showed "No Network" although the internet was fine, I clicked on the wireless icon and it changed to "Limited" then disappeared and CPU usage was back to normal

I don't use the laptop much, but I feel as if the problems started since the last time Windows Update installed a few things

That's what I'm thinking too. Windows should have installed an update that somehow messed with something else.

Right now I'm having the slowdown. Deleting two folders with a few files each took almost 2 minutes. I have task manager, resource monitor opened and nothing peaks or seems wrong. Every other program behaves normally if it is open. If I launch a program, it will take a few minutes to open and work slow.

I will take a look at the Microsoft Answers forum and see if someone has already reported this. I'm almost sure that an update is the culprit.

[Detection]

That's what I'm thinking too. Windows should have installed an update that somehow messed with something else.

Right now I'm having the slowdown. Deleting two folders with a few files each took almost 2 minutes. I have task manager, resource monitor opened and nothing peaks or seems wrong. Every other program behaves normally if it is open. If I launch a program, it will take a few minutes to open and work slow.

I will take a look at the Microsoft Answers forum and see if someone has already reported this. I'm almost sure that an update is the culprit.

I ran sfc /scannow and it found no integrity problems

I wondered if it was an AV but then realised I only have default Win 8 defence running, no 3rd party,

Feels like something is deeply scanning the files before giving you access right :?

[Kenneth Graulund]

I notice that everyone in this thread having the issue is using an SSD, so unless the adoption rate for SSD's have skyrocketed, that seems to be connected to the issue.

I have 3 different SSD's in my machine, all different brand, but no issues like what you mention... but i researched a little, and it seems that while Defrag was disabled on Windows 7 when you have an SSD, this has now changed in Windows 8.

The defrag in Windows 8 on SSD's is different from what you usually understand about Defrag, it will send TRIM commands to the SSD to clear out deleted data.

You can read more about it here : http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/W8ITProPreRel/thread/f97425f8-3857-4aa4-9cf5-437d5e212c9c/

I wonder if these TRIM commands is somehow causing issues, maybe bad firmware in your SSD ?, maybe compare SSD models and check for newer firmware on the vendors website ?.

[Detection]

I notice that everyone in this thread having the issue is using an SSD,

Normal physical SATA here

[ajua]

I notice that everyone in this thread having the issue is using an SSD, so unless the adoption rate for SSD's have skyrocketed, that seems to be connected to the issue.

I have other Win8 Pro computers with an SSD and only my desktop is having this problem. SMART attributes (checked with 3 different apps) show health at 100%. RAM tests show no problems.

Four days ago was Patch Tuesday. That's when I started seeing this behavior.

The first time, it would take almost 24 hours to experience the slowdown. Today I've suffer it 3 times already.

[ingramator]

Hey guys. Could you post an Event Viewer log for us? What computing patterns have changed over the last few days? Have you started using more multimedia orientated applications?

One fix that I apply that works is to hit up CMD/PS as an admin and type

bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes
[/CODE]

Other than that ensure you are on the latest updates and keep checking the event log!