Windows 7 Peformance issues

[bikeman25]

Hi All

 

Have an older Intel Atom Acer Revo nettop guess it's called, inherited from when Uncle passed away in 2015, though it's really slow, hardly can open Chrome, or Malwarebytes, or even Avast Antivirus,  Specs are Intel Atom 1.6ghz, 2gb of ram (upgrading to 4gb as soon as I can) 5400rpm hard drive OEM, (might have shop replace that as info online says have to remove everything to get to screws underneath motherboard for the darn PC.

 

Disk cleanup done

Defrag done

 

Avast 12.4.2281 beta installed

Malwarebytes 2.2.1.1043 believe is version

Windows 7 clean installed probably 2 months ago as it was even slower than it is now a ways back

 

All Systems Run Avast right now, but willing to switch to MSE/Defender if it will increase performance, my daily use machine is Asus M32BC-01 Desktop, with 8 Core AMD FX 8310 Processor, 8gb of ram, DDR3 1600mhz, 2tb Hard drive 7200rpm,  Radeon R7 240 video card (upgrading that when I can in future), 1gb Ethernet,  (main system clean installed after Avast bug crashed system a month ago)  

 

 

[Nick H. Supervisor]

You provided the information, but you seem to have left out the question.

Do you want to know if there is anything you can do to increase the performance without changing the hardware? I don't think there's really much to be done. Increasing the RAM will help, but you are basically dealing with an outdated netbook. They weren't designed to be that great from what I remember, they were designed with portability in mind and simple tasks such as browsing the Internet and editing word documents.

[bikeman25]

Yeah I wasn't sure what question to ask in regards to that, can't really afford to change the hardware at the moment, attempting to save up for at least the memory upgrade that maybe will help a bit, 2gb to 4gb, and then upgrading it to Windows 7 64bit, as it does have 64bit Intel Atom, but probably as far can go with it really.   Know it's not meant for performance like my main system, but sluggishness in even doing basic tasks, leaves me not using it too much lol

 

[Skiver Veteran]

I assume the slowness in performance was not there before the latest rebuild?

 

Have you done things like check all the latest drivers are installed?

 

If you look in Task Manager do you see any particular process maxing out the CPU, Memory or Disk?

[bikeman25]

Slowness was there, but wasn't as bad as it is now, takes like 1-2 minutes at least just to open Malwarebytes,  did do clean install of Avast beta on November 3rd, but I figured well would run about same as old version, but seems not to be at this point, of course that system is old, so might just be it's always been that slow and i'm more used to my 8 Core system, than using the Windows 7 Atom PC.   

 

[Dot Matrix]

You can try to uninstall the anti-virus softwares. They're pretty sluggish by design. 

 

Also, I suggest trying to disable some of the visual features - Aero Glass, window animations, etc. That should also increase performance. 

[bikeman25]

Ok will do that, and see if improves at least a little bit for that system

 

[Nick H. Supervisor]

What would you use the machine for? It sounds like it will be a side-machine for messing around with, so what about trying a Linux distribution with it? You could probably find a distribution that is supposed to be as lightweight as possible, that might help matters.

[bikeman25]

Yes Side Machine, mostly used for Testing programs (example Avast beta versions), light email duties at times, nothing major really,  Will look into Linux for it, then get the iso onto flash drive, and get it

installed, as that system no cd/dvd drive, but I think got spare flash drive can use for that task, and can get that taken care of shortly here hopefully

 

 

 

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

30 minutes ago, bikeman25 said:

Hi All

 

Have an older Intel Atom Acer Revo nettop.....

You can stop right there, actually.....acer netbooks are slow by design, as they are made cheap. You could TRY to add more ram, but it won't do much good. If I were you, I'd think about investing in an SSD, so at the VERY least, the processor will be the bottleneck. I've had TONS of experience on these things.....acer makes the cheapest thing they can. BUT, an SSD would make all the difference in the world.

[bikeman25]

Ok Definitely will look into SSD, plan on getting  first one for Desktop eventually anyways,  so cheaper one possibly, maybe Crucial one for that little system, think comes with Desktop adapter so could use Desktop adapter with probably another model in Main Desktop and don't think i'd need adapter in that acer netop, as already 2.5 inch drive I believe inside there

 

 

[Michael Firth]

Question....do you have an instance of svchost.exe that is inexplicably using a large amount of RAM?

[Copernic Reporter]

1. Disable Windows Defender
2. Get rid of Avast ; use MBAM on demand only.
3. Replace Chrome with Otter Browser, Midori or QupZilla.
4. Disable Indexing (Windows Search) - get Everything instead
5. Disable the Aero theme & visual effects
6. Disable System Restore
7. Disable Unwanted Services
8. Turn off Unused Windows 7 Features
9. Disable the Windows 7 Sidebar (The Gadgets)

 

If nothing works, just downgrade the damn thing to Windows XP, or better yet, like Nick already said, get a lightweight Linux distro.

[bikeman25]

Yes Do it appears have svchost.exe using high amount of ram on Windows 7 Nettop

 

 

 

 

[Michael Firth]

Ahh, that's not as high as I was thinking. There's a stinking bug with Windows 7 that sends Windows Update into a meltdown and massively slows the machine down, but it would be a single svchost.exe that is using 200+MB of RAM.

 

I would remove all anti-virus for a start, just install Microsoft Security Essentials instead. It's more than good enough and very kind in terms of performance.

 

Security Essentials LINK:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/14210/security-essentials-download

[Tech Geek Alex]

Go to MSConfig -> startup and see what is checked in start up.  I would uncheck everything.  People are usually surprised what all is in the start up area. 

[n_K]

Being honest sounds expected. The 5400rpm drive is a killer, add to that it's an atom CPU. Getting an SSD will give you a much needed performance boost, but at the end of the day it'll still be an atom and it'll still be slow, as, heck.

[flynempire]

OK I want to chime in here since i'm a user of Windows 7 on just about all my machines. One of Windows 7 biggest issue like someone mentioned above is the damn Windows update system is totally messed up. I have seen this on many machines I have encountered although some machines do not exhibit this behavior go figure.

Normally SVCHOST.EXE and TrustedInstaller.exe will consume most if not all the CPU. How the hell can they develop a system for updates which should be simple and not give these problems. If you turn off Windows Update in the services or open it on Control Panel and say don't check for updates the problem goes away.

Since I became so frustrated with this issue I googled for alternatives to Windows Update and found a tool which does not even have to be installed. It is called Windows Update Mini Tool and I got it at SoftPedia.com. Just download and run for 32-bit or 64-bit. Instead of hours and house searching for updates it takes 10 minutes mostly which I'm OK with. It gives you a list of what is available and you can download some at a time (which I recommend) and then after restart install more. This has helped my customers and family. I wont say it is perfect because some times updates don't install the first time but for the most part it works.

I leave it on in the services section and then just click don't check for updates in the control panel area. This way the system runs normal all or most of the time.

This is one of the issues you have right now. I would highly recommend an SSD that will make a difference and max the memory to whatever it can hold and get the fastest ram available. Crucial has a nice online tool that lets you see what memory is available for the system.

Graphics wise cant do much because it is integrated. 

 

Hope this helps.

 

[flynempire]

Thanks Copernic for the tip on Everything search. Im going to try that. I think the indexing can also slow the machine down a bit