Desktop is TOO slow

[+Warwagon MVC]

For fun I would also open up the defragment and optimize drives (search for it in the start menu)  and check to see if defrag has been running on a normal schedule. Sometimes it gets turned off for some reason and hasn't been ran for years. Probably won't help THAT much for speed but it is something I check on customers PC's  who have a spinning drive.

[jnelsoninjax]

11 minutes ago, bledd said:

Get an SSD.
 

You will kick yourself for not moving to SSDs when Vista came out.

 

The only place HDDs belong now are in a NAS.

Agree with an SSD, once you get one you will never want to go back to a magnetic drive. Here are two good deals:

https://slickdeals.net/f/11308535-480gb-adata-ultimate-su650-3d-2-5-solid-state-drive-ssd-98-17-free-shipping

https://slickdeals.net/f/11308531-500gb-samsung-850-evo-2-5-sata-iii-internal-solid-state-drive-ssd-135-99-free-shipping

[xendrome]

CrystalDiskInfo that 100% drive?

[Mockingbird]

Run userbenchmark and post results here

 

http://www.userbenchmark.com

[seta-san]

My mom bought an all in one a few months ago that had a 1tb hdd, 5400rpm, and 8mb cache. I made her take it back. 

[Ready2018]

Looks to me from the information posted about the WD drive is that it's a 2009 (or there abouts depending on the manufacture date) SATA1 drive.

 

You would need to check what SATA revision the motherboard can take, otherwise if it's only a SATA1 then you will be stuck at the maximum of 150MB/s if you upgraded to a SSD.

[DevTech]

4 hours ago, nabz0r said:

My HDD is WD 250gb.
No, there is nothing development stuff installed on this machine. A couple of weeks ago I did test my HDD but found nothing but haven't tested RAM.

 

Could it be my that my motherboard has an older bios version?

MB: RAMPAGE III EXTREME

SMBIOSBIOSVersion
1102 (latest bios version 1502 from late 2011)

1. Before anything else, verify your motherboard has the latest BIOS. Whatever you typed there seems to imply you need to upgrade.

 

No point in all of this debugging of stuff  if the problem is with the BIOS.

 

 

 

2. The HD is a mid-tier 7200 WD 250 gb which did not seem very fast even in the year it was made but it was not an excruciating slow 5400 rpm from that time. It should not however be pegging your disk at 100% which leads to BIOS as a one of the suspects.

 

That is an excellent motherboard:

 

https://www.asus.com/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/RAMPAGE_III_EXTREME/specifications/

 

2. A) make sure your hard drive SATA cable is connected to one of the GREY motherboard SATA connectors

 

2. B) make sure you are running the latest Intel chipset drivers from Intel.com

 

 

3. A problem with the CPU can be the cause if it is overheating and throttling down, or has other speed glitches

 

3.A) check the CPU temps

 

3.B) if temps are a bit high, redo the thermal compound since some of them wear our over time. What cooler are you using?

 

3.C) That motherboard is designed for overclocking so make sure to set your RAM and CPU speeds to normal while debugging this issue. Some overclocking timings have been known to confuse some device drivers. I have also seen a case where so much focus was given to maxxing the RAM, that the CPU was intentionally underclocked!

 

 

4. Check BIOS settings for power management

 

4.A) make sure that you are not under-volting

 

4.B) make sure Load Line Calibration is turned ON

 

4.C) make sure that all CPU features are turned ON

 

4.D) make sure that all CPU power management and low power C-States are turned ON (Win 10 is more comfortable with that)

 

 

5. Make sure all device drivers are up to date (and other software as well)

 

5.A) One really fast way to do this is to download PatchMyPC which will run a check for any old software it knows about

 

In the left hand side, click the check box for "Driver Booster" 

 

Let Driver Booster install and update all your device drivers. You can then uninstall it afterwards.

 

It will rapidly download all the Intel and other system board drivers you need to be compatible with Windows 10.

 

 

6. If you upgrade to a SSD

 

6. A) To avoid any future issues, just keep it simple and select either a Samsung 850 EVO or a Samsung 850 Pro

 

6. B) DO NOT clone your current hard drive. Bite the bullet and do a clean install of Windows 10. Cloning could easily just bring over your current config problem. Measure Disk I/O before and after installing your own software setup to make sure one of your "normal" installs is not the culprit.

 

 

[DevTech]

2 hours ago, Ready2018 said:

Looks to me from the information posted about the WD drive is that it's a 2009 (or there abouts depending on the manufacture date) SATA1 drive.

 

You would need to check what SATA revision the motherboard can take, otherwise if it's only a SATA1 then you will be stuck at the maximum of 150MB/s if you upgraded to a SSD.

https://www.asus.com/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/RAMPAGE_III_EXTREME/specifications/

 

- Top end mobo paired with a ho-hum hard drive.

 

- has SATA-2 and SATA-3, but I would stick to the Intel based SATA-2

 

In any case a disk constantly pegged at 100% is not likely to be a serial transfer issue. It has serious head movement issues of some sort or more likely driver or disk time outs.

 

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

When you do switch to a SSD, I would strongly recommend that you do a clean installation of Windows 10 and the various applications installed on the computer (Adobe Acrobat, Apple iTunes, Dropbox, ESET, FortiClient, Mozilla Firefox, device drivers for Logitech and NVidia, and so forth), get them configured as you like them, and then connect the old Western Digital 250GB 7200 RPM hard disk drive back to the computer, and copy your data from it to the SSD.

 

When you are done with that, put the HDD aside for a while in case you need to get any files you missed from your earlier copying.  After a safe amount of time that you determine, put it into a USB enclosure, and use it as an removable backup drive to store backups of your valuable data files.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

[PsYcHoKiLLa]

This is your hard drive:

 

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/250gb-western-digital-wd2500aajs-caviar-blue-sata-3gb-s-7200rpm-8mb-cache-9ms?v=c

 

From your screenshot it's also showing 100% usage which is weird, I suspect you might have boot time defrag enabled.

 

It's also a Sata II drive which means it's theoretical maximum speed is 300MB/s (which it'll never reach, especially if it's older), your motherboard supports Sata III (600MB/s) :

 

https://www.asus.com/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/RAMPAGE_III_EXTREME/

 

As others have said, try an SSD and connect it to the Sata III port, if you do then make sure you back up anything you don't want to lose first so you can move it back, also disable hibernation, there's some other things you should really do too, examples here :

 

https://www.xtremerain.com/things-installing-ssd/

Edited February 27, 2018 by PsYcHoKiLLa

[ThaCrip]

@PsYcHoKiLLa

 

I see in that article (from xtremerain you linked to) it talks about 'disable prefetch etc'. I would avoid that stuff as it does not increase wear much as a modern SSD like Samsung 850 EVO, which is a popular SSD drive, is a total non-issue because it's rated for 75TB of writes and won't be worn out for a long time to say the least as I have had mine since May 2015, so nearly 3 years, and only have 9.8TB of written data to it according to Samsung Magician. even if someone did double what I do, chances are your going to get at least 10+ years out of it before actual failure from writing data to the drive occurs. at my current rate ill be somewhere in the ball park of 21 years+ of life out of it which basically means the SSD will outlast my computer hardware assuming it only dies from writing and nothing else.

 

or look at it this way... one could write 20GB EVERY SINGLE DAY to the SSD (basically average 20GB of data written per day for the life of the SSD) and still get at least 10+ years out of the Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD drive. I don't see the vast majority of people doing this and not only that how many people are still using the same computer they are now in 10+ years time?, I suspect not many (even though I don't doubt some will be). even if you wanted to go more towards 15 years if your one of those people who like to hang onto PC hardware for general internet usage as long as you can, chances are if your not going too crazy with the writes to the SSD, it will get at at least this far to.

 

bottom line... It's not worth worrying about writes on a modern SSD all that much. sure, any large file writes I generally use a regular hard drive (like for video files and the like) but outside of that just use your SSD and don't worry about it. hell, you could still write some larger video files on it here and there and not worry about this either because it's going to be difficult to average 20GB per day for the life of the drive which means you will more than likely get well over 10 years of life out of the drive assuming the drive only dies from write wear and nothing else.

[PsYcHoKiLLa]

3 minutes ago, ThaCrip said:

@PsYcHoKiLLa

 

I see in that article (from xtremerain you linked to) it talks about 'disable prefetch etc'. I would avoid that stuff as it does not increase wear much as a modern SSD like Samsung 850 EVO, which is a popular SSD drive, is a total non-issue because it's rated for 75TB of writes and won't be worn out for a long time to say the least as I have had mine since May 2015, so nearly 3 years, and only have 9.8TB of written data to it according to Samsung Magician. even if someone did double what I do, chances are your going to get at least 10+ years out of it before actual failure from writing data to the drive occurs. at my current rate ill be somewhere in the ball park of 21 years+ of life out of it which basically means the SSD will outlast my computer hardware assuming it only dies from writing and nothing else.

 

or look at it this way... one could write 20GB EVERY SINGLE DAY to the SSD (basically average 20GB of data written per day for the life of the SSD) and still get at least 10+ years out of the Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD drive. I don't see the vast majority of people doing this and not only that how many people are still using the same computer they are now in 10+ years time?, I suspect not many (even though I don't doubt some will be). even if you wanted to go more towards 15 years if your one of those people who like to hang onto PC hardware for general internet usage as long as you can, chances are if your not going too crazy with the writes to the SSD, it will get at at least this far to.

 

bottom line... It's not worth worrying about writes on a modern SSD all that much. sure, any large file writes I generally use a regular hard drive (like for video files and the like) but outside of that just use your SSD and don't worry about it. hell, you could still write some larger video files on it here and there and not worry about this either because it's going to be difficult to average 20GB per day for the life of the drive which means you will more than likely get well over 10 years of life out of the drive assuming the drive only dies from write wear and nothing else.

Yeah, it is an older article to be fair, presumably dealing with the 1st or so generation of SSDs, I just grabbed the first one that lists post-SSD processes

[Dutchie64]

Just to add to this....
I had a laptop from a family member a while ago, that did the more or less the same thing. Slooooww bootups and program starts.
I checked Windows, updates, settings, drivers, software etc. etc., started in safe mode and regular, but found nothing out of the ordinary.

As this was a HP machine, I downloaded the diagnostic tools, and ran them. First batch came up with errors on the disk controller.
Replaced and cloned the HD with an old HD I had lying around, and presto! Boot times were back in the 30-40 seconds again. (Old 5400rpm HD....)

So.... It could be your harddrive is slowly failing on a controller level. And with a HD from 2009 it's about time to replace that one

 

rob

[Ready2018]

1 hour ago, PsYcHoKiLLa said:

This is your hard drive:

 

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/250gb-western-digital-wd2500aajs-caviar-blue-sata-3gb-s-7200rpm-8mb-cache-9ms?v=c

 

From your screenshot it's also showing 100% usage which is weird, I suspect you might have boot time defrag enabled.

 

It's also a Sata II drive which means it's theoretical maximum speed is 300MB/s (which it'll never reach, especially if it's older), your motherboard supports Sata III (600MB/s) :

 

https://www.asus.com/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/RAMPAGE_III_EXTREME/

 

As others have said, try an SSD and connect it to the Sata III port, if you do then make sure you back up anything you don't want to lose first so you can move it back, also disable hibernation, there's some other things you should really do too, examples here :

 

https://www.xtremerain.com/things-installing-ssd/

Not sure what screenshot you were looking at, but the screenshot the OP posted show the following HDD: WD2500AAJS-60M0A0 which is a much older HDD (and not so fast) than the one from scan as pictured below

 

 

 

 

[patseguin Global Moderator]

19 hours ago, bledd said:

Get an SSD.
 

You will kick yourself for not moving to SSDs when Vista came out.

 

The only place HDDs belong now are in a NAS.

I sort of agree, but large capacity SSD's are still really expensive. I have a 4TB RAID 0 volume with WD hard drives and it's plenty fast enough. That much space in SSD would cost me north of $2000 I think.

 

EDIT: To the OP, have you run any tests on the hard drive or SMART status? Even it being an old drive shouldn't be causing it to take 15 minutes to boot, Sounds to me like that are probably drive errors.

[patseguin Global Moderator]

4 hours ago, goretsky said:

Hello,

When you do switch to a SSD, I would strongly recommend that you do a clean installation of Windows 10 and the various applications installed on the computer (Adobe Acrobat, Apple iTunes, Dropbox, ESET, FortiClient, Mozilla Firefox, device drivers for Logitech and NVidia, and so forth), get them configured as you like them, and then connect the old Western Digital 250GB 7200 RPM hard disk drive back to the computer, and copy your data from it to the SSD.

 

When you are done with that, put the HDD aside for a while in case you need to get any files you missed from your earlier copying.  After a safe amount of time that you determine, put it into a USB enclosure, and use it as an removable backup drive to store backups of your valuable data files.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

Perfect plan right there.

[DevTech]

ALERT!

 

Everyone is focusing in their favorite advice to replace a hard drive with a SSD, when that is obviously NOT the OP's problem.

 

The drive he posted was NEVER slow enough to peg at 100% Disk I/O and cause a 15 minute boot time. 

 

Think about it. 15 minutes. 15 minutes. 15 minutes. A 7200 RPM hard drive is simply NOT that slow.

 

Without identifying the actual issue, replacing the hard drive with a SSD runs a risk of spending money and time and still ending up with the same problem.

 

 

[PsYcHoKiLLa]

2 hours ago, Ready2018 said:

Not sure what screenshot you were looking at, but the screenshot the OP posted show the following HDD: WD2500AAJS-60M0A0 which is a much older HDD (and not so fast) than the one from scan as pictured below

 

 

 

 

He posted this screenshot...

 

 

I googled that model and I posted a link to a retailer which showed the same drive. If you look at the scan link, it even shows the same model number. Whether it's a newer model, I'm not sure.

 

Here it is on NewEgg too.

[Ready2018]

1 hour ago, PsYcHoKiLLa said:

He posted this screenshot...

 

 

I googled that model and I posted a link to a retailer which showed the same drive. If you look at the scan link, it even shows the same model number. Whether it's a newer model, I'm not sure.

 

Here it is on NewEgg too.

Sorry, but you keep looking at the wrong model number, it's 60M0A0 and not just WD2500. The 60M0A0 is a SATA1 model from 2009

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

3 minutes ago, Ready2018 said:

Sorry, but you keep looking at the wrong model number, it's 60M0A0 and not just WD2500. The 60M0A0 is a SATA1 model from 2009

Actually, it's SCSI, which I believe are the first class of SATA1.

 

If he even gets a newer model HDD, he will be far better off.

[LaP]

21 hours ago, seta-san said:

My mom bought an all in one a few months ago that had a 1tb hdd, 5400rpm, and 8mb cache. I made her take it back. 

 

Those generic 5400rpm HDD can hold back the best computer. Works well when you install nothing and just run one application at a  time in full screen mode (i.e. games) but as soon as you install lot of things and try to multi task they kill the whole computer. We have an old test computer at job with a 5400 rpm HDD and despite having a more than capable i5 it is uber slow.

 

His being a 7200 rpm WD he should be fine though anyway should not be that slow with this drive.

[Ready2018]

2 minutes ago, Mindovermaster said:

Actually, it's SCSI, which I believe are the first class of SATA1.

 

If he even gets a newer model HDD, he will be far better off.

Indeed he would be far better off

[sc302 Veteran]

10-15 minutes is unacceptable even on a rotating drive of whatever rpm....a few minutes maybe.  There is something else going on.

 

 

 

 

Check your smart status, disable applications you do not use that start with the computer, check your event logs (application and system) to see if there are any errors that cause the system to wait a long period of time prior to proceeding.  

 

FWIW, an ssd isn't necessarily going to fix a 10-15 minute boot time unless the drive is going bad...which it could be and this would be identified in the smart status or the system event log with a lot of hard drive events.  

 

It could even be a malware infection.  In the mid 00's I saw infections cause a computer to take an hour to boot to the os, and the os was barely usable.  It isn't outside of the realm of possibility.  Don't blame the hardware just yet, there are still a lot of unknowns before we go from a few minute boot that an ssd can fix to a 15 minute boot that an ssd will have a low probability of fixing.

[PsYcHoKiLLa]

26 minutes ago, Ready2018 said:

Sorry, but you keep looking at the wrong model number, it's 60M0A0 and not just WD2500. The 60M0A0 is a SATA1 model from 2009

 

[DKAngel]

is there a proccess smashign that drive at 100%? shame he isnt on win10 he could find out what is causing it then

 

has anyone suggested after its booted and calmed down to usuable speeds to check the windows logs for errors? that would give you a hand also