# Windows 10 horribly slow in every way



## mrodent

Just got a new laptop, Dell Precision, powerful.

Installing stuff with a view to it becoming my primary machine.

Offered upgrade to W10 from W8.1 so did it (but I have a disk image of C: drive so could presumably revert).

Very little installed so far but everything is absolutely slow and horrible. Have Avast installed (avoided installed bundled Chrome and OpenCandy), and system scan says "no malware".

Typing, at all times, including in this browser, is like typing in treacle: horrible latency.

Here are some times which are making me feel even less charitable to M$ than normal (that's saying something): 17 s from entering system password to get to desktop; 36 s from entering system password to get to dialog to enter Veracrypt (using a .bat file which runs on startup!)

Going Win-E takes about 5 s to get Explorer to come up, initially, and later about 2 s.

Clicking Firefox icon takes about 15 s (!) for window to come up initially, later about 2 s.

There's obviously a vast battalion of crapware being run in the background... is there any way I can shut some of it down? (yes, yes, I do know this is M$, and choice is something they hate ... but hope springs eternal).

In another (closed) thread here the OP was asked to run the "sysinfo" utility. This is what I get:
Tech Support Guy System Info Utility version 1.0.0.2
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro, 64 bit
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4810MQ CPU @ 2.80GHz, Intel64 Family 6 Model 60 Stepping 3
Processor Count: 8
RAM: 16289 Mb
Graphics Card: NVIDIA Quadro K2100M, -2048 Mb
Hard Drives: C: Total - 120046 MB, Free - 65074 MB; D: Total - 74999 MB, Free - 37220 MB; E: Total - 74999 MB, Free - 18774 MB; G: Total - 4095 MB, Free - 1702 MB; X: Total - 6469 MB, Free - 754 MB; Y: Total - 749 MB, Free - 450 MB;
Motherboard: Dell Inc., 0V5GVY
Antivirus: Windows Defender, Disabled

Any help greatly appreciated!


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## Oddba11

Sounds like the upgrade didn't complete properly or there is some software running that is not fully Win10 compatible. On a machine such as yours, there should be no performance difference between Win8 and Win10.

I'd start by disabling all addon software that is set to auto start. Start with Avast, as Win10 has Windows Defender.


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## flavallee

> Just got a new laptop, Dell Precision
> Motherboard: Dell Inc., 0V5GVY


You appear to have a *Dell Precision M4800 WorkStation* laptop which has been tested by Dell for an upgrade to Windows 10 and which provides the necessary drivers for it.


> There's obviously a vast battalion of crapware being run in the background... is there any way I can shut some of it down?


I did a clean install of Windows 10 in a separate partition in my Dell OptiPlex 780 desktop running Windows 7 so I can play with it and still have Windows 7.
It does install a lot of multimedia-related apps(most of which I have no use for), so I used a third-party app(Piriform CCleaner) to uninstall the ones that I couldn't uninstall within Windows 10.
I actually find Windows 10 to be a bit faster and "snappier" than Windows 7.
You probably have a lot of apps installed that I don't use, and many of them are probably running in the background, so that may be affecting speed and performance.

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## lunarlander

Try going to the start menu, right click on each tile and select 'turn off live tile'. See if that helps performance.


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## mrodent

Thanks to all three of you for your very helpful pointers.

Dell turns out to have a guide on its site for "prepping" for this upgrade which includes updating any drivers... but before reverting to 8.1 and trying again (maybe) I shall follow the advice of each of you. Much appreciated...


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## mrodent

*Failure... though M$ succeeded as ever in convincing me they are the most abysmal company on the planet.

Turning live tiles off*
- went to the Start menu and, right-clicking each "tile" went either "Uninstall" or, if unavailable, "Turn live tile off". This seemed to improve things.
- restart: no dramatic improvement, but maybe some...
*
Using Windows Defender (temporarily, because it's not highly rated) instead of Avast*
- I uninstalled Avast... tried to set Windows Defender to "on": lots of restarts later, still unable to access Defender. However, under Control Panel --> Sys & sec --> Sec & maintenance --> Security it says Network firewall: On (Win Firewall), Virus Protection: On (Win Defender), Spyware etc: On (Win Defender)! 
*
Disabling some auto-start apps*
- Under "auto start": Control Panel --> ? --> Task Manager, tab "Startup": disabled the following: Waves MaxxAudio (medium), Realtek HD (high), HD Audio Background (high), Dell Precision Optimizer (medium), NVIDIA Update backend (medium), MS Off 2k component (medium), Common Software manager Flexera (one of two, the one marked "medium"),
- restart... no significant change to startup time...
*
Using CCleaner*
- installed CCleaner (I in fact use this for cleaning) and managed to disable a few new auto start things
- restart: looked at processes active on startup. The main culprits appear to be
1) "Antimalware Service Executable" --> Windows Defender Service
2) Cortana
3) Service Host: Local System (19) --> a whole load of subprocesses
4) Dell.DFS.Agent.WinService
5) Windows Modules Installer Worker
*
Trying to kill off scumware known as Cortana*
- search: Cortana: turned 3 things off...
- restart: Cortana still in memory, turns out the fLICkers at M$ have made it impossible to uninstall/disable properly.

Even after all my efforts, over 2 hours, at disabling startup apps and nonsense there are, at startup, 81 processes running!

The "hard drive" symbol (this is an SSD drive) is still flashing like crazy for about 20 s during the boot up/logon process

Services can be disabled, of course, but as ever I don't know which services I can safely turn off (without losing Internet functionality for example).

- verdict: Dell may be partly responsible for loading up this machine with its own-brand crapware, but I assume 90% of the responsibility for this shambles is down to the greedy incompetent fLICkers at M$. Bravo, lads, you have excelled yourselves.


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## lunarlander

If you are unsure of which services to stop, take a look here: http://hardenwindows10forsecurity.com in the Guide. On that page, search (CTRL-F) for the term 'vulnerable service'. It will show you which ones you can disable.


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## Triple6

If it's a new laptop and if you don't have a lot on it, back up your data and do a Reset with Windows 10, it'll take all the pre-installed Dell software off and give you a fresh clean install. You can then update the drivers to the latest versions and reinstall only the software you need.


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## Phantom010

As far as I know, Windows always behaves like that at startup. It's quite normal for Firefox to be taking 15 seconds to open the first time. For some people it can take up to 30 seconds, and I've even seen 60 seconds. Since everything seems to be running normally after the first time apps are opened, I don't think it's worth the fuss. A lot of stuff is running at startup, like Windows Update. That's always been a hog.


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## mrodent

Thanks again for these additional helpful suggestions... I have now reverted to 8.1 (although I have a disk image of an early stage of the post-switch W10 so presumably might be able to revert at some point in the future).

@lunarlander: very useful for both 8.1 and 10, great, thanks
@Triple6: also v useful, but I have the conviction by now that Cortana (and maybe other Windoze 10 Scumware things) cannot be disinfected without major seriously geeky hoop-jumping... if at all.
@Phantom. Well, my W7 installation (on my 2013 Dell Precision) is a fairly well-behaved beast, although I had to do some shutting down of preloaded M$ crapware at the beginning, obviously. On this new machine things were deffo NOT running acceptably in any non-Microsoft sense of the term...! Thanks though.


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