Good evening,
Are there any tips or tricks one would suggest when looking over a Windows machine when the owner (not you) thinks it is "running slow"?

I have recently been asked by a friend/co-worker if I would not mind looking
at their machine sometime in the near future. I would like to but, while I don't have to come across as a know-it-all, I would like to not look stupid.
I used to be pretty confident about stuff like this but, after using linux
for so long, I have really lost touch with what can go wrong with Windows.

Is there anything that comes with Windows 7 and up that is anything like,
say, 'hardinfo', or that would perform similar performance tests? I would rather not download something that might cause more harm (adware, etc.) than good if I can help it. :)

Mike

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* An ongoing debate between Mike Powell and All rages on ...

Are there any tips or tricks one would suggest when looking over a
Windows machine when the owner (not you) thinks it is "running slow"?

I use Wise Care 365 to keep the system "clean & organized", the best way to speed up Windows (my system, a Win 7 Pro 64-bit OS, is as spiffy as it was when

I built it). The ultimate fix would be to re-install everything from scratch (Windows itself and applications), a daunting task, but doable (I used to do this every couple of years, but found it unnecessary after installing Wise Care

365!)


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Re: Re: Windows benchmarking
By: Ben Ritchey to Mike Powell on Thu Mar 02 2017 10:45 pm

I built it). The ultimate fix would be to re-install everything from scratch (Windows itself and applications), a daunting task, but doable (I used to do this every couple of years, but found it unnecessary after installing Wise Care

Windows 10 finally got it right. When booting to the menu using F8, there's the option to boot to last known good config, and another to wipe and reinstall the OS. They even leave you a nice html file showing what apps were installed to help the reinstallation process.

I upgraded an old Windows 7 install to 10 and had weird niggling issues with it. A fresh install and it was better than when running on 7.
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Re: Windows benchmarking
By: Mike Powell to All on Thu Mar 02 2017 06:46 pm

I have recently been asked by a friend/co-worker if I would not mind looking at their machine sometime in the near future. I would like to but, while I don't have to come across as a know-it-all, I would like to not look stupid. I used to be pretty confident about stuff like this but, after using linux for so long, I have really lost touch with what can go wrong with Windows.

Things I've run into with my system in no particular order:

1. Run Disk Cleanup from Windows or ccleaner, I prefer the latter. Have it run a registry check as well as disk cleaner. Having a temp file filled with thousands of files can slow Windows down as it will need to access that directory.

2. Windows defrag doesn't do as good of a job as third party defrags. Try running mydefrag or another reputable defragger - after the disk cleanup.

3. Run HD Tune on the system and check to see that the HD system is running well. It'll analagous to running timing tests with hdparm. My SATA mirror gives me a speed of around 90-100 mb/sec max. If it's running on ATA drives and seems way slow, like single or low digits, it may be that the storage controller in Device Manager is set to PIO mode instead of DMA. There's a setting in device manager for that.

4. Check out device manager and see if any hardware didn't install correctly.

5. Check under My Computer to see if any mapped drives no longer exist. That can slow down file listings while the system looks for a non-existent drive and times out.

6. Check the memory usage by hitting ctrl-alt-delete and selecting task manager. If the system is running out of memory, then use the MSConfig program to disable start up at boot for any programs you don't need. They'll start just fine when you need them.

Those are the kind of things I've run into with my own system, hope this helps point you in the right direction.
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On 02 Mar 17 18:46:00, Mike Powell said the following to All:

Good evening,
Are there any tips or tricks one would suggest when looking over a Windows machine when the owner (not you) thinks it is "running slow"?

I wrote a very detailed reply to you in MIN_COMP on Micronet about this.

No matter what suggestions you read here, the only "proper" way to troubleshoot a slow Windows computer is to correctly identify and isolate what service, application or process is causing the slowness. Task manager and Resource Manager are the two to start with. HijackThis 1.99 comes second, to isolate services loaded on startup. Find the slowness and isolate it.

NEVER EVER just randomly throw things at it in hopes it will fix it. "Good" technicians fix Windows problems *properly*. They do not just try a bunch of things in hoping and praying it will work.

I wrote on Micronet about never, EVER defragmenting a customers computer. There is a reason why which I did not explain; which fits into this rant about not just throwing random things at a problem.

Very rarely do customer computers need defragmenting. This is a common misconception going back to the days of FAT32 file systems and Windows 95. Truth is... the NTFS file system is very reslient and efficient, and unless a computer's file system has been neglected for years will this EVER be a noticable improvement. Take it from someone running a BBS on Windows for close to two DECADES... a BBS that constantly tosses mail packets, many read/writes on an NTFS volume.

Before investigating performance issues relating to the hard drive, or contemplating a defragment, you should run a SMART test on the customer's hard drive to ensure it can even *survive* any more disk-intensive operation.

In most cases, the customer has not backed up files... backups? What are those? So, determine with SpaceMonger the breakdown of the disk usage. If its reasonable, lets say, 50 to 100 gigabyte, then use Drive Snapshot to conduct a complete image of the customer's system to an external USB drive. The time spent waiting for the snapshot set to complete can be used to upsell the customer on your services or make idle chit-chat over coffee... your choice.

If you are charging billable time, the customer will almost always agree to have a working complete disk snapshot. It sells itself. If the customer
needs to re-install; they do NOT have to re-install Windows but rather just recover using the snapshot set created.

I do NOT believe in re-installing Windows except in the most severe cases because you will NEVER hear the end of it from the customer. They will nag
you incessently over "wheres this", "wheres that" after reinstalling Windows and in some cases, the computer is back to square one months later, after all your messing around because the slowness was not fixed properly the 1st time.

The last thing you EVER want is that customer coming back over and over again with the same computer, same problem, etc... harassing you, nagging,
demanding work for free, etc etc... "Good" technicians fix things right the first time so they are not "married" to that customer's machine later.

Nick

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I would recommend the gui-based procexp:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

You can use it to monitor all the processes and their associated cpu usage. It's a great way to track down and kill a roque process that insists on high cpu usage as soon as it is detected.

As for something like hardinfo (or even better imho), I'd recommend Speccy or Aida64.

Hope this helps.

...A


Mike Powell : All wrote:

Good evening,
Are there any tips or tricks one would suggest when looking over a Windows machine when the owner (not you) thinks it is "running slow"?

Is there anything that comes with Windows 7 and up that is anything like, say, 'hardinfo', or that would perform similar performance tests? I would rather not download something that might cause more harm (adware, etc.)
than
good if I can help it. :)

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Hope this helps.

Thanks!

Mike

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