Periodic Slow Down and Solution
 

Hi

Every three or four months, my Dell Latitude laptop grinds to a virtual halt: Everything is slow--startup, search, connection and page loading all bgged down. Every time this happens, I go through all the drills--malware searches, CCleaner and similar, vetting startup apps and other unused programs. None of these seems to have any effect, so I turn to my Ace in the hole--System Restore and this ALWAYS brings me back to good performance.

Here's my question--what is it that slithers in and destroys performance regularly and is there anything I can do to prevent it????

And when you run System Restore, how far back do you go every time?

After you scan for malware, run CCleaner, etc. do you reboot?

How much free disk space do you have?

Tell us about your hardware.

Hi Digerati

Thanks for your reply I've answered in turn:

And when you run System Restore, how far back do you go every time? There don't seem to be many choices, but generally I go back to a date when my PC was running well.

After you scan for malware, run CCleaner, etc. do you reboot? Yes

How much free disk space do you have? Almost a TB

Tell us about your hardware.

Dell Latitude Windows 10
Processor: AMD FX-9800P R7, 12 compute cores 4C + 8G 2.70 GHz
Installed RAM: 16.0 GB
64-bit OS; x64 based processor

Okay - you seem to have more than enough system resources.

My point about System Restore was, because this happens every 3 or 4 months, do you have to go back to the beginning (as in years) or just the most recent 3 or 4 months? And it is the last 3 or 4 month.

I wonder what would happen if you just leave it and see if it works itself out? My thinking is you keep undoing Windows Updates and get further and further behind. Windows Update is supposed to work in the background and not interfere with the user. But if, for example, you shutdown after every session, it cannot keep Windows fully updated. So eventually, it has to move into the foreground where it impacts performance.

Perhaps if you adjust your power options when plugged into the charger to stay awake. Then initiate Windows Update and let it finish updating and see if performance is okay. Windows 10 2004 is out now, it may even include fixes for your problem - if allowed to get installed.

What are you using for security? I use Windows Defender on all my systems here - in part because I got tired of alternative solutions bogging my systems down. I also use it because it works. None of my systems have been infected with Windows Defender, starting with W8 and now with W10 or its predecessor, Microsoft Security Essentials with W7.

I am not trying to promote WD, just saying it is a viable solution that's effective, easy on resources and already in there.

https://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=234277
 

Thanks, Digerati

I use WD for security as well. I don't have the patience to wait it out, although I have on occasion because I haven't used the PC for a couple days. It didn't sort itself.

I never find System Restore points further back than a couple months, so I generally use the first one available.

It's working fine, now--more than anything I was just curious about what caused it.


Thanks again for your advice!

On my computer systems, I also noticed that everything works very quickly right after installing Windows. But then updates for Windows OS come and computers (it doesn't matter, laptop or desktop) begin to lose performance.

However, after a couple of weeks of days (sometimes up to a month) everything worked well again.

Tip: Operating systems are constantly updated in the background. You have Dell Latitude Windows 10. Therefore, you just need to calmly install all updates, do not disable the background system update.

And check your disk system for read errors. Perhaps overheating occurs under load and this leads to a loss in performance.