Windows 10 is slow: hardware limitation or software issue?
June 20, 2020 8:30 AM Subscribe
I have a Thinkpad X220 Tablet with an i5-2520M CPU, 8 gb of ram, and an SSD. It's set up as a dual boot system with Ubuntu & Windows 10. Ubuntu runs fine, especially now that I've increased the ram to 8gb, but Windows 10 is often painfully slow to use even after a restart.
I had Windows 7 until a few months ago, and I did an upgrade to Windows 10 rather than wiping and reinstalling from scratch. Is the terrible slowness likely to be a limitation of my hardware, or is it something that I could substantially improve by doing a clean new install of Windows 10? I haven't found any viruses or malware, I've done a some of the "here's 10 things you can do to speed up Windows 10!" type stuff and there's sufficient free space on my Windows partition. I do need to have Windows around, but I mostly just use Ubuntu and I'd rather not deal with reinstalling Windows on a dual boot system unless it's likely to help. (Also not 100% sure whether my product key would work for a new install?)
I had Windows 7 until a few months ago, and I did an upgrade to Windows 10 rather than wiping and reinstalling from scratch. Is the terrible slowness likely to be a limitation of my hardware, or is it something that I could substantially improve by doing a clean new install of Windows 10? I haven't found any viruses or malware, I've done a some of the "here's 10 things you can do to speed up Windows 10!" type stuff and there's sufficient free space on my Windows partition. I do need to have Windows around, but I mostly just use Ubuntu and I'd rather not deal with reinstalling Windows on a dual boot system unless it's likely to help. (Also not 100% sure whether my product key would work for a new install?)
A first step might be to try running Task Manager. Click "More details" at the bottom so you can see if any of the five areas (CPU, memory, disk, network, GPU) are showing high usage. Then click the column heading to see if a process is hogging the resource. From there, Googling the process name may lead you to more information.
posted by davcoo at 8:47 AM on June 20, 2020
posted by davcoo at 8:47 AM on June 20, 2020
The CPU is around a decade old which means it's going to be a limiting factor. It's roughly 1/3 the processing power of a modern lowish end CPU and I suspect Microsoft simply isn't interested in spending all that much time and effort trying to optimize for systems that old. If anything, they want to incentivize you to buy a new computer, because that's when they make their money. Ubuntu puts a lot more work into making sure they work well on older hardware because that's part of their target market. My oldest system in any use is a 3rd generation i5 and I find it pretty much unusable at this point for any serious work.
One other possibility between the two platforms is the mitigation that were put into place to work around the Spetre / Meltdown etc. vulnerabilities. The 2nd generation i5s had really bad performance reduction with the patches compared to more recent CPUs and Microsoft's patches for them tended to have worse performance impact than Linux's. And again, they're probably not spending all the much time testing and tweaking the patches for the newer vulnerabilities in that class on the really old CPUs.
But definitely check the system performance using Task Manager and use something like Autoruns to see if there's extra stuff running in the background you get get rid of.
posted by Candleman at 9:29 AM on June 20, 2020 [2 favorites]
One other possibility between the two platforms is the mitigation that were put into place to work around the Spetre / Meltdown etc. vulnerabilities. The 2nd generation i5s had really bad performance reduction with the patches compared to more recent CPUs and Microsoft's patches for them tended to have worse performance impact than Linux's. And again, they're probably not spending all the much time testing and tweaking the patches for the newer vulnerabilities in that class on the really old CPUs.
But definitely check the system performance using Task Manager and use something like Autoruns to see if there's extra stuff running in the background you get get rid of.
posted by Candleman at 9:29 AM on June 20, 2020 [2 favorites]
A clean install isn't a bad idea, and may help if your original Win7 system had a bunch of vendor bloatware (or subsequently installed crap) on it. They've made doing a clean install painless enough that I tend to favor doing one periodically just as prophylaxis against the inevitable accumulation of cruft.
Also check the "Startup" tab in task manager. There's some sort of brain parasite endemic amongst Windows developers that makes them feel the urge to add stuff that constantly runs in the background even when it's not necessary or useful. (No, I don't want tens of megabytes of Garmin Updater running at all times just so the damn thing can auto-launch when I update my GPS every six months. I will launch it from the start menu like a sane proto-hominid. Get in the sea.)
posted by sourcequench at 9:30 AM on June 20, 2020
Also check the "Startup" tab in task manager. There's some sort of brain parasite endemic amongst Windows developers that makes them feel the urge to add stuff that constantly runs in the background even when it's not necessary or useful. (No, I don't want tens of megabytes of Garmin Updater running at all times just so the damn thing can auto-launch when I update my GPS every six months. I will launch it from the start menu like a sane proto-hominid. Get in the sea.)
posted by sourcequench at 9:30 AM on June 20, 2020
Windows still degrades over time, for reasons that are not clear, not easy to explain or both.
The half-life of a modern Windows system is 3-4 years now, a big improvement over what it’s been historically, but it sounds like you’ve carried over some of the decay from your Win7 install. I would back up my data, reinstall 10 on a clean partition and see what that got me. It doesn’t sound like a hardware problem, really.
posted by mhoye at 9:46 AM on June 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
The half-life of a modern Windows system is 3-4 years now, a big improvement over what it’s been historically, but it sounds like you’ve carried over some of the decay from your Win7 install. I would back up my data, reinstall 10 on a clean partition and see what that got me. It doesn’t sound like a hardware problem, really.
posted by mhoye at 9:46 AM on June 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: I was aiming to keep my question concise, but: I’ve played around with startup programs and task manager and neither made a big difference, unfortunately. I pruned stuff down when I was working with only 4gb of ram, and then figured that surely doubling my ram after that would make a big difference, but it did not (with Windows—with Ubuntu it made things much more pleasant.)
It is definitely a rather ancient machine (I’m not sure about specs but the processor matthewr mentions is from q1 2013 and mine is from q1 2011) but I’m not super motivated to upgrade as long as Ubuntu (mostly) serves my needs. It would be nice not dreading having to boot into Windows when I need to, though.
posted by needs more cowbell at 9:46 AM on June 20, 2020
It is definitely a rather ancient machine (I’m not sure about specs but the processor matthewr mentions is from q1 2013 and mine is from q1 2011) but I’m not super motivated to upgrade as long as Ubuntu (mostly) serves my needs. It would be nice not dreading having to boot into Windows when I need to, though.
posted by needs more cowbell at 9:46 AM on June 20, 2020
Depending on what your Windows needs are, you could try creating a Windows virtual machine running inside Ubuntu. I've done that not all that long ago on an X230T (admittedly with a better i7 processor and upgraded to 16GB of RAM) using the free VMware Player and it's been fine for modest Windows things (like say, Excel).
posted by Pryde at 10:04 AM on June 20, 2020
posted by Pryde at 10:04 AM on June 20, 2020
Does it have the original SSD in it? They don't necessarily last forever; perhaps it's just that the Windows portion of it isn't in an ideal spot on the drive. (This is admittedly somewhat hand-wavy, but the memory chips on an SSD do in fact wear with use, and drives do wear leveling to compensate, so your Windows install might be on part of it that's.. more worn, or more being used to compensate for worn-out cells.) On the plus side, it's almost certainly a SATA SSD and 240GB ones run about $35 now - if it shipped with a 128GB drive then that's double your space on top of that.
Would second the fresh Windows 10 install, and will also note that not but a couple months ago I activated a Windows 10 install using a Windows 7 COA stuck to the side of an (actually older) machine, and it worked fine. That was supposed to stop working at some point but I don't know that it ever really did. (Said machine was a Core i7-930 or something, so even older CPU, with 16GB RAM and a spinning disk. It worked fine, so I wouldn't imagine a newer machine would be "painfully slow", even factoring in the other differences between them.)
posted by mrg at 11:22 AM on June 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
Would second the fresh Windows 10 install, and will also note that not but a couple months ago I activated a Windows 10 install using a Windows 7 COA stuck to the side of an (actually older) machine, and it worked fine. That was supposed to stop working at some point but I don't know that it ever really did. (Said machine was a Core i7-930 or something, so even older CPU, with 16GB RAM and a spinning disk. It worked fine, so I wouldn't imagine a newer machine would be "painfully slow", even factoring in the other differences between them.)
posted by mrg at 11:22 AM on June 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
I have a repeating problem with my Thinkpad T530 (similar specs, but slightly less old) where it gets into a situation where it has some kind of mild overheat and throttles itself down to 29% until I reboot, and that makes everything painfully slow.
But in general, I don't have problems with performance on it (on Windows 10, obviously) apart from that.
posted by ambrosen at 11:28 AM on June 20, 2020
But in general, I don't have problems with performance on it (on Windows 10, obviously) apart from that.
posted by ambrosen at 11:28 AM on June 20, 2020
Can you try running in safe mode? (may be a safe mode with networking) to see if a limited set of processes makes a difference.
posted by sammyo at 12:23 PM on June 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by sammyo at 12:23 PM on June 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
It is definitely a rather ancient machine (I’m not sure about specs but the processor matthewr mentions is from q1 2013 and mine is from q1 2011)
Your processor has a PassMark (overall performance rating) of 2326, mine has a PassMark of 2144.
Optimising Windows can be really frustrating but you don't need to give up on the hardware just yet. I'd reinstall a clean Windows 10.
posted by matthewr at 2:17 PM on June 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
Your processor has a PassMark (overall performance rating) of 2326, mine has a PassMark of 2144.
Optimising Windows can be really frustrating but you don't need to give up on the hardware just yet. I'd reinstall a clean Windows 10.
posted by matthewr at 2:17 PM on June 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
Nthing to back up your Windows partition and do a clean install. It's possible that you could find the right set of tweaks to get it to play nice with your upgraded installation, but I guarantee that it's going to take more time and effort than starting from scratch, and you'll at least be starting from a known quantity that way.
posted by Aleyn at 6:37 PM on June 20, 2020
posted by Aleyn at 6:37 PM on June 20, 2020
Download a Microsoft suite of tools called SysInternals. Run the AutoRuns tool, and turn off anything that's not essential. You'll probably see a bunch of things like Java checking whether it need to update, printer drivers checking whether they need to update, etc.
If you see software from a company you don't recognize, you might google them and the software and see if it's malware and turn it off and/or uninstall it (if it's possible to uninstall - some disregard attempts to uninstall). AutoRuns is a hassle-free, authorized-by-Microsoft way to turn stuff off.
Also, it's your Bluetooth. Not really, but here's an example of how things can slow down a system.
What's your story on anti-virus? MS Security Essentials?
posted by at at 1:39 PM on June 21, 2020
If you see software from a company you don't recognize, you might google them and the software and see if it's malware and turn it off and/or uninstall it (if it's possible to uninstall - some disregard attempts to uninstall). AutoRuns is a hassle-free, authorized-by-Microsoft way to turn stuff off.
Also, it's your Bluetooth. Not really, but here's an example of how things can slow down a system.
What's your story on anti-virus? MS Security Essentials?
posted by at at 1:39 PM on June 21, 2020
This thread is closed to new comments.
I run Windows 10 on a similar spec laptop: a Dell XPS 13, a slightly slower processor (i5-3337u), 8gb, SSD. I have no problems doing standard stuff (browser + Office).
posted by matthewr at 8:42 AM on June 20, 2020