3 ms·

I recently helped a friend de-cruft their slow as molasses laptop, and as ever was struck how Windows is always freaking DOING shit. It's sitting there seemingl

I recently helped a friend de-cruft their slow as molasses laptop, and as ever was struck how Windows is always freaking DOING shit. It's sitting there seemingly idle, but the start bar takes 5 seconds to open. You open task manager and it's grinding away at network, grinding away at CPU, grinding away at disc, all via opaquely named processes. The bloody thing is relentless.

schleck8 4y ago
Same here. I installed the manual firewall SimpleWall and a bunch of Windows processes I haven't used in months + telemetry are constantly trying to connect to the internet (things like xbox game bar and widgets)
jpalomaki 4y ago
Based on my experience, I blame the 3rd party stuff. All kinds of software and devices just love to add background processes to the system. I guess this is the price you pay for system where everything is possible.
- feintruled 4y ago
  I'm sure it doesn't help, but even with all that stuff disabled it's bad. svchost.exe's mysterious machinations, windows updates, superfetch (or whatever they call it now), one drive syncing, malware checking, app updates, it's like 'everything everywhere all at once' for Windows. You can make a case for all those things, of course. Just why does it have to launch into them all immediately upon startup? On a beefier machine it's probably not noticeable but it's sad to see on older PCs when Windows 10 at launch was quite reasonable when it came to lower specs.
  - GraemeMeyer 4y ago
    Recent versions of Win10 still perform quite well on old hardware for me - could be that you just need a clean install?
    - feintruled 4y ago
      Yes, clean install usually helps, but it wasn't my laptop so I didn't want to jump to extreme solutions straight away (otherwise I might have put Ubuntu on it!) I think what the main problem was they hadn't used it in a while and accumulated a backlog of mandatory Windows Updates. While these chugged away they got frustrated with an almost unresponsive computer, turned it off, install interrupted for the same thing to happen all over again. I can see how doing this stuff in the background makes sense as you don't necessarily want to bother the user with it, but when it impacts performance so badly maybe it's better to throw up the message and the progress bar. At least they know what's up!
  - zekica 4y ago
    Couldn't have said it better, Windows 10 is the first Windows that does "Everything everywhere all at once" without any regard to what other resources are in use. It is basically unusable on any 5400rpm hard drive.

schleck8 4y ago

Same here. I installed the manual firewall SimpleWall and a bunch of Windows processes I haven't used in months + telemetry are constantly trying to connect to the internet (things like xbox game bar and widgets)

jpalomaki 4y ago

Based on my experience, I blame the 3rd party stuff. All kinds of software and devices just love to add background processes to the system. I guess this is the price you pay for system where everything is possible.

feintruled 4y ago
I'm sure it doesn't help, but even with all that stuff disabled it's bad. svchost.exe's mysterious machinations, windows updates, superfetch (or whatever they call it now), one drive syncing, malware checking, app updates, it's like 'everything everywhere all at once' for Windows. You can make a case for all those things, of course. Just why does it have to launch into them all immediately upon startup? On a beefier machine it's probably not noticeable but it's sad to see on older PCs when Windows 10 at launch was quite reasonable when it came to lower specs.
- GraemeMeyer 4y ago
  Recent versions of Win10 still perform quite well on old hardware for me - could be that you just need a clean install?
  - feintruled 4y ago
    Yes, clean install usually helps, but it wasn't my laptop so I didn't want to jump to extreme solutions straight away (otherwise I might have put Ubuntu on it!) I think what the main problem was they hadn't used it in a while and accumulated a backlog of mandatory Windows Updates. While these chugged away they got frustrated with an almost unresponsive computer, turned it off, install interrupted for the same thing to happen all over again. I can see how doing this stuff in the background makes sense as you don't necessarily want to bother the user with it, but when it impacts performance so badly maybe it's better to throw up the message and the progress bar. At least they know what's up!
- zekica 4y ago
  Couldn't have said it better, Windows 10 is the first Windows that does "Everything everywhere all at once" without any regard to what other resources are in use. It is basically unusable on any 5400rpm hard drive.