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Author Topic: Slow computer  (Read 18785 times)

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Little Marine

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    Slow computer
    « on: March 08, 2022, 12:41:58 PM »
    My wife and I use the same desktop (Dell Inspiron) at home. When I log under my name the computer works fine. When she logs under her name the computer slows to a crawl. I looked in task manager and it doesn't show any high usage. I used process manager but I don't know how to read the results very well. When it first started happening she was using Microsoft Edge. I switched everything to Google Chrome. It improved greatly but it back to a crawl now.

    ngc2392



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      Re: Slow computer
      « Reply #1 on: March 08, 2022, 12:58:17 PM »
      Do you have a ssd drive? If you create another test account, is it also slow? I would test disk (if its hdd) and memory.

      Little Marine

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        Re: Slow computer
        « Reply #2 on: March 08, 2022, 02:28:39 PM »
        It is not an SSD. I can create another account.

        Little Marine

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          Re: Slow computer
          « Reply #3 on: March 08, 2022, 06:02:57 PM »
          Why would the disk or memory be bad if it works for me

          Lisa_maree



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          Re: Slow computer
          « Reply #4 on: March 08, 2022, 07:01:23 PM »
          If it is a mechanical drive there could be failing sectors where your wife's profile is stored on the drive. You can test the hard drive using a trail copy of HDsentinel from here

           https://www.hdsentinel.com/

          You say there is nothing seems to have high usage.
          Can we check this using a program called Speccy from here.

           https://www.ccleaner.com/speccy/download

          After you run the program. select file then publish snap shot. Then copy the link displayed to another post here
          You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”
          ― John Bunyan

          ngc2392



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            Re: Slow computer
            « Reply #5 on: March 10, 2022, 03:27:11 PM »
            well, i would suggest that you buy a ssd drive. for testing purposes you can also run crystal disk info (portable version). and, is her profile maybe bloated with some autostart software? if you have just 4gb of ram, that could also lead to crawling experience.

            Little Marine

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              Re: Slow computer
              « Reply #6 on: March 10, 2022, 08:11:26 PM »

              Little Marine

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                Re: Slow computer
                « Reply #7 on: March 10, 2022, 08:19:36 PM »
                I also ran the drive test. It said there no problems

                Allan

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                Re: Slow computer
                « Reply #8 on: March 11, 2022, 05:37:29 AM »
                While an ssd will certainly improve boot time and certain disk intensive operations (such as large database searches), it will have minimal impact on day to day operations once the system reaches the desktop. This sounds more like a corrupt profile to me than anything else.

                Lisa_maree



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                Re: Slow computer
                « Reply #9 on: March 11, 2022, 09:10:02 PM »
                Hi Thank you for the Speccy report which looks fine, nothing out of the ordinary.
                Does your wife's desktop have a lot of files or any large folders. If you open users\leslie\
                The select properties on the Desktop folder.   It should be less than 100 KB.
                Also when logged into her profile you could open a command prompt as administrator. The run SFC /scannow
                This checks the windows system files don't have any corruption.

                 
                You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”
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                DaveLembke



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                Re: Slow computer
                « Reply #10 on: March 12, 2022, 09:20:04 PM »
                Quote
                This sounds more like a corrupt profile to me than anything else.

                I'm siding with this as cause (or) profile is very large in size making it inefficient and latent because of mechanical hard drive vs SSD.

                Making a new profile for her to use and keep old profile remaining may be a solution. Browser favorites can be backed up and exported from old profile and imported to new profile. Personal data can be accessed through c:\users\ and click on her profile name and should be able to navigate to locally stored data to access from outside of that profile from the new profile. A shortcut could be made to this data or it copied to a location that is not in the user profile to avoid the new profile from taking on large size. I like to save my data not within my profiles but at folders outside of the profile such as at C:\Data

                If you do decide to go the route of an SSD upgrade though it can help in avoiding lag when dealing with large data as well as lag if there are many small files to be accessed. But a HDD is still usually plenty as long as you have adequate amount of RAM for the OS, where Windows 10 works best on 8GB or more of RAM and if 4GB RAM or less it can heavily page (virtual memory) working a hard drive to act as the extra RAM it needs to function better than no paging at all but this is where HDD's can become overwhelmed with read/write requests and the computer lags as its shuffling a flood of bits back and forth between system RAM and the HDD. SSD's are able to get data lightning fast vs having to wait for the data to come around on platters.

                Little Marine

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                  Re: Slow computer
                  « Reply #11 on: March 26, 2022, 06:33:13 PM »
                  I ran the command prompt to check for damaged files. It found several and repaired them. I created another profile for my wife also. The odd thing about the new profile is every shortcut I create on the desktop gets a message stating windows can't find the file. I checked the amount of files on her desktop. It was 5.2 mb. Mine is 5.4 but I have no problems. After running sfc her old profile seems to be doing better. THANKS FOR ALL THE HELP

                  Little Marine

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                    Re: Slow computer
                    « Reply #12 on: March 29, 2022, 06:41:10 PM »
                    I deleted my wife's old profile. I created a new one. When I create a shortcut on the desktop I get an error message stating Windows can't find the file. I looked on the internet for possible solutions but it still doesn't work.

                    ngc2392



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                      Re: Slow computer
                      « Reply #13 on: March 30, 2022, 02:38:17 PM »
                      where does that shortcut links to? if you right click on icon and select properties, it should say where the proper file is located. if you deleted the profile, you could also delete the files in that profile.

                      Little Marine

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                        Re: Slow computer
                        « Reply #14 on: March 30, 2022, 08:18:47 PM »
                        One of the shortcuts was to Yahoo. I went to yahoo and copied the address and put it on the desktop