Windows 10 PC staging work slow-down

Great news, glad you got it fixed ;)

UPDATE... Thank all you for your insights and suggestions.. I cleaned out what I could, scanned for everything, with no luck.. 4 GB of ram was not fully being used and hard drive is less than 1/3 utilized.. THEN removed Norton Internet Security completely. restarted the computer and it works 100 percent better.. apparently Norton didn't like living with other programs OR it itself was the problem.. Seems to be working fine now.. Never would suspect a well known product like Norton to be a trouble maker since it had worked well in the past. AGAIN..Thanks to all for your help..

DiskDoctr covered a lot of salient points, but without RAM numbers, here's more I see occasionally - hard drive running out of space.

Low on memory means it will hit the swapfile harder, which if low on hard drive space will also mean much slower performance. Unless of course you have a solid state drive.

Hibernation files may also interfere if it's low on disk space.

Worth a try to clear cache and cookies (I believe CCleaner can do that) even though it's overall system performance.

First, check your BIOS version for updates. A LOT of machines were auto-updated to Win 10 but have incompatible BIOS. Win 10 loads compatibility junk that might make it work for a bit, but if you try to load from scratch, things like blanked out video mid-way, hard drive freezes, etc could happen.

Second, look at your windows updates. Win 10 was the end of Micros*ft even pretending to respect the end user. It now does whatever updating it wants, on its own schedule, whenever it wants. You won't see an "update now" only schedule updates now or some trash to that effect.

It will download whenever it likes- especially trouble for IT people who want to update computers in their shops with high bandwidth connections and while servicing. Nope- it will wait until customer is on the road over cellular for example :(

The updates can be quite HUGE, depending which one it wants.

Dump Norton. High failure/miss rate. Use AVG, free version. Do NOT use safebrowser and other performance enhancements.

Switch to free version of Malwarebytes (you can pay if you want, but under account, deactivate license). The paid version is massive overhead.

BTW, the full version of MBAM interferes with some antivirus programs.

Some combinations of antivirus and some versions of Win 10's MS-Essentials do not play well together.

If you have an upgraded computer to Win 10, you might still have old, incompatible OEM software installed.

Of course, scan thoroughly, including rootkits. A number of the nasties cloak other nasties.

CCleaner- unless you are a pro or have a specific need, don't use it. Okay as a tool, but not as regular maintenance for average Joe. It can do too many things you may not know to exclude. I am seeing more and more profiles corrupted in Win 10 by using CCleaner.

One recently involved system paths and variables. New accounts cloned those settings :( Had to rebuild all the variables based on the installed system and programs. Reloading from scratch was not an option.

Shipping to/from your location would be cost prohibitive.

Use task manager to see what's using up your resources.

^^ THIS times 10.

I don't use CCleaner. My machine is 8 year old.

I found that Norton AV slowed everything down appreciably. Got rid of it and went to Trend Micro Systems AV. Not sure you can get Trend online however. It's more of a developers AV. I have 10 with the developers suite and a solid state hard drive in my Dell 5000. CCleaner here too.

It's really fast

It is not necessary for you to do a re-install. Windows 10 has multiple options to repair/reload when performance has reached a point that it is barely usable. It has been a while since I used it but there is a "Repair Windows" option and a "Reload Windows" option.

The reload has the same effect a re-install from a downloaded image or DVD, but it is much easier - you do no have to down load image files and then apply updates. BUT it will by default load the most recent version, so if you are intentionally on an older release, use it with caution.

Check Microsoft Windows Recovery options.

I use CCleaner as well. It has a function where you can look at the programs/applications that start during Startup, and you can then restrict the ones you don't want running. As someone else mentioned, you could be getting plugged up by too many running programs/applications. On a computer build by dell, it would not suprise me to see a large amount of "bloat" running.

Other's mentioned the amount of RAM you have, and I'll echo that. You may need more.

Windows 10 searching for updates/trying to install an update(s) could also be slowing you down. It may have had a problem installing some and is continuing to try. I use manual updates on mine, not automatic (Win 7).


The combo of Norton, Malwarebytes, and windows defender may not be playing well together either. I had Norton long ago and found it to be very bloated and resource intensive. I currently use Malwarebytes and Eset smart security with windows defender deactivated. The two work fine together.

You may also want to look at some of the dell "bloatware" that you can uninstall.

If I had to pick two: RAM and running processes/programs/updates/etc.. If you want more work, as a previous poster mentioned, reinstall windows.

I use program System mechanic that adjusts and tweaks multiple settings that really makes a noticeable difference. Some of these tweaks you can do yourself, but the program does it easy and quick. Also, if your running a cloud backup program they really slow down the unit. Consider installing an ad blocker. I use UBlock Origin which stops almost all and takes the load off the CPU. If you search youtube there are many video's on PC slow down. If you only have 4 Gig of ram I would go to 8 Gig which is considered the bare minimum now.