[Gurd141]

I need expert advice because this is completely crazy!

My main desktop system (which I'm posting this from) was recently home-built from the very fastest hardware components I've ever owned, yet in actual usage it's turned out to be among the slowest Windows computers I've ever owned! What's going wrong?

Here's my hardware:

Motherboard: ASUS Z97-A
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz
RAM: 16GB G.SKILL Trident X Series DDR3 2666 (PC3 21300) Model F3-2666C12D-16GTXD
Graphics/GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750
Boot/System Disk: Samsung 850 PRO SSD (one of the fastest available)

Here's my OS:

Microsoft Windows 7 Pro SP1-U with all patches and updates

Services and background processes:
Unless requested, I won't list them all, but keep in mind that the computer in question is running the exact same set of services and background processes as almost all of my other Windows 7 computers, all of which run MUCH faster.

Here are the symptoms I keep experiencing on an ongoing constant basis:

- Almost every non-trivial app I launch ridiculously frequently shows "Not responding" for at least 30 seconds and up to 5 minutes for almost all operations!
- If I'm flipping through photos looking for a particular one, I will see delays of from 20 seconds to three minutes between each image, even for small images!
- Clicking on a link on a web page can take up to two minutes to open in a new tab!


Here are the things I've tried to resolve this extreme slowness:

- Run very thorough malware scans with all options enabled (using MBAM and my default Norton AntiVirus) -- Nothing found
- Run SFC /SCANNOW -- Nothing incorrect found
- Run Disk Check -- Nothing incorrect found
- Run System Checkers (e.g., Iolo System Mechanic), including registry problem scans from more than one scan app -- Whatever small problems were found have been corrected without any noticeable speed improvements
- Run Registry Defrag -- Whatever small problems ere found have been corrected without any noticeable speed improvements
- Run Disk Defrag -- Whatever small problems were found have been corrected without any noticeable speed improvements
- Run hardware diagnostics -- SiSoft Sandra 2015 thoroughly tested mobo, CPU, RAM, GPU, RAM throughput, disk throughput, disk speeds, IO system bandwidth and throughput, etc, etc, etc, without finding ANY problems or slow hardware.  Also, MemTest+ ran for a full day without finding ANY problems.

All told, I haven't found ANYTHING wrong based on tests and diagnostics, but yet this system is still absurdly slow! :banghead:

 What can I do to resolve this deeply annoying problem?

 

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Gday Gurd141.

Your RAM has not been tested on that board and if you have configured it to the spec speed, it may not play nice, > http://www.gskill.co...2666c12d-16gtxd

Possible settings in the BIOS or via switches on the MB may be out of whack, so I would try the following.

With the PSU turned off, > clear the CMOS, > set all switches on the board to defaults, > Ensure only the OS boot drive is connected, > disconnect all external devices except, mouse/keyboard/monitor, power on and enter the BIOS.

Check, time/date, > OS drive is detected as SSD and set as AHCI, > go to exit menu, > Load Default or safe setting, (not optimized)  > Save and exit.

NB your RAM will be running at 1333MHz at this stage.

Any improvements?  

[iammykyl]

Gday Gurd141.

Your RAM has not been tested on that board and if you have configured it to the spec speed, it may not play nice, > http://www.gskill.co...2666c12d-16gtxd

Possible settings in the BIOS or via switches on the MB may be out of whack, so I would try the following.

With the PSU turned off, > clear the CMOS, > set all switches on the board to defaults, > Ensure only the OS boot drive is connected, > disconnect all external devices except, mouse/keyboard/monitor, power on and enter the BIOS.

Check, time/date, > OS drive is detected as SSD and set as AHCI, > go to exit menu, > Load Default or safe setting, (not optimized)  > Save and exit.

NB your RAM will be running at 1333MHz at this stage.

Any improvements?  

[iammykyl]

Gday.

Been a while since we heard from you.   Have your solved the slow performance?   An update would be appreciated.

 

Thanks.

[Gurd141]

Thanks, 

iammykyl

, and I'm sorry about the great delay in responding...

 

So here's what the problem turned out to be: After working on it for days, it turned out that there were suddenly some SFC problems that couldn't be fixed even after several fix-reboot-fix loops. However, these were extremely minor and were related to my conscious decisions to allow third-party themes to run, so these were no real problem after all.

What WAS a real problem was primarily a clobbered CMOS & BIOS, but in the end I cleared the CMOS and re-burned the BIOS, after which the problem mostly went away! However, there's some sort of lingering mobo problem with my ASUS Z97-A that causes a reboot to take an abnormally long time under certain uncommon circumstances. I could RMA it, but that would leave me without this machine until it could be fixed or replaced, so I've decided to just live with that small-ish problem.
 

But THANKS for your thoughtful replies, friend!

 

Gday Gurd141.

Your RAM has not been tested on that board and if you have configured it to the spec speed, it may not play nice, > http://www.gskill.co...2666c12d-16gtxd

Possible settings in the BIOS or via switches on the MB may be out of whack, so I would try the following.

With the PSU turned off, > clear the CMOS, > set all switches on the board to defaults, > Ensure only the OS boot drive is connected, > disconnect all external devices except, mouse/keyboard/monitor, power on and enter the BIOS.

Check, time/date, > OS drive is detected as SSD and set as AHCI, > go to exit menu, > Load Default or safe setting, (not optimized)  > Save and exit.

NB your RAM will be running at 1333MHz at this stage.

Any improvements?  

 

 

Gday.

Been a while since we heard from you.   Have your solved the slow performance?   An update would be appreciated.

 

Thanks.

 

 

[iammykyl]

Thanks for your reply Gurd141.

Sorry you are not fully satisfied with performance.

If you wish, try a clean Boot to see if you can spot a problem. 2 for W7 and a W8 which has some good info. I won't bug you for updates.

> http://www.tweaking....pvista78,1.html

> http://www.sevenforu...an-startup.html

> http://www.eightforu...indows-8-a.html