[fowlermj]

Hello everyone! I'm running an older computer (circa 2012) in Windows 10, and ever since the upgrade to Win 10 I've been noticing a lot of slowdown in overall performance. It's not always an issue, but startup is very slow and every now and then things just hang for a while. Not great for gaming (or for anything, really). 

 

Looking at task manager (both when idle and when trying to do something demanding like run a game), CPU doesn't seem to be overloaded and there's a decent amount of RAM, but it looks like my primary hard drive is constantly (or near constantly) running at 100% usage. 

 

 

For comparison, here's the CPU tab of that window:

 

 

As you can see I have two other hard drives (pretty old, neither SSD), which I use as backups for key files. 

 

Any thoughts on what I can do to lessen the load on the main HDD if this is an issue of relocating files or something like that? Or is this an error that I can remedy through settings/etc?

 

Thanks for any thoughts on the issue!

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Hello fowlermj,

 

Download then run Speccy (free) and post the resultant url for us, details here, this will provide us with information about your computer hardware + any software that you have installed that may explain the present issue/s. 

 

To publish a Speccy profile to the Web:

1. In Speccy, click File, and then click Publish Snapshot.
2. In the Publish Snapshot dialog box, click Yes to enable Speccy to proceed.
3. Speccy publishes the profile and displays a second Publish Snapshot. You can open the URL in your default browser, copy it to the clipboard, or close the dialog box.

[phillpower2]

Hello fowlermj,

 

Download then run Speccy (free) and post the resultant url for us, details here, this will provide us with information about your computer hardware + any software that you have installed that may explain the present issue/s. 

 

To publish a Speccy profile to the Web:

1. In Speccy, click File, and then click Publish Snapshot.
2. In the Publish Snapshot dialog box, click Yes to enable Speccy to proceed.
3. Speccy publishes the profile and displays a second Publish Snapshot. You can open the URL in your default browser, copy it to the clipboard, or close the dialog box.

[fowlermj]

Speccy profile here. 

 

Thanks for taking a look!

[phillpower2]

Only thing that I can see in Speccy is that you are seriously low on free storage space on C: on a drive/partition of that size ideally you want 170GB free and certainly no less than 150GB, see my canned info below.

 

Partition 1

Partition ID: Disk #1, Partition #1

Disk Letter: C:

File System: NTFS

Volume Serial Number: 36B8D7AE

Size: 930 GB

Used Space: 855 GB (91%)

Free Space: 75 GB (9%)

 

 

For Windows to be able to run efficiently and to be able to update you need to have between 20 and 25% of the partition or drive available as free storage space at all times, if you don`t you risk Windows becoming corrupt or not being able to update which puts you at risk of malware attack + you will encounter stability issues.

 

You are welcome btw 

[fowlermj]

Best Answer

 

 

You know, sometimes you take a break from paying attention to computer-related things for say, five years or so, and you forget basic things like disk space. I cleared out ~270gb of programs I don't use and wouldn't you know, disk use is ~3-15% at most times even under load. 

 

Can't believe it took a post to get to the bottom of such a basic issue, but I really appreciate your taking time to look through my speccy profile and point that out. Simple solution that I apparently could not figure out without your help.

 

Thanks!!

[phillpower2]

You are most welcome  glad we could help and thank you for letting us know that all is now well with your computer