Suddenly Slow On Startup?

[suzerain_00]

What's poppin forum. So, usually I have at least some ideas as to what's going wrong with my hardware, but I'm genuinely drawing a blank here.

 

My computer is slow on startup, and this persists for a long time afterwards. This was a sudden change. I hope you can help me identify the issue!

 

WINDOWS VERSION IS: WINDOWS 10 PRO - VERSION 1809 - BUILD 17763.253

 

Here's my system spec:

CPU: Ryzen 7 1700 (3.875GHz @ 1.35v)

MOBO: ASRock AB350 Pro4

RAM: 16GB Crucial 2400MHz (2733MHz @1.42v)

GPU: Powercolor RX 580 8GB Red Devil

CPU COOLER: Cooler Master Masterliquid 240

SSD: WD Blue 250GB M.2 2280

HDD 1: WD Black 1TB 7200RPM 3.5"

HDD 2: WD Blue 1TB 5400RPM 2.5"

PSU: Cooler Master 550W Elite V2

Case: Corsair 270R

 

Issue: So let me describe in a little more detail. Before this occurred, I could boot up my computer, and do everything at lighting pace and my CPU usage would match the workload being put on it. So for example, booting into Windows wouldn't cause immense pressure, and browsing the web was pretty light, gaming was a good way to push the system usage, video editing/encoding would also push the CPU to it's limits. Normal behavior; you ask the CPU to do something, and it will operate according to the task it is assigned. The issue now is that I boot into the system, and it would seem that my CPU is pegged at 99% usage. And it is SO SLOW that even the cursor follows behind my actual mouse movements, it's jelly like. Opening up Task Manager is a 50/50 because it crashes half the time, and I barely got into the settings menu to see the build of Windows that I'm on.

 

Context: I always put my computer to sleep rather than shutting it down, so yesterday I woke it back up because I wanted to try out Chrome Remote Desktop from my laptop to control my desktop (the system in question). So after waking up the system, I went over to my laptop and ran Chrome Remote Desktop. I did a couple of basic things on my Desktop (via my laptop); open up the web on my desktop, look at the file explorer, just mild stuff. So after I was done confirming that remote desktop worked properly, I went to open up the "Sleep" dialogue in the start menu on my desktop. This is when the Chrome Remote Desktop connection got very slow & choppy (I'm thinking it may have been my actual desktop). The desktop did however go into sleep mode. So later in the day, I go to wake up my desktop, only to find it acting funny. The login screen is somewhat unresponsive, and it takes me a little longer to type my pin in to login. I reach the desktop screen, only to be surprised by how slow everything has become. Task Manager is incredibly slow and sensitive, and doesn't refresh very often (like once every minute), but for what it's worth, I didn't see CPU usage drop below 99%.

 

The system has been on for the past little while, and it's still acting the same. Slow, unresponsive and it sucks because I can't determine what's up. I've restarted the system one time through, and no change.

 

Additional Information: 

• I've had issues in the past with Ryzen overclocks, wherein you can set a frequency in BIOS, but in reality it you're actual frequency is much lower (for example 3.9GHz in BIOS but in reality you're running at 1.7GHz), and HWInfo64 can confirm that this IS NOT the case, it reads frequency @ ≈ 3.875GHz.
• Again according to HWInfo64, the system IS NOT overheating, the highest temp I saw TCtrl get to was 51°C.
• I tried to run JRT (Junkware Removal Tool), for the purpose of nuking any unnecessary processes, and that didn't seem to do much, still slow and unresponsive.
• While it would appear that JRT did manage to kill background processes, strangely enough it couldn't complete the system sweep, it crashed at the last phase.
• Moreover, JRT now acts sort of temperamental. Sometimes, I can just run it as per usual. Other times I'll get an error message and the program won't run. 
• I am still somewhat skeptical about the "99% Usage" on the CPU for one reason. My PSU (the Cooler Master Elite V2), has a very sensitive fan curve. The fan will spin up audibly at very moderate load (related post I made). Task Manager reads (kinda sorta) 99% usage, but my PSU is next to silent? I'm not sure how true that 99% is.
• For some other Task Manager curiosities, certain processes will read at well below 10% total CPU usage, but be categorized as "Very High" power usage
• Also "System Interrupts" shows up in Task Manger very briefly every once and a while at 99% usage.
• As I'm writing this, I just witnessed a Bitdefender system scan stop working

[suzerain_00]

UPDATE: I was able to complete a JRT run, with no results out of the ordinary.

[suzerain_00]

UPDATE: Bitdefender has continued where it left off, all on it's own. It seems to be stuck at 3%?

[suzerain_00]

UPDATE: Looks like an update is available (KB4476976), I'm going to install and see what happens.

[Cyberspirit]

To me, it sounds like Chrome remote desktop is to blame here. Maybe try deleting it and do a full power cycle.

I've had issues with waking Win10 from sleep mode before like programs not loading up or just being really unresponsive but, a restart usually fixed it for me.

[Guest]

it seems to me it's an SO issue, task manager shouldn't run 50/50 the times

 

have you tried running chkdsk /f?

check the SSD health too and the event logs

 

if the interrupts take a lot of cpu usage could be one of your devices is failing, try unplugging all the devices you have attached, also you could try a live Linux distro if there are some hardware issue you want to diagnose better, and it will be slow in there as well too

 

reset all your bios settings too

[suzerain_00]

5 minutes ago, Cyberspirit said:

To me, it sounds like Chrome remote desktop is to blame here. Maybe try deleting it and do a full power cycle.

I've had issues with waking Win10 from sleep mode before like programs not loading up or just being really unresponsive but, a restart usually fixed it for me.

I'm giving it a restart after that update I just downloaded! I'll see where it goes from here.

[suzerain_00]

4 minutes ago, Lukyp said:

it seems to me it's an SO issue, task manager shouldn't run 50/50 the times

 

have you tried running chkdsk /f?

check the SSD health too and the event logs

 

if the interrupts take a lot of cpu usage could be one of your devices is failing, try unplugging all the devices you have attached, also you could try a live Linux distro if there are some hardware issue you want to diagnose better, and it will be slow in there as well too

 

reset all your bios settings too

I'm currently waiting on a restart (that's also taking a while), but once I get back to the desktop I'll give this stuff a good look at. 

Pardon my ignorance but what is "chkdsk /f"? I'm unfamiliar.

Also when you say "devices failing" do you mean internal/external or both?

And I'll get a live distro ready in the meantime, but my boot SSD is partitioned between Windows 10 and Ubuntu (although I haven't used it in a while). Would that be enough, or is the idea to isolate my drive?

[Guest]

Just now, ExodusR said:

I'm currently waiting on a restart (that's also taking a while), but once I get back to the desktop I'll give this stuff a good look at. 

Pardon my ignorance but what is "chkdsk /f"? I'm unfamiliar.

Also when you say "devices failing" do you mean internal/external or both?

And I'll get a live distro ready in the meantime, but my boot SSD is partitioned between Windows 10 and Ubuntu (although I haven't used it in a while). Would that be enough, or is the idea to isolate my drive?

interrupts are for both external and internal devices, chkdsk /f is for checking the filesystem health

 

Yes if you have Ubuntu preinstalled you could just boot it and try if is slow even in there

[suzerain_00]

1 minute ago, Lukyp said:

interrupts are for both external and internal devices, chkdsk /f is for checking the filesystem health

 

Yes if you have Ubuntu preinstalled you could just boot it and try if is slow even in there

Thank you so much, I've got a windows update percentage on screen now, so once I can get back to the desktop I'll do some more digging. You're the best!

[suzerain_00]

51 minutes ago, Lukyp said:

interrupts are for both external and internal devices, chkdsk /f is for checking the filesystem health

 

Yes if you have Ubuntu preinstalled you could just boot it and try if is slow even in there

UPDATE:

• 1. Windows Update didn't change anything.
• 2. Ubuntu is super smooth and responsive, just how I left it.
• 3. Attempting to run chkdsk/f presents the error "Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges or the disk may be locked by another process. You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode and make sure the disk is unlocked.".
• 4. Opening up the event log is chaotic and I still have yet to figure that out as it's almost completely unresponsive.

[suzerain_00]

6 minutes ago, ExodusR said:

UPDATE:

• 1. Windows Update didn't change anything.
• 2. Ubuntu is super smooth and responsive, just how I left it.
• 3. Attempting to run chkdsk/f presents the error "Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges or the disk may be locked by another process. You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode and make sure the disk is unlocked.".
• 4. Opening up the event log is chaotic and I still have yet to figure that out as it's almost completely unresponsive.

UPDATE: Running chkdsk /f in PowerShell as administrator reads "Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts?"

[suzerain_00]

Just now, ExodusR said:

UPDATE: Running chkdsk /f in PowerShell as administrator reads "Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts?"

UPDATE: Reset the BIOS to no effect.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, ExodusR said:

UPDATE:

• 1. Windows Update didn't change anything.
• 2. Ubuntu is super smooth and responsive, just how I left it.
• 3. Attempting to run chkdsk/f presents the error "Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges or the disk may be locked by another process. You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode and make sure the disk is unlocked.".
• 4. Opening up the event log is chaotic and I still have yet to figure that out as it's almost completely unresponsive.

Ok so it could probably be something Windows driver related, when you are running chkdsk /F you need to do that in an administrative command prompt by right clicking it just to be sure there are not any file system issues, anyway yes let it reboot and do its things then I would use DDU to uninstall all the drivers you can (GPU, chipset, network card, etc) and then let windows update install their ones, if still nothing helped, try also from another administrative command prompt "sfc /scannow" and "DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth"

Try also booting into safe mode, if here all works smoothly there is certainly something driver related

Edited February 7, 2019 by Guest

[suzerain_00]

1 hour ago, Lukyp said:

Ok so it could probably be something Windows driver related, when you are running chkdsk /F you need to do that in an administrative command prompt by right clicking it just to be sure there are not any file system issues, anyway yes let it reboot and do its things then I would use DDU to uninstall all the drivers you can (GPU, chipset, network card, etc) and then let windows update install their ones, if still nothing helped, try also from another administrative command prompt "sfc /scannow" and "DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth"

Try also booting into safe mode, if here all works smoothly there is certainly something driver related

UPDATE: Spent the last little while DDUing VGA and Audio drivers, the system performance has increased fairly noticeably however it is still acting strange and hitting 99% like before. I'm going to try your recommended commands and keep moving on.

[suzerain_00]

1 hour ago, Lukyp said:

Ok so it could probably be something Windows driver related, when you are running chkdsk /F you need to do that in an administrative command prompt by right clicking it just to be sure there are not any file system issues, anyway yes let it reboot and do its things then I would use DDU to uninstall all the drivers you can (GPU, chipset, network card, etc) and then let windows update install their ones, if still nothing helped, try also from another administrative command prompt "sfc /scannow" and "DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth"

Try also booting into safe mode, if here all works smoothly there is certainly something driver related

UPDATE: Alright so sfc /scannow said that everything was fine and DISM completed successfully but I'm still experiencing more or less the same performance behavior. WITH THAT SAID, it would appear that DDUing the VGA and Audio drivers has made the system usable at the least. I'm not sure how to go about resetting my other drivers. Could you explain the process? (and also btw Safe mode was very smooth, pretty much like stock)

[Guest]

1 hour ago, ExodusR said:

UPDATE: Alright so sfc /scannow said that everything was fine and DISM completed successfully but I'm still experiencing more or less the same performance behavior. WITH THAT SAID, it would appear that DDUing the VGA and Audio drivers has made the system usable at the least. I'm not sure how to go about resetting my other drivers. Could you explain the process? (and also btw Safe mode was very smooth, pretty much like stock)

So basically you need to uninstall every driver you can, you can either do that from the device manager and uninstall as you can, I don't remember a third party utility for that purpose, you could try https://www.guru3d.com/content-page/guru3d-driver-sweeper.html

It can either be a program you installed which is using a buggy kernel driver (virtualbox for example)

So you need to found the faulty driver and program which is causing this

[suzerain_00]

On 2/7/2019 at 11:07 AM, Lukyp said:

So basically you need to uninstall every driver you can, you can either do that from the device manager and uninstall as you can, I don't remember a third party utility for that purpose, you could try https://www.guru3d.com/content-page/guru3d-driver-sweeper.html

It can either be a program you installed which is using a buggy kernel driver (virtualbox for example)

So you need to found the faulty driver and program which is causing this

UPDATE: So it's been a little while, and I've done a number of things:

• Manually delete every driver I could find in device manager = no effect
• DDU both VGA and Audio drivers = no effect
• Instead Realtek's official audio driver as opposed to the one ASRock provides on their product page = no effect
• Use Driver Sweeper to nuke all the drivers = No effect
• Re-seat RAM = no effect
• Reset Windows = Temporarily good performance, followed by the same issue after restarting

Here is something I discovered: I remembered the point you brought up about it removing devices, and so I decided to take out two of my drives (My main drive is an M.2 SSD, and I have to SATA hard drives.). To the best of my knowledge, both Windows and Ubuntu 16.04 are installed on my SSD, and I can access Ubuntu via a boot dialogue. However, when the two SATA drives were unplugged, I could no longer access windows but I could still boot into Ubuntu 16.04. Any thoughts there? Should I try different drive combinations to see if there are any changes? Thanks again!

[suzerain_00]

8 minutes ago, ExodusR said:

UPDATE: So it's been a little while, and I've done a number of things:

• Manually delete every driver I could find in device manager = no effect
• DDU both VGA and Audio drivers = no effect
• Instead Realtek's official audio driver as opposed to the one ASRock provides on their product page = no effect
• Use Driver Sweeper to nuke all the drivers = No effect
• Re-seat RAM = no effect
• Reset Windows = Temporarily good performance, followed by the same issue after restarting

Here is something I discovered: I remembered the point you brought up about it removing devices, and so I decided to take out two of my drives (My main drive is an M.2 SSD, and I have to SATA hard drives.). To the best of my knowledge, both Windows and Ubuntu 16.04 are installed on my SSD, and I can access Ubuntu via a boot dialogue. However, when the two SATA drives were unplugged, I could no longer access windows but I could still boot into Ubuntu 16.04. Any thoughts there? Should I try different drive combinations to see if there are any changes? Thanks again!

UPDATE: Just noticed this but, when I move my mouse, a couple of my CPU cores react in sync, particularly CPU 1 which reaches 99% usage when the cursor is moving. 

[suzerain_00]

3 hours ago, ExodusR said:

UPDATE: Just noticed this but, when I move my mouse, a couple of my CPU cores react in sync, particularly CPU 1 which reaches 99% usage when the cursor is moving. 

UPDATE: I've tried a number of things at this point, and frankly I feel like trying anything else would be futile, and besides that, I have to have my system working by Monday, so I've decided to format my main SSD and reinstall Windows. If that doesn't solve the issue then I'm not sure what will. 

 

I'll go through the typical process and report back. Thanks for your help everyone!

[suzerain_00]

RESOLUTION: It would seem that Bitdefender's latest update was causing the issue. After a clean install of Windows 10, I went through every single piece of software or drivers I had installed on my previous image, and I narrowed it down all the way to Bitdefender. 

 

My system experienced instability with the latest version of Bitdefender (as of February 9th, 2019), but I have three other systems with Bitdefender that run perfectly fine. What I can say is that if you are experiencing similar behavior in Windows as I was, and you have the same general system spec as me, with Windows 10 Professional Version 1809 Build 17763.253, it is likely that Bitdefender, is causing the problem.

 

Thank you everyone!

[suzerain_00]

UPDATE: I'm currently working with the Bitdefender team to identify and address the issue. I'll keep everyone in the loop as progress is made!

[Cyberspirit]

2 hours ago, ExodusR said:

UPDATE: I'm currently working with the Bitdefender team to identify and address the issue. I'll keep everyone in the loop as progress is made!

Nice, good luck with that.