The week FIOS promised to double speed, my Windows 10 home computer is super sluggish. After reinstalling all my browsers and running Avast and Malwarebytes and restarting, I check the task manager and each browser (with maybe four or five tabs open) is already running more than twenty "processes" and eating up all the memory. Anybody have any clues as to what may be going on?
Slow motion
- Thread starter chemazzo
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Thanks, Wolfie! I'd tried that last time around but I went there again and disabled a suspiciously named app ("Program"). Anything I can do if it turns out it's malicious? File manager won't "show it in folder"... I'll be monitoring the speed, but I was wondering: could I "selectively" end superfluous processes? Chrome says it's running twenty or so, and when I try stopping a single one, the whole app shuts down.
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Hi chemazzo,
what is the name of the app in start up?, it may be a bug?, have you run your Anti Virus tool at all?.
Hi, Wolfie. The name is Program. It looks fake, but I have no way of knowing as options are greyed out. I can only stop it each time, as it doesn't show as an app available to uninstall. Plus, I don't even know for sure if it's the culprit.
I did use antivirus tools (Avast and Malware). I have since noticed that Windows says you shouldn't run both, so I turned one off (Malware; no clear way of shutting down Avast. Perhaps that's what I should reinstall)
I did use antivirus tools (Avast and Malware). I have since noticed that Windows says you shouldn't run both, so I turned one off (Malware; no clear way of shutting down Avast. Perhaps that's what I should reinstall)
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No!, do not do that, if it is a virus, it will gain the upper hand during the time you are re-installing and a restart.
Enter "Safe mode" and run your AV app there!.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12376/windows-10-start-your-pc-in-safe-mode
I decided to uninstall Malwarebytes instead, as it appeared to have more than one unstoppable versions running. But let me recap the main issue: when I start Windows (10) and open my browsers (Firefox and Chrome), it is very sluggish. When I go to Task Manager to see why, it's because the two browsers I use are embarked on around ten (Firefox) and more than twenty (Chrome) processes each. They are, respectively, only trying to load the initial tabs (four each). They are the latest versions, and they behave like this when they have been reinstalled from scratch two days ago.
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That is normal behavior for both firefox and chrome. They break up the process so that if something in the browser crashes, it doesn't always take down the entire browser.
What are your system specs (cpu, ram)? Also hold down alt ctrl and delete keys at the same time. When the screen comes up select device manager. Then click the performance tab. What is does your memory usage look like?
Thanks, BigFeet, I've been educating myself and now I see the multiple processes are normal... The thing is, regardless of system specs, it did not USE to be this slow. And, precisely, CPU and Memory fluctuate but reach unusually high levels (80% for Memory, for example). I've only gone and checked because of the slowness.
Thanks for your help!
Thanks for your help!
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Your ram is almost maxed out. When it gets that close to full, it starts to use your hard drive as ram. Since your hard drive is is hundreds of times slower than ram, it bogs the system down badly. One problem is chrome and firefox can use almost 1gb of ram by itself if you have multiple tabs open. 4gb of ram is fine. Most of my windows 10 PC's are using 1.8-2gb of ram on boot. It doesn't take much to push that close to 4gb though. You may also have a program that's badly coded and not giving ram back when you close it out. It's hard to make recommendations without physically seeing what's running on your PC.
Thank you, BigFeet! Here's the thing. I made sure not much else is running other than what I described, and the task manager doesn't let me selectively end "heavier" processes within either browser; if I click to end one process, the whole browser shuts off. Plus, I wouldn't want to have to monitor the task manager and look for processes to close every time it gets critically slow, right? How do you suggest I locate a program that's badly coded and not giving ram back when I close it out? The "high numbers" appear in the browsers; background and windows processes, while many, have very low numbers in comparison. Thank you in advance once again for your help...
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The browser processes are working as they should. You can't just shut down one process. That's not how it works. Each process serves a purpose. The browser isn't the issue. As far as finding the offending program (if that is indeed the issue), when you have the processes up in the device manager, click on the top where it says "memory". That will sort processes by memory usage. I can't be sure that's the issue, but if you want to post a screenshot of your processes sorted by memory usage, we can look at it and see if that's the issue. You may have a bunch of bloatware running, especially if it's a prebuilt computer. It really is hard to know without physically looking at it. But maybe a look at the background processes can give us a clue.
As you can see in my screenshot, I'm right at 4gb of ram usage, and I just had 5 chrome tabs open, dropbox, AVG, and mostly just normal startup programs. So it really doesn't take much to hit that threshold.
As you can see in my screenshot, I'm right at 4gb of ram usage, and I just had 5 chrome tabs open, dropbox, AVG, and mostly just normal startup programs. So it really doesn't take much to hit that threshold.
Thank you, Wolfie. The question would be, can you think of specific types of bugs that might make it through WD that Avast would be better at catching? I guess it would depend on what you use your computer for most and in what areas they are most likely to be encountered (games, design, music, photography...), but I'm wondering because I have fond memories of Avast preventing disaster and it makes me a bit risk-averse...
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I don't see anything unusual there. You'll save a 100-200 mb of ram by using defender. I'm not a fan of it at all, but nothings 100%, and it's adequate. I'll have to put my Windows 10 hard drive back in to my laptop and see how much ram it's using. That has 4gb of ram in it. I know it ran pretty slow. Kind of the reason I run linux on it.