Opening Task Manager Slows PC to Crawl - Windows 10 Pro 1709

Anonymous

Hi all,

I've had an issue with Windows 10 Pro really freezing up and not being responsive after opening up Task Manager. The numbers shown for performance and CPU utilization are not pegged at all.

This is on a Dell T3500 with a SSD OS drive, W3580 cpu, 24GB RAM, and an AMD Radeon Pro WX7100.

The computer is on a Domain with Webroot installed as AV. I usually have Solidworks and a couple of other programs open. I do not have any hardware bottlenecks as far as I can see. I also looked at the Event Viewer, and apart from a couple Group Policy warnings, nothing out of the ordinary, and no system events registered at the time of opening Task Manager.

Thanks for the insights, gents n ladies.

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78 answers

Anonymous

2018-01-10T05:01:38+00:00

Hi,

Your concern about the performance of your device can be due to the changes in its configuration and/or broken/corrupted system files. Based on the details that you've shared along with your previous posts on this thread, we'd recommend performing an in-place upgrade to overwrite the existing configuration with default operating system (OS) settings as well as to fix system conflicts on your device. To do this, we'd recommend performing the steps posted by Andre Da Costa on this link. As an additional reference, you can also check the post of PaulSey here.

Let us know how it goes after you've performed the steps.
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Anonymous

2018-01-08T19:21:05+00:00

Been having this problem for weeks. I just encountered another issue - Regedit and Firefox does the same thing as Task Manager and Firefox. A new machine 2 Xeon processors, 48g RAM, 1T SSD. And it did it on my old machine and does it on my laptop as well.
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Anonymous

2018-01-08T18:19:25+00:00

I noticed the same issue. Lately when I tried accessing Task Manager, it just slows my PC to a crawl, and I can replicate the same issue on another laptop. PC is a 4.5GHz 4790K with 32gb ram, so I highly doubt hardware is the culprit.

Tested with Firefox open and it slows to a crawl. Closed Firefox and tested and works ok. Not sure what's causing this behind the scenes.
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Anonymous

2018-01-08T17:22:16+00:00

Apologies - I'm also still having the issue, although not consistently. After I posted, the PC went into sleep mode and, on wakening, the FF/TM combo froze it. Just now, TM/FF worked fine when I tested, then after restarting the PC, it froze as soon as Task Manager opened while FF was running.

I've disabled TM again. System Explorer by Mister Group -- http://systemexplorer.net/ --works for me as an alternative.
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Anonymous

2018-01-05T14:47:48+00:00

Webroot looks like the culprit in my case too.

Having set WR to allow taskmgr.exe (https://www.webroot.com/En_US/SecureAnywhere/PC/Content/C5_Quarantine/CH5b_BlockingAllowingFiles.htm),the PC no longer slows to a crawl when Task Manager and Firefox are open.

To see whether the problem relates to the Webroot Filtertering Extension in Firefox, I tried enabling it and disabling it. Didn't affect performance with TM open, so I assume that 'allowing' TM in Webroot is the step that matters.

I'll try Chrome later and report whether the WR fix holds good for it as well.

I thought that was the smoking gun, as turning off Webroot made Task Manager immediately responsive while Firefox was running on my laptop (i7, 8g RAM, 1T standard disk drive). However, when I tried same on my much more powerful desktop (2 Xeon X5670 processors, 48g RAM, 1T SSD), it slowed it to a crawl as usual.
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