Windows 10 computer is very unresponsive

Anonymous
2019-03-07T19:03:07+00:00

First I'll describe the problem, then give the background.

The problem is that a Windows 10 computer usually is very unresponsive.  Clicking on anything, the blue circle will spin, then stop.  Then 10-20 seconds later the app will start to come up, but slowly.  The row of icons will appear at a rate of about 3 per second.  Often when I try to type into it, the characters don't appear - until several seconds later, then they will suddenly show up.

I've looked at task manager, and it is showing periods of high CPU use, and it is in these periods when it us unresponsive.  The main things using the CPU are "system", "service host: diagnostic policy service" and "service host: Windows event log".  See the attached screen capture from Task Manager.  When the CPU use is 20% or higher, it is unresponsive.

Background: I got a used HP Z620 last week (two 8-core Xeons, 64GB of RAM).  It came with Windows 7 and was working fine.  I tried to upgrade it to Windows 10, but it got into a boot loop. I took it into the computer repair shop, and they did a reinstall of Windows 10.  But when I got it back, it had this problem.  It would come and go - see the Task Manager image, which shows 4 minutes.  I left it on overnight last night, and this morning the task manager was flat at or near 0%, and it was responding normally.  When I came back after lunch, it had rebooted and the problem was back, except worse.  Now all (or almost all) of the time the CPU use is high and it is unresponsive.  The repair shop guarantees their work, but I'm wondering if there is a quicker solution.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Performance and system failures

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-03-09T20:11:31+00:00

    My suggestion, and the simplest way to determine if the HDD is an issue, is to use another HDD, place the replacement loosely in the tower,  obtain a HDD cloning software (Free - look on http://downloads.cnet.com ) or if you already have Acronis or other similar product and prefer to create a standalone CD) - connect the drive, and use the cloning software.  If you have an image copy (Control Panel Win7 backup tool), and created a recovery  CD, you can put the replacement HDD in place and boot the CD (or use the recovery console), and restore the image , but the replacement HDD must be equal or larger than the original.

    Disconnect the original drive and boot on the replacement.  You may come up in the recovery console (possible) where you would use "Troubleshoot" to correct booting.

    It will work, and then you can see if the problem is outside of the Disk itself.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-03-09T19:50:18+00:00

    "Someone suggested Chkdsk, but I couldn't find how to run that as admin (Windows has hidden it somewhere).  However, I ran HDTune overnight, which does a more thorough analysis, and it didn't find a problem".

    FYI:  Running commands like  CHKDSK are from a Administrator (elevated) CMD prompt  (C:\Windows\System32>). One way  is available by searching CMD, not pressing ENTER, right-click on the icon found, and then choosing "run as Administrator".   That works in every Windows from Vista to Win10.   In W10 you can also right-click on the START symbol and use the choice (Command or PS depending on level and has "Administrator" beside the choice.  In all these it will say it cannot run the command while the disk is in use, so answer "Y" and it runs on reboot.   Lastly in W8-10, holding the SHIFT key while doing a "RESTART" brings you to the recovery console, where navigating through "Troubleshoot" gets you to a CMD prompt.  In this case it is better to add the partition to the command as in "CHKDSK C: /R".   All "DOS commands" provide help with whatever the command by using  /?

    or -? (h can be substituted for ?).   CMD is also available in Windows Accessories.      NOTE: CHKDSK by itself can check the health of the partition quickly, /F will correct errors, /R will try to  recover data from questionable spots and move what it recovered to an alternate location, and /SPOTFIX assumes that W10 has logged and already found a bad spot because of read errors.

    :End of my tutorial.   

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  3. Igor Leyko 112.4K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2019-03-09T18:34:09+00:00

    Is this Xeon in a supported processor list of motherboard?

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-03-09T18:26:46+00:00

    Someone suggested LatencyMon.  In periods when I was not having the problem, it didn't show much.  But it showed something when I was having the problem, but the response was not good enough to save the screenshot.  I just managed to get a screenshot and save it.  I'm not using audio for anything and haven't heard problems.

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  5. Anonymous
    2019-03-09T18:01:32+00:00

    Did you upgrade desktop motherboard with Xeon? Unfortunately this may cause some problems of itself.

    Now most of the time this website won't let me post replies.  I press SUBMIT but it gives a red circle with a line, and won't post it.  Why?

    No, it came with the Xeon's, and didn't have this problem until right after I tried to upgrade from Windows 7 to 10, couldn't get it done, and had a repair place do it.

    Someone suggested Chkdsk, but I couldn't find how to run that as admin (Windows has hidden it somewhere).  However, I ran HDTune overnight, which does a more thorough analysis, and it didn't find a problem.

    Now here is something strange - I rebooted and started HDTune when it wasn't having the problem.  Of course, HDTune makes heavy use of the HD.  After about a half hour, I could see on Task Manager that the things that take up a lot of CPU had started, as they always do, but now the system was reasonably responsive!  As responsive as you would expect with HDTune running. 

    I rebooted again within the last hour, and it was OK, until the problem started again after about 32 minutes.

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