On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 15:50:23 +0100, NY wrote:

"Jimmy Wilkinson Knife" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 08:10:34 +0100, NY wrote:

"Jimmy Wilkinson Knife" wrote in message
news How much memory do you have and what percentage is in use in the task
manager when it's slow?

6 GB (increased from the 4 GB that it came with). CPU usage is around
90-100% when the PC slows down, even though after the initial high usage
after rebooting it normally stablises to about 10-20%. It's often simple
things like redrawing the screen when a window is moved, or when a
background window is clicked to bring it to the foreground.

What tasks are using the 100% CPU?

Often it's a generic process such as system or svchost, so nothing
obvious
that points to a process that has been explicitly started by the user or
by
one of the various auto-start-at-boot mechanisms such as
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run .

As soon as I saw 6GB I thought "increase that". The absolute minimum I'd
ever have in any machine is 8GB. And I only have that in computers with
no user interaction, like a server or something just doing processing
tasks like BOINC. For a normal computer, 16 or 32 is sensible. What's
the % memory usage in the task manager when it's slow? If it's 50% or
higher, you need more memory.

It's low, and the amount of free memory is typically 1-2 GB,

1-2GB free out of 6GB is nowhere near enough. Increase the memory. You need memory for disk cache etc. Less than half free (as in less than 3GB in your case) means it's not got enough.

which I presume
means it hasn't started paging yet.

It isn't that simple, I often see a machine both paging things to disk, yet using memory as a disk cache aswell. Windows does whatever it think s is most efficient.

High CPU usage on a system process, but
not high memory usage. I too tend to start to worry if the Physical Memory
Usage goes much above 50%.

It typcally takes about 10 mins to boot: a minute or so to bring up the
desktop but then ages before I can interact with it and apps will open or
fully draw their window. And then once it has booted and settled down, there
will be occasions when it has a fit of slowness.

As far as I know, there's nothing unusual about it. Standard installation of
Win 7 Home Premium, with any customisations/addons that Samsung may have
installed in their standard image, but with some of them then disabled or
uninstalled. Avast Free antivirus. No much set to auto-start at boot.

I don't think adding the extra 2 GB of RAM (it was supplied with 4 GB) made
any difference to the severity or frequency of the go-slows, though it did
increase the amount of reported free memory and *slightly* reduce the
Physical Memory Usage graph.

I could try restoring to factory state again, and then go through the hassle
of restoring all my customisations, reinstalling applications and copying
back data, but that would be a bit like admitting defeat. ;-)

I would upgrade or throw away any machine under 8GB.

--
The first Harley Davidson motorcycle built in 1903 used a tomato can for a carburetor.