Sluggish Netbook

[ro2124]

Recently my laptop broke down, so now using an old netbook with windows 7 starter temporarily. well netbooks are known to be extremely sluggish and pretty useless so I expected that. but this one is doing weird things I cant understand. I tried to make it faster by adjusting it to best windows performance which is disabling all the fancy windows effects which did help. with that it was running at around 60% RAM, which made it just about usable. but quite a few times it suddenly becomes virtually unusable everything frozen and very slow. checked and it was running at between 90 and 99 % RAM which is obviously the cause of slow down but I just can't figure out why it seems to be doing it for no apparent reason. I checked on processes and they were exactly the same processes as when it was running at 60%. then after a while for no apparent reason it goes back to 60-70% making it usable again, other times I have to reboot. completely baffled by this, checked for viruses, there seems to be none, and done some other system cleaning. anyone got any idea what might be causing this?

[Bertrum]

You will have to run Task Manager to see what is using all the memory. My initial guess would be “svchost” which is a generic host processor and the process is going to be windows update. This has caused many problems for the past couple of years on various machine configurations and update stages where windows will consistently try to install updates but never succeed. There are a multitude of fixes for the problem but not all of them work for every situation and selecting the correct fix or sequence of fixes can be time consuming and Microsoft are not really that interested. If this does prove to be the problem and you are only using this machine as a stop gap it may be worth turning off windows updates.

[Buenchico]

I'd also guess that svchost.exe is likely to be involved, with either the dreaded Windows updates behind the problem or possibly your antivirus program. (Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows Defender are notorious for causing such problems. Norton used to be bad, got better but now has a poor reputation again for hogging resources. Kaspersky used to be good but is now also prone to similar problems. I gave up on AVG after I found that it had started to hog resources too ).

The problem with trying to make sense of what's shown in Task Manager is that programs such as Firefox (just as an example) tend to go into overdrive (apparently using a lot of resources) when there's actually something else going on in the background that's stopping Firefox (or whatever) from doing its job normally.

I've also got a Windows 7 netbook, which I use regularly. After loads of problems like yours, I've got it to function reasonably well by
(a) turning off Windows updates ;
(b) using Avast as my antivirus program ; and
(c) gaining additional RAM by using Ready Boost:
http://www.dummies.com/computers/operating-systems/windows-7/how-to-use-readyboost-to-speed-up-windows-7/

As well as those suggestions, I'd also recommend a scan with Malwarebytes (or AdwCleaner), as malware can sometimes be the cause of such problems.

[ro2124]

@buenchico

Well as I said I checked the processes but there was nothing on there extra that should cause it to slow. as I said all the same processes were still running when it had 60% RAM. and yes I am aware of that pain in the ass Svchost ..can be a prob, but wasn't the cause the last few times. and as you said updates updates should be turned off which I do anyway normally. regarding Anti virus I also have Avast which seems to be the best one for netbooks. As for browser I don't use Firefox or Chrome too memory hungry ..I use a browser similar to Firefox which will accept some of the same extensions/add ons, called Pale Moon... and yes also used Malwarebytes and couple of others, like Spybot, Superantispyware, Advanced cleaner, ..So really already tried most of the things that you mention, except for that ready boost..that will be final step so hopefully will do something.

[Buenchico]

So what's actually showing as using all that RAM?

Open Task Manager.
Select the 'Processes' tab.
Put a tick against 'Show Processes from All Users'
Maximise the window.
Click 'View' and then 'Select Columns'
Put a tick alongside 'Memory - Commit Size' and 'Memory - Peak Working Set'
Then look in each of the three 'Memory' columns to see what's grabbing all of the RAM

[ro2124]

Ahh..That's where I went wrong, all users was not clicked. Now I can see the problem and yes it is that bloody annoying svchost after all. bloody pain in the proverbial. there are about a dozen of these bloody things running, biggest memory Hogs seem to be Windows Audio Endpoint Builder and Background intelligent transfer service. well I am not exactly a computer expert so I'm not sure which of these can be disabled safely or if at all. Or would it help to lower the priority on those Services, but I suppose that could cause problems with the system.

[Buenchico]

Possibly relevant:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/why-is-scvhostexe-using-75-of-my-laptops-physical/f96b1a1a-ea10-4612-a9cf-1437b49a75f6

Disabling SuperFetch might be a good idea. (It's suggested in that link and it's helped me speed up things in the past).

[ro2124]

Well after a few days of fiddling about and disabling things I have come to the conclusion the best is as you said, disable fetch and I also disabled windows update and background intelligent transfer service which seems to hog a lot of memory and since then netbook works better. still a bit slow of course being a netbook but at least it doesn't freeze anymore like it used to.