Computer help required

A few weeks ago I "Upgraded "? from windows 10 to windows 11 via a prompt on the screen. It took over three days of restarts and problems and now the computer is very slow to start and takes many minutes to start or change pages.

I am a complete computer dummy with a slow connection but prior to this all was well and fast enough for me. Computer has 8gb ram and little is stored on it.

As another dummy I can only sympathize, I use a slow and old system, affraid that I will suffer a similar fate if I upgrade. Noel.

Thanks Noel, lets hope someone can point us in the right direction. I would go back to windows 10 if I knew how.

If it's not been more than 10 days since you installed Windows 11, you can go to Settings>System>Recovery and choose “Go Back.” This will revert your computer to the Windows 10 version you had before installing Windows 11. It may still work after that for a while.

After that you need to do full reinstall of Win10 using your original media. If it was windows 7 use that and then upgrade to 10 as you did before.

If M/S prompted you to upgrade it must have detected that your pc was capable of running Win 11. I would just roll back if possible and stick with Win 10. I find Win 11 much faster than Win10 personally.

What programs are you trying to run ? If very old versions of whatever that is your problem so another reason to go back to Win 10.

IHTH regards

Edited By Oldiron on 04/02/2022 13:41:08

Try starting and logging into the computer as usual. A likely reason for slow running is a rogue process keeping the processor busy running flat out and causing severe queuing.

Check CPU usage by opening the task manager by typing CTRL-SHIFT-ESC. When it opens, click the CPU column head, to sort processes in order of how much CPU they're consuming. Look for anything continually consuming 100%: these are suspicious. Legitimate high CPU% do happen, such as a full virus check, or Windows updating it's Search database but these should eventually finish. However, anything using 100% continually has probably failed by getting stuck in a loop. Make a note of the process or service name and then kill it as described here.

With luck the system should clear the queues and normal performance will resume, at least during the current session.

It may be necessary to Google the service or process name for known bugs and fixes, or a general search on Windows 100% CPU causes. Before doing that, make sure the system is fully updated. It's possible the problem is caused by Windows 11 getting stuck part way through an update, and the cure is simply to complete it. So, once the computer is running normally, apply all outstanding Windows 11 updates. Could be tedious requiring lots of reboots and repeated killing of the rogue process with task manager, but it's necessary to ensure W11 has updated to it's own satisfaction before looking for other answers.

Another possibility is a rogue program is consuming loads of memory, Can also be identified and killed with Task Manager, but look for high CPU first because it's more likely.

Dave

As Oldiron said, if you're within the first 10 days you can rewind to Win 10. After that the rollback files will have been deleted from your PC and you'll have to reinstall.

If anyone within the first 10 days wants more time to evaluate the "upgrade", this article shows how to increase the period up to 60 days.

Regards

The OP says that the upgrade was a few weeks ago, so roll-back shouldn't be available.

I'd suggest a W11 clean install:- open settings > system > recovery > reset this PC ( chose remove personal files).

The PC must be connected to the internet and personal files will need re-installation.

Alternatively download and run Windows Installation Media following the instructions on the Microsoft web-site. This needs a USB drive for storing the download.

Do you shut your machine down after every use? If so it is possible that the computer never actually gets enough time to finish downloading and installing all of its updates. So then every time you power it on it is downloading and trying to do updates, this can kill your performance. It may well pay to leave the machine powered up overnight to enable any required updates to complete.

Colin

Thanks for all the replies. I will make copious notes before attempting a remedy.

Really useful advice.

Can I ask a question on a similar theme without hijacking the thread?

My memory is constanly reading 85% use or around that and I have lots of applications shown open in task manager using memory but not doing anything. Never used to be like, why the change?

Want to install more memory, got 4gb, how do find out what I need without diving inside if poss?

Thanks

Use the Crucial memory scanner here

I have a DELL WIN 10 PC as well. This PC disk activity light is on the side, so I cannot see it. I put a small mirror so I can see the disc activity. There are two reasons I look at this like this:
1-To see quickly if theres any disc activity and if its continious and expected or not. If its going on and on I try to find the reason.
2-If you shut down Windows, you cannot see from Taskmanager the disk activity, which is important when switching the PC off. One should not switch the PC off after shutdown when there is still disc activity going on.

I also found that if WIN 10 updates, and it starts to "hang" at a certain % like even at 90%, the selution is to unplug your network cable to router, wait 1-2 minutes and reconnect it, then it always resumed the update till completed.

I also found with my Win 10 PC, if I switch the plug on wall on and immediately switch on the PC, I may encounter a slow boot up, if I wait 1 minute, its always fast every time.

Edited By Chris Mate on 04/02/2022 20:15:09

Edited By Chris Mate on 04/02/2022 20:15:47

It's worth remembering the two methods of closing Windows:

"Shutdown" - saves much of Windows previous state for a fast subsequent boot.

"Restart" - doesn't save, resets everything and reloads from scratch at next boot (which therefore takes longer).

(To my mind, the naming of those two are reversed but MS obviously thinks otherwise).

If something is "funny" is happening in Windows, it's recommended that you use Restart to avoid carrying the problem over to the next and subsequent sessions.

[ This is the way Windows comes configured. It is possible to change this so that either version will reload from scratch ]

I might have got somewhere. after reading the above posts and Google I tried a shutdown.

Control + X then tap U U

The system shut down and today seems to be much better. Funny thing is I no longer get the power options when using the windows key so have been unable to shutdown before.

Edited By Chris Evans 6 on 05/02/2022 12:19:44

A last resort for shutting down when the PC freezes, is to hold down the main power button for a few seconds.

Phil

Another possible issue is that the computer is using an older style "real" hard disc, and Windows 11 hammers hell out of traditional discs, probably because all the developers at Microsoft are using hardware that's based on Solid state discs, and they've not had to actually try to work with a machine that's got older disc on it.

That's very much the case with updates of the operating system, an old style disc can take many hours to do a full update, and in a lot of cases, one update is only the start of a chain of updates of other systems like .NET, with the result that the machine will be slow and sluggish for many more hours, even more so if it doesn't get to finish the update before it's powered down.

Even a Windows 10 updafe can take many hours on an older machine for the same reason, in order to restore some productivity to the use of these machines, they've been upgraded to SSD discs to reduce the time lost waiting for them to update.

The simplest solution if that's the case will be to seriously consider an upgrade of the disc drive to put a sensible size SSD into the machine, they're not massively pricey any more, and the difference in performance is chalk and cheese,

In Task Manager, as well as looking at the CPU utilisation, also check the disc usage, as that may well be a factor in the performance.

Are you using a third party anti virus product, as depending on the package, that can very much get in the way if an operating system upgrade is running, and on completion of the upgrade, it may well schedule a full scan of the system, which with some products can take a very long time to complete.

Another system killer can be if Microsoft search is set to index large parts of the disc, it may well be trying to regenerate the search indexes, which will also kill performance.

If it was easy to do, having endured over 30 years of nausea with Microsoft WIndows from the outset, when it was only a 13 floppy disc package, I'd be ditching Microsoft and moving onto an alternative, but there are problems moving some software onto non Microsoft platforms, and trying to deal with some organisations at state level is not easy if you don't use Microsoft products.

Windows now has become so bloated as time has gone on, it's reached the point where there are very few people that really know and understand what's going on internally with Windows, and the result is a package that's trying to be all things to all men, and it does none of it well any more.

I know its not the most apt advice, but I'd echo above. If you've got no specific reason to use Windows, i.e. program compatibility, and you just use your PC for web browsing/emails/spreadsheets/etc I couldn't recommend Linux Mint more highly. Your computer will be much more responsive for it, and the experience is very similar to Windows.

I wondered how long it would take .... this time.

I'm a Linux user but also maintain a window laptop and I will not consider going to Win 11 for around 12 months and hopefully they will have got the bugs out of it by then !

H