Extreme laptop slowdown (solved)

[seafiant]

Hi all,

I doubt I'll be able to find a solution for this but really hope I'm wrong. Short version is I got a new laptop just shy of two months ago as a gift. I don't have a receipt for it and don't want to trade it in so I need to resolve the problem.

It's an Asus X540L (I3-5005U, 4GB ram, 1TB HDD)

The machine turns very slow for no reason and even a shutdown/restart doesn't always clear the issue. When playing video files in VLC everything is fine and then randomly the machine seems busy and it can't even play 480p video without freezing for several seconds to catch up. For example playing three seconds then waiting ten for buffering. Downloading from Steam the speed is maximum for my net connection for the first few minutes and then stutters crawling and peaks and lows later down to just 200kbps down from 6.5mbps. I can't be sure but downloading from the internet large files (several GB as a single file) seems to be a major trigger for the system slowing down.

An intermediate/advanced user I've been searching for a fix for many weeks online. I've done every fix for "100% disk usage" I can find online including disabling background services, anti-virus, windows defender, windows update, changing the page file, command prompt lines, scanning the hdd, even a full HDD wipe using an external USB to install windows. I've also disabled all indexing on the HDD to see if that helped. I've installed a more advanced third party task manager/monitor and there are no tasks using resources. I've even added desktop CPU and HDD temp monitoring tools and the temps are great at 38-45 on the HDD and around 50 on the CPU.

I wanted to try a theory since Steam downloads large files and went to the Internet Archive and downloaded one of it's legal torrents and got a 100% buffer overload warning from a torrent application (pre-allocation disabled) with its speed dropping to zero as it cleared the data backlog so it seems to be some kind of randomly occurring bottleneck with the HDD. I've replaced all system drivers manually with the latest version and no difference.

Right now I'm out of ideas. From disabling services to wiping windows itself I can't find the bottleneck causing random slowdowns and freezes. This is more than just a slow speed hard drive issue, I've had enough systems to know this really isn't normal. It's at the point now if audio is playing and it sticks I'll hear an audio glitch for a second before the system resumes functioning. Only other clue I have is when shutting down the system the screen will turn off as normal but it can take several minutes before all CPU/HDD activity ends and the machine is finally off.

(I have checked and disabled all task manager tasks, disk defrag tasks etc)

The only clue that it seems to be big file downloading related is that when the error hasn't occurred I can play Starcraft 2 and World of Warships quite happily. So I'm not sure how to fix this as for work downloading big files is essential.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Sounds like a dodgy drive, have you done a chkdsk?

 

[seafiant]

Yep, chkdsk showed clean no errors. I've even done some stress tests with HDD Sentinel and everything comes up clean.
I review old games so keep copies of my GOG installers on Mega (with games getting removed from online stores now it's good to keep a backup). I downloaded a 1GB file no problem using Megasync, then tried a 19GB file last night and it really had slowdown problems.

I've also tried all battery and during charge power options to see if that made a difference (no luck.) Modified the power options manually so the HDD doesn't slow due to inactivity until idle for 10,000 minutes and removed all GoogleUpdate tasks.

 

[Oussebon]

The Steam symptom sounds like Steam is downloading files, and once it has a certain amount it starts quite a lot of writes (which is certainly what I see with Steam game updates). And that the writing is the bottleneck, slowing the overall process.

When you say "wiping windows itself" have you performed a clean reinstall of Windows, deleting all preexisting partitions, installing only Windows and letting Windows handle all driver installation? or just a factory reset or similar?

 

[seafiant]

Sorry for confused caused and thanks for replying. I used my desktop PC to create a Windows USB. Deleted all partitions on the laptop including the stock recovery and started clean. After I downloaded the systems drivers and got them up to date with the most current version.

This was after trying the factory reset and reset PC options in Windows. (When the problem didn't go away I progressed to the more extreme options.)

 

[Oussebon]

When downloading the drivers (from the Asus site?) did that include any Asus software?

I'd be tempted to try a clean install just letting Windows do the drivers, to see what happens.

 

[seafiant]

Tried the clean install Windows drivers route first, when it didn't improve I used the Asus site drivers then tried third party driver update software to make sure that everything is the current version. No changes in performance between them.

According to Device Manager:

Drive is a Toshiba MQ04ABF100

Driver File Details (all in system32\drivers\):
disk.sys
EhStorClass.sys
partmgr.sys

 

[Álvaro]

What is the RAM usage? I had a pretty annoying bug where downloading large files (especially with torrents) would hog the non-paged pool and eventually clog the whole ram, which would lead to the whole machine slowing down. This went away with a restart (as in, fully restarting the drive with Quick Boot disabled). If you have Quick Boot enabled it will save an image of your RAM between startups so it won´t clear that.
In my case it was due to the network adapter software (Killer whatever-it-is-called). I had to uninstall it and install the drivers only, so it may not apply to you, but worth checking as the symptoms look similar to what I had.

 

[seafiant]

That's a really interesting read and not something I hadnt considered. I'm waiting for the machine to fail again (bad thing to say about your PC) which should be within the next day and will check the RAM usage when it happens. I believe it stays well below full. Today I upgraded from Windows v18 to v19 and flashed the BIOS. So far the system has been working with zero problems since but it could be a rare fluke before the problem returns. If so I can't imagine what between a flashed BIOS and Windows upgrade could have fixed the problem since all visible settings are unchanged.

 

[ubuysa]

That RAM issue reported was almost certainly a driver issue, and likely the Killer network card the poster mentioned. Whilst interesting I don't think it's necessarily related to your issue.

In your OP you mentione searching for the '100% disk usage issue', is that what you're actually seeing (via Task Manager for example) or is that's just what you think the problem is? If it's the former and you do see 100% disk usage then I'm in agreement that swapping the drive is the most sensible first step. That chkdsk runs clean is a surprise, but 'disk usage' time also includes the time spent waiting, and if the drive has some sort of a problem that makes it slow to respond then that will impact usage of course.

You could try using the Performance Monitor to look more closely at the physical disk counters. Start by using the real-time mode, right click in the graph area and select Add Counters. Scroll down the list of counters and expand the Physical Disk section. Select % Idle Time and in the window at the bottom highlight either All Instances or the specific drive you want to monitor, then click Add. Then (in the top window) select Current Disk Queue Length (this is the number of I/O operations waiting to use that drive) and in the window at the bottom highlight either All Instances or the specific drive you want to monitor, then click Add. Click Ok to dismiss that dialog. The graph now contains those counters; the %idle time will show you whether the disk truly is busy most of the time and the Queue Length counter will show you whether this is because it's working normally but handling too many I/O operations.

You could also run the Performance Monitor in the background over as long a period as you need collecting data for later analysis. You probably want to read this post https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/threads/using-the-performance-monitor.60203/ if you're not familiar with using the Performance Monitor. You might also select a few more counters in background mode if you think they can provide useful data. At the very least you'll be able to see whether the disk is just slow or whether it's being overused.

 

[seafiant]

Thanks for that. To update right after I posted last night the system went bad again while trying to download large files that didn't need to be decompressed etc. I checked the RAM usage and it was below 50% dropping to 33% when I had finally got the programs to close right before shutdown.

I swapped to process explorer a little while ago but I'll follow your Performance Monitor tweak guide next and see if it provides any more clues. As someone who has repaired/reinstalled their machines since the Windows 98 era I genuinely have never come across such a strange error.

 

[Oussebon]

How about with a lightweight Linux distro?

 

[acolwill]

@Sefiant If you're seeing slow-down after a short time with little going on with the machine, assuming you're running Win10 you can check disk utilisation direct from task manager.

If your disk active time is greater than ~15% with the machine being idle then I'd agree with @SpyderTracks that you have a disk issue.

 

[seafiant]

Just had the slowdown occur while trying to download large size files again.
I couldn't get back to this screen during the problem but just took a screenshot once downloading had stopped for a few minutes.
Seems the idle on the it (Windows drive) ticks between 0-25%. I've looked at more advanced info and it seems the files are still being
written after I've paused the downloads for quite some time (a couple of minutes.) so I am wondering if its like filling up a cache and until the cache has been emptied the system refuses any more data.

Given it happens on multiple download services it's not program specific I'm really not sure what the issue can be. Every drive test comes up clean, I've tried allocating space for files before they download and not and the result is the same for both. As soon as I get a large amount downloaded of larger files (for example 6GB into 20GB) the machine cripples.

The best hint I had was from the Internet Archive torrent download where the downloader stated disc cache overload.
I also checked now during the problem (it occurs at different times every day not a scheduled task) and it was showing 100% disk usage in Task Manager with less than 1MB drive transfer usage.

 

[acolwill]

I'll be honest. I don't think there's anything actually wrong with the machine.
CPU is a dual core device with a TDP of ~10 watts, it's ultra low power.
HDD is one of the slowest modern mechanical drives you can actually buy.
Motherboard only has 1 memory slot and can only be upgraded to 8GB RAM.

It's only really designed to browse the web.
If it were mine, I'd grab a cheap SATA SSD - PNY CS900 (480GB) is around £43 on Amazon UK.
and slap 8GB RAM inside it - 8GB DDR3L SODIMM - Crucial CT102464BF160B - Around £35 on Amazon UK.
Should be fine for WOWs and SC2.

Also, when it's on battery it'll throttle CPU and GPU unless you set your power profile to high performance.

 

[seafiant]

I've tried all performance options plugged in and unplugged and it doesn't make a difference. I'd have to disagree and believe there is a fault in options somewhere I'm not seeing. I'm considering giving the BIOS another look and even though it's never good disabling the write buffer to try and go through the motions.

I reviewed CPUs at the end the 2000s for a tech magazine (PC Live! in Ireland) and never did a low end CPU make Steam stutter when simply downloading or using a mechanical HDD not SSD (although I do admit loving using a SSD for VRAM back in the day even though it uses up the writes) even a low power machine these days is massively ahead of those. I have a dozen games installed at the moment that all play fine on the machine from Arkham Origins to Minecraft, SC2 and World of Warships, transferring 100GB Steam installer backups to and from TB drives and there's never a problem. I can't imagine the HDD or CPU should be doing all those tasks (especially gaming) yet have a panic attack every time it's only asked to download larger files from the internet, need to freeze everything and take a few minutes to collect its thoughts.

The fact I can download dozens of small files in an identical fashion and simply have issues with large files is extremely strange.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I've tried all performance options plugged in and unplugged and it doesn't make a difference. I'd have to disagree and believe there is a fault in options somewhere I'm not seeing. I'm considering giving the BIOS another look and even though it's never good disabling the write buffer to try and go through the motions.

I reviewed CPUs at the end the 2000s for a tech magazine (PC Live! in Ireland) and never did a low end CPU make Steam stutter when simply downloading or using a mechanical HDD not SSD (although I do admit loving using a SSD for VRAM back in the day even though it uses up the writes) even a low power machine these days is massively ahead of those. I have a dozen games installed at the moment that all play fine on the machine from Arkham Origins to Minecraft, SC2 and WOW, transferring 100GB Steam installer backups to and from TB drives and there's never a problem. I can't imagine the HDD or CPU is should be doing all those tasks (especially gaming) yet have a panic attack every time it's asked to download larger files from the internet and take a few minutes to collect its thoughts.

The fact I can download dozens of small files in an identical fashion and simply have issues with large files is extremely strange.

With such little RAM, it will be maxxing out and then have to write to the hard drive to make up for it.

You can see this by the hard faults on task manager on the RAM page.

That will cause a significant slow down.

Why the downloads are sporadic, I don't know. Could be a faulty card.

 

[seafiant]

I'll double check the memory during the next slowdown. Even running every program possible for daily activity (multiple Chrome tabs, VLC running, Explorer open, task manager etc) maximum RAM usage I've seen is 67%, on idle I'm at 33% and with usual daily usage I'm at 50%

As for the downloads it's done via both hardline and Wifi downloading.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I'll double check the memory during the next slowdown. Even running every program possible for daily activity (multiple Chrome tabs, VLC running, Explorer open, task manager etc) maximum RAM usage I've seen is 67%, on idle I'm at 33% and with usual daily usage I'm at 50%

Windows 10 alone will use over 3Gb.

 

[seafiant]

Windows 10 alone will use over 3Gb.

Over 3GB is odd. I'm running the newest Windows version and I never hit that high with just Windows. This is current (no problem) with about
15 Chrome tabs open including YouTube paused and Gmail. Along with a running VLC video window. Without Chrome it's a lot lower.