Win7 64 is excruciatingly slow. (New upgr. from XP 32.)

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Je-Tze

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Feb 3, 2008
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EDIT: Fixed! (But still sortof a confusing WTF.)
Posted this morning. should have updated here as well. Here. Thankyou for all the help and suggestions. /EDIT

I've just upgraded my XP 32 system to Win 7 64. The install went fine, with the exception of taking literally hours to resolve some of the "loading" and "configuring" screens. I should have known something was up...

[If you want to jump ahead and check my specs i have them posted at the bottom.]

Doing ANYTHING in my new install of Win7 now takes several minutes, at least! Even opening the Start Menu, or opening the Task Manager, or even switching from the "applications" tab to the "processes" tab of the Task Manager (which just took, literally, 6 minutes--i'm typing this on a separate computer). In short it's unusable. Even shutdown is taking around 30 to 45 min. with nothing running, I haven't even attempted to run ANY apps yet. Although once that initial 'load time' is done SOME processes will respond instantly until i shut them down; in the Task Manager example: now that the tabs have loaded i'm able to freely switch between them and all the other Task Manager tabs, until i shut it down; then if i try to load it again i'm back to the insane load times. Likewise, once the Start Menu is loaded up it continues to come up pretty much instantly unless some other process is in the middle of its own insanely long loadtime, but loading anything form the Start Menu, like the Control Panel, will still take at least a minute, often more. Even something like switching the "View by:" item on the Control Panel is taking several minutes, and then actually loading into the selected "View", say "small icons" will take a few minutes more. The little blue 'loading/working ring' (ie. the hourglass) will generally show up and animate during these 'loading' times.

Hopefully i'm not belaboring the point here, but i'm trying to be complete, because this is fucking weird.

My first thought is it might have something to do with Aero, even though my system should be more than enough to support it, but having FINALLY gotten to the appropriate part of the control panel menus and dialogs, as far as i can tell Aero is completely turned off because i'm still running on the Win7 default drivers for everything including the gfx card.(The hours it would take to install any drivers in this condition is a no-go.)

COMPUTER SPECS:

Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (2.2GHz, part #ADA4200DAA5BV)
4 GB DDR500 (4x1GB Patriot Extreme Performance DDR 500, PC 4000)
ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe (ATX, socket 939, Radeon Xpress 3200 chipset.)
XFX Radeon HD 6870 1GB (This is brand new but i tried briefly it under XP, before i upgr. to win7, and it worked fine.)
Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer (PCI, 7.1 channel Sound Blaster)
Windows is installed on a 260GB Western Digital Caviar, SATA II (3Gb/s) @7200rpm
700Watt CoolMax power supply (Not the best, but plenty to handle this system.)

Yes, this is old stuff--except the new video card, which is fucking awesome--and never was top of the line, but it should be more than enough to run Win7 64bit, with all the bells and whistles, including Aero.

Anyone got ideas for me?

EDIT: Forgot to say.
Task Manager's performance monitor is reading consistently 0%CPU usage, with SMALL spikes when loading a menu or something.
And it's recognizing all 4 GB of my RAM--reading: 4095MB physical mem, 568MB cached, 591MB in use, 1MB "hardware reserved", 2935 free.
 
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Already off. Never worked right, even under XP.

EDIT: Also, in case anyone is going there... Running in SATA mode. Not using the MoBo's onboard RAID controller.
 
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Did you do an upgrade install, or a fresh install?

also open up resource monitor and take a look at disk activity. Your hard drive is the weakest link utilizing much older platter technology. Go into services and disable indexing for now. I would also disable superfetch and turn it back on before you go to sleep tonight and give your drive the evening to sort things out.
 
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Check your energy settings as well. What are the Win 7 experience scores for your pc?

To be honest, its about time for an upgrade for you anyway. You can find an AM3 dual core, 4 gb DDR3, and mobo for $100-$150 pretty easily maybe even cheaper. I only say this because your ram is on the slow side and the 2.2 clockspeed probably isnt helping either.
 
Processes and services:
Task Manager's status bar at the bottom of the window indicates 29 processes running, but the Processes Tab indicates just six. csrss.exe, dwm.exe, explorer.exe, taskhost.exe, taskmgr.exe, and winlogon.exe. Each is taking under 4MB, except for explorer, which is ~16MB. This is all as expected.
Apps Tab shows nothing of course.
Services Tab shows 52 services running, and about that many more not; not going to list them all if i can help it, as getting Win to print out or send the list over my network ATM would be like pulling teeth... really slowly. Trust me though that this is a CLEAN INSTALL, and i've run NOTHING but a very few of the most basic windows functions.
 
Do you have Windows 7 upgrade or full version? I would try reformatting and installing win7 again.
 
OP's hardware is more than capable for running Windows 7. Heck, I've even got a machine with an ASUS P4P8X, a Pentium 4 2.8GHz CPU (Northwood), and 2GB RAM along with an ATi Radeon 9800Pro; thing runs like a fucking champ (even Vista runs pretty well on it). Something is definitely wrong here.


These suggestions might sound like shots in the dark, but you've got a spare hard drive to test out? Have you tried checking the disk I/O in Resource Monitor? Sounds like your WD Caviar is about to shit the bed. Might want to go to WD's site and download their Data LifeGuard ISO to check the physical condition on your disk.
Also, is your BIOS up to date?
 
Thanks guys for your attention, time, and responses so far!

Answers to some above ?'s:

This is a CLEAN INSTALL from the Win7 Home Premium, Family Pack, 3 Licsense UPGRADE kit.
Clean install is totally supported natively from the upgrade DVD (called "Custom Install"), it just looks for a previous XP install, and even allows a format before you start. It did not choke on this part in any way... besides going REEEEEALY slow at some points, as mentioned above.

Resource monitor shows disk activity as nil during said 'loading' events. I thought i saw that Indexing was off, but i will double check that, as well as superfetch, as suggested.
Also, hard drive is fine, and not that old, and nowhere near out of date. Although i did misspeak, it's 250GB, not 260. =)

As for the other upgrade suggestions, the new GFX card IS my update, and with it under XP this machine gets 40-60fps or more in modern games like COD:MW2, TF2, LFD2, Crysis, with Med, and or High settings. This machine is old, but it's FINE, and nowhere near obsolete yet. Besides i've seen myself, and heard of even more anecdotaly, plenty of older/worse machines than this running Win7 with Aero on, and doing just fine. More to the point as much as i'd love to upgrade to a blazing fast new setup, the money is just not there, my two options are to make this work with Win7 as is, or to go back to XP, and just do without DX11, etc.

Energy settings: All MoBo settings are off. I haven't got to the control panel stuff yet due to everything being so slow, but it's definitely on my list. Thanks =).

I don't understand what, or where the "Win 7 experience scores" are. Help? =)

Thanks again guys.
 
Also BIOS is up to date.
Hard Drives, well like i said, Drive monitor is not showing any undue, or wierd activity, HD was GREAT right up to the install, so i'm fairly certain it's not the problem.
But i will definitely give your suggestions a try, and download WesternDigital's software, and also try installing on a completely different drive.
Thanks again.

EDIT:
Oh also i've not yet been asked verify, or enter license codes, etc., neither during install nor afterward.
 
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go to start/computer/right click properties, you'll see it there...system ratings experience.
 
I have a similar rig sitting around, was painfully slow in vista/w7 doing anything other than idling. Time to upgrade! Your 6870 will thank you.
 
Windows Experience Index Rating:
Thanks for the help on this! =) I had no idea this existed. Currently the possible range is 1.0 to 7.9, and i haven't had time to read into it yet, so i don't no if these scores are determined dynamically by physically testing the hardware, or just by looking it up in some index, or something else, but here's the numbers.

CPU - 4.9 (based on calculations per second)
RAM - 4.9 (based on memory operations per second)
Hard Disk - 5.4 (based on disk data transfer rate)
Gaming GFX and Aero GFX both rate as 1.0, and we'll assume for now that this is simply due to the crappy default driver which only enable 800x600, DX8,etc.

Those numbers seem pretty good to me, not GREAT, but perfectly acceptable.
Or am i missing something.

Oh also on the table for troubleshooting, beside the Hard Drive stuff, is completely reformatting and doing a clean base install of XP, and then attempting another clean install of Win7 64. I won't be able to try this or the HD stuff until, at least, later tonight though, or possibly over the next couple of days.
...sigh.
 
are you sure you have the PCI-E card selected as the one to use for video instead of any onboard video?

something in your system is screwed up, one at a time.....process of elimination

i had a rig with slightly lesser specs that was running Win 7 x64 with similar WEI ratings as that (other than the obviously gimped video one)
 
Take a look in Event Viewer and see if any error are recorded.

Whenever I've seen extremely long pauses, it's usually been the result of the storage driver timing out.

Update your BIOS to 0701 by navigating the link below:
http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

Install the latest 64 bit Silicon Image 3132 driver from:
http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=32&cat=3&os=11

Install the latest Realtek driver from:
http://218.210.127.131/downloads/do...=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

Hopefully that fixes it for you, but in general Asus never officially supported Win7 on their 939 motherboards, so getting it to work on some boards can be a crap shoot.
 
Video is definately on the PCI-e card, as i don't have onboard gfx.
Plus i've been through the BIOS with a fine-toothed comb. About the only thing i have left to try in there is turning off all of the Auto-OC settings, which i've had on for years.

Yep, i have the 0701 BIOS, been out for years.

I have the latest LAN drivers.

Realtek audio drivers are not needed, onboard sound is off.

I didn't think of the SI RAID driver. Thanks! As you know(and now so do i =) they have one out for Win7. Didn't think of it cause i've RAID turned off, but of course the driver effects the whole SATA controller. Will try that.

Haven't looked in Event Viewer yet. Thanks for the suggestion as well.
 
If you did an upgrade, the problem is likely a service or app on the pc that is not compatible with win 7
 
well here's the thing, it takes a whopping 20 minutes or so to do a total format and clean re-install, you've spent more than that wondering what it is and trying to track it down.....just re-install
 
Also, with the video card you have your graphics score should easily be 7.5 or more. Download the right drivers and install them.
 
ocellaris said:
If you did an upgrade, the problem is likely a service or app on the pc that is not compatible with win 7
Click to expand...

Well, except, it's an "Upgrade" package, with which i did a clean install (no tricks needed), including formatting the drive. Also, i'm not migrating any settings or apps from the old install.
 
nobody_here said:
well here's the thing, it takes a whopping 20 minutes or so to do a total format and clean re-install, you've spent more than that wondering what it is and trying to track it down.....just re-install
Click to expand...

NOPE. It took at least 8 solid hours and that's not including all the times i had to leave it and check up an hour or so later, that brought it to 12 hours +overnight.
Also the first three times it happened i quit at different points in the process--including once almost at the end, i found out later--and restarted the install and re-reformatted, because i figured something was wrong, after the third time i started to wonder if that's just how a Win7 install goes... never installed it myself before. Of course once i finally finished the process it was more of the same... so here i am. =)
 
Je-Tze said:
NOPE. It took at least 8 solid hours and that's not including all the times i had to leave it and check up an hour or so later, that brought it to 12 hours +overnight.
Also the first three times it happened i quit at different points in the process--including once almost at the end, i found out later--and restarted the install and re-reformatted, because i figured something was wrong, after the third time i started to wonder if that's just how a Win7 install goes... never installed it myself before. Of course once i finally finished the process it was more of the same... so here i am. =)
Click to expand...

you need to replace something, something is broken, start swapping out parts one at a time
 
nimajneb5000 said:
Also, with the video card you have your graphics score should easily be 7.5 or more. Download the right drivers and install them.
Click to expand...

Well, i'd love too, and that's the eventual goal. In the current circumstances, however, it takes hours to do anything meaningful on this machine, driver installs included.
And luckily, i feel like, from the evidence, and Aero being turned off, the gfx probably aren't the problem. Don't you think?

Thanks again to all you guys for the help. Let me know if ya'll think of anything else. I still have a few suggestions to try out tonight, including the SATA/RAID controller driver, HD diagnostic utility, and trying a different drive (which will, by necessity mean doing a clean XP instal, and then a clean Win7 install). Wish me luck.
 
nobody_here said:
you need to replace something, something is broken, start swapping out parts one at a time
Click to expand...

Agreed. And if the HD related fixes don't pan out, that's what i'll be doing.
It's just with even a Restart taking more than an hour for the whole process, anything i do will be SLOW going. And i work tomorrow, and have other obligations. I expect to be able to report something to y'all on Monday...hopefully =/
 
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If it takes 8 hours to install, your hard drive is broken or the SATA controller has serious issues.
 
yeah, something is totally screwed on your system. why did you decide to upgrade to W7 in the first place, ie: what were you trying to fix? I am not saying W7 is the cause, but it may help to get some context. Out of the box with a clean system you should not have these issues.
 
Tawnos said:
If it takes 8 hours to install, your hard drive is broken or the SATA controller has serious issues.
Click to expand...

THIS times a million. It shouldn't take you 8 hours to install in the first place. This has nothing to do with Windows 7. It's a hardware issue. Something is either dying or dead. Maybe the reformat just triggered it? Who knows, but it sounds like something hardware related is going on here. I think it took me maybe 30 minutes to install Windows 7 64-bit.
 
Jon55 said:
This has nothing to do with Windows 7. It's a hardware issue. Something is either dying or dead. Maybe the reformat just triggered it?
Click to expand...

To be fair, it's probably a hardware-conflict with Windows 7. I'm very doubtful anything is dying or dead if his computer was working perfectly in Windows XP. A quick google search revealed someone with a similar problem installing/using Win7 and the exact motherboard, while Vista was working just fine. Probably not a coincidence.

During both the Vista and Win7 tech betas, it was not uncommon to hear of the occasional person with outdated hardware having issues with pro-longed install times. Usually it came down to a BIOS or IDE issue. Of course this is definitely not normal, so Je-Tze, even if storage driver updates fixes it, you should still do a clean re-install Windows 7, but this time load the needed storage driver on a usb stick during setup. Install should be quick, since even on the AMD X2 (939) machine in my sig, install only took 15 mins on an old WD Raptor 74GB (which I no longer own).

It would also be worth checking the setuperr.log in C:Windows\Panther\ to see if it indicates any errors during setup.
 
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Don't toss out bad hard drive simply because XP ran ok. I have seen several faulty drives that would load one OS, but not another. I just sold a laptop as a repair unit that had a hard drive that wouldn't load any form of XP (BSOD and formatting problems) but would load Vista and 7 both perfectly fine. The least you could do is just scan it with the data lifeguard utility mentioned above.
 
Not particularly surprising. WinXP's installation process is very HDD intensive. WinVista and Win7 installation by comparison is just a simple copy operation of a large disk image with some minor configuration afterwords. Usually it would be WinXP installation to identify a broken drive, not the other way around.

But I do agree that it wouldn't hurt to run WD's Data Lifeguard tool just to rule that out if nothing else works. Make sure to use the DOS bootable version though. Attempting to run it in Win7, when it's behaving as it currently is, would be a bad idea.

Just to make sure, you're not running any IDE HDDs right?
 
Seriously get those graphics drivers installed ASAP.

Aero will increase performance on a working system not decrease it...
 
Since something clearly went wrong during the install I am not even sure you are going to be able to fix it.

So if you don’t just give up on 7 and reinstall XP. When you do the next 7 install pull out 2 of your 1gig DIMMs. Some people believe this was just a Vista pre SP1 issue but it’s not. Some dated hardware has problem with Vista and 7 with greater then 2gig of ram. Just like some systems with 4gig had no problem with Vista pre SP1.

If the install goes ok on 2gig you should be able to put the other 2gig back in with no issues.
 
I had a problem with EXTREMELY slow boot times under Vista x64 on my old Intel 965 board all of a sudden when I went from 2GB to 6GB of RAM. Needed a BIOS update. For a while folks were rolling back to OLDER BIOS images as a fix. The problem was, EXTREMELY slow boot and load up times running > 2GB of RAM, and it was specifically addressed in a BIOS update.

Luckily by the time I went to Vista x64 they had a good BIOS update.

It's worth trying to remove a stick and see if that helps IMO. Easy test to rule out a similar problem. Sounds like you're on the latest BIOS...but who knows.

When troubleshooting, always try to minimize the problem first. Disable anything you're not using on the motherboard (extra IDE ports, parallel, etc). Unplug all extra USB gadgets like BT dongles, unplug the optical drive. Try booting up on 1 stick of RAM with one HDD and a vid card and that's it.
 
In your BIOS, what is the AHCI/IDE setting set to? If it's not set to AHCI, you may want to try doing that, and if you run into trouble with that, here's a walkthrough on getting around an issue of enabling it in Win7. (This is just another shot in the dark.)

Also, how did you format the drive before the OS install?
 
evilsofa said:
Also, how did you format the drive before the OS install?
Click to expand...

The reformat was done as part of the Win7 install if I understood his OP and replies correctly.

And OP I know you seem concerned with having to do a Win7 reinstall like it is going to be some crazy ordeal but it really isn’t that bad. And yes I am aware you have an upgrade copy just google something like “win7 upgrade install tricks”. It isn’t as simple as when working with none upgrade media but still you can do it in less time than your first install took you for sure. Cause if it’s still taking along time your hardware issues is not yet resolved.

Another thing that it could be is that XP was forgiving of minor system instability that Linux, Vista, and 7 will choke on. Things could be as simple as the added stress of populating 4 DIMM slots is causing minor instability that XP was able to shrug off. But the easiest way to test this to pull 2 and then if problems return when they are added back in you know where to start. But again I am not sure anything you do will help your install that likely has its own issues because it never should have taken that long to install.
 
Contrary to unpopular belief, disabling Superfetch and Indexing does not increase performance.
 
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