win7 pro slow

[P.N.]

I have win7 pro on my laptop 32 bit and on my desktop win pro 64 bit.
Now my laptop is fast and my desktop slow. Is this a common experience or
should I reinstall win7 on my desktop pc.

 

[Ed Cryer]

I have win7 pro on my laptop 32 bit and on my desktop win pro 64 bit.
Now my laptop is fast and my desktop slow. Is this a common experience
or should I reinstall win7 on my desktop pc.

My experience is no difference. There must be other factors involved;
things like amount of RAM, HD sizes, software installed, CPU speeds.

Ed

 

[s|b]

I have win7 pro on my laptop 32 bit and on my desktop win pro 64 bit.
Now my laptop is fast and my desktop slow. Is this a common experience or
should I reinstall win7 on my desktop pc.

Perhaps your laptop is equipped with a SSD?

 

[John]

My experience is no difference. There must be other factors involved;
things like amount of RAM, HD sizes, software installed, CPU speeds.

P.N.,

I have a laptop with WinXP. I haven't booted it up for months. Were I
to, I would find it impossible to use for maybe a couple of hours as I
last left the AV, firewall and a couple of other softwares in a "you
have my permission to automatically update your stuff" state.
Once everything had been updated, it would whiz along, but when first
booted it is going to be a pain.
My HP notebook running Win7 is also running Prime95, the Mersenne
Prime search program. I leave it running 24/7. Sometimes, when I want
to use it, the GIMPS won't get out of the way for a while. It is too
busy doing stuff to respond to my request for CPU privileges. Usually,
the search software is extremely polite but occasionally it hammers
the CPU and it is difficult to get the machine's attention.
And why am I telling P.N. this? Because otherwise lovely boxes can be
trapped into glacial slowness and uselessness by one or two programs,
they may even be running in the background.
Try Task Manager. See if you can see what is using the CPU cycles.
See if anything huge is running. If you have more than one security
program they can slow things down. Back software or search-and-index
software can slow things.
Try "Process Explorer" from www.sysinternals.com for an even better
tool, though that one does tend to show *lots* of truly weird
information.
You could also try optimising your x64 machine. Remove stuff you
don't use and tidy up other things.
If you want an anecdotal data point, my 12GB RAM Win7 x64 box is
amazingly fast even when running SETatHOME, EINSTEINatHOME, Agent,
Process Explorer (which I left up in the background accidentally), VLC
and Microsoft Media Centre. It is certainly *loads* faster than my 1GB
Win7 notebook, even when I turn off Prime95 on that machine.
I do have security software running, the x64 box is *still*
incredibly fast.
One of the first things I did on this box when it was new was to go
through all the extra "goodies" HP put on it, like HPSupport and the
rest, and I removed much of them. I removed the trial toolbars and a
load of other stuff.
But I did that with the laptop and the notebook, too.
Maybe that is what is bogging down your machine? The crudware that
comes with the box?
As Ed said, "other factors". To help more, we'd really need more
details.
J.

 

[John]

program they can slow things down. Back software or search-and-index
software can slow things.

BACK-UP software. Software that does back-ups. But you knew I meant
that, of course?

Try "Process Explorer" from www.sysinternals.com for an even better
tool, though that one does tend to show *lots* of truly weird
information.
You could also try optimising your x64 machine. Remove stuff you
don't use and tidy up other things.
If you want an anecdotal data point, my 12GB RAM Win7 x64 box is
amazingly fast even when running SETatHOME, EINSTEINatHOME, Agent,

It's an I7. That means essentially it's seven computers all running
at once. Sort of. That could explain a lot about the speed of the
thing.
And it's got a really huge disk. Not that that explains the speed but
it probably means little fragmentation, yet.
The slowest thing on this box, by far, is me.
J.

 

[Paul]

I have win7 pro on my laptop 32 bit and on my desktop win pro 64 bit.
Now my laptop is fast and my desktop slow. Is this a common experience
or should I reinstall win7 on my desktop pc.

Indexing enabled ?

AV software ?

Do a read benchmark on the hard drive with the free HDTune ?

Does the system properly support Aero ? Turn off special effects.
Run "dxdiag" and try the 2D and 3D test buttons.

Are programs slow to launch ? Or slow while running ?
Quantify what part of it seems slow.

Paul

 

[Dave]

It's an I7. That means essentially it's seven computers all running
at once. Sort of. That could explain a lot about the speed of the thing.
And it's got a really huge disk. Not that that explains the speed but
it probably means little fragmentation, yet.
The slowest thing on this box, by far, is me.
J.

I thought all those processors were supposed to make things run faster. My
I5 has 4 processors, as does an I7, although that one might be the type
where each processor simulates a double processor, I looked it up once but
forget.
My window 7 professional seems very fast, but any machine might take a
little while to load an application due to all the junk they load first
time. A reload is generally faster.

 

[Wolf K]

I thought all those processors were supposed to make things run faster. My
I5 has 4 processors, as does an I7, although that one might be the type
where each processor simulates a double processor, I looked it up once but
forget.
My window 7 professional seems very fast, but any machine might take a
little while to load an application due to all the junk they load first
time. A reload is generally faster.

Multi-core processors (CPUs) don't necessarily make a program run
faster. It depends on
a) how well the alloocation of tasks (threading) works (that's an OS
thing); and
b) how well the program has been optimised to run on more than one core.

In addition, the speed of the video subsytem affects the apparent speed
of the machine. A separate video card with its own processor (GPU) will
make for a faster machine.

Loading speed depends on the hard drive speed. A solid state drive is
inherently faster. "Reload" is faster only if sufficient RAM is
available to store part(s) of the unloaded program(s).