Question AVG TuneUp vs iolo System Mechanic or none?

[Jassen]

So I have this 10+ YO PC that I'm using and I don't have any type of cleaning/optimisation software.

Should I get AVG TuneUp or iolo System Mechanic, or just CCleaner? Does Windows 10 benefit from them and will they really improve performance?

My OS is about 2 years old, everything is fine for the specs I have, except booting in to Windows, feels slow, or at least its not what it used to be.

MB: Gigabyte EX58-extreme
CPU: i7-970
GPU: Asus TUF-GTX1660TI-O6G
RAM: GEIL 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) 1600 MHz CL9 Dual-Chanel
PSU: Enermax 500W or 550W ( Too lazy to open case)
HDD: 4TB HGST DESKSTAR NAS
OS: Win10 Pro

 

[Secret-Squirrel]

.....................Should I get AVG TuneUp or iolo System Mechanic, or just CCleaner? Does Windows 10 benefit from them and will they really improve performance?

They're little more than snake oil products so don't waste your time (or money) with them because they can't improve your PC's performance. Also, their so-called Registry "cleaners" have the potential to cause catastrophic problems.

The Windows Event Viewer keeps a startup log and occasionally it can identify the culprit that's slowing things down. Open Event Viewer and navigate to Applications and Services logs -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Diagnostics-Performance -> Operational. Have a look and see if you can find any "Boot Performance" events that are showing Warning or Error. If you can then double click on an entry to view the full details and see if it names a program or service that's causing a significant delay to the boot times. Values shown are in milliseconds.

Even though your motherboard only has 3Gb/s SATA ports, upgrading your hard drive to a SATA SSD should make a noticeable improvement in general performance. It's something to consider if you're moderately experienced and knowledgeable.

 

[Jassen]

@Secret-Squirrel Thank you for the reply .

Basically every boot I have a warning and an error.

The Warning is :

Warning 23.10.2020 г. 6:36:17 Diagnostics-Performance 102 Boot Performance Monitoring
This driver took longer to initialize, resulting in a performance degradation in the system start up process:
File Name : klgse
Friendly Name : Security Extender [fre_win7_x64]
Version : 20.6.4.0
Total Time : 1015ms
Degradation Time : 1068ms
Incident Time (UTC) : ‎2020‎-‎10‎-‎23T03:33:47.868700500Z

That's some Kaspersky driver, don't think it's fixable, plus 1 sec isn't that much .

The interesting part is the error:

Error 23.10.2020 г. 6:36:17 Diagnostics-Performance 100 Boot Performance Monitoring
Windows has started up:
Boot Duration : 96273ms
IsDegradation : false
Incident Time (UTC) : ‎2020‎-‎10‎-‎23T03:33:47.868700500Z
Log Name: Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance
Date: 23.10.2020 г. 6:36:17
Event ID: 100
Task Category: Boot Performance Monitoring
Level: Error
Keywords: Event Log
User: LOCAL SERVICE
Computer: ***
Description:
Windows has started up:
Boot Duration : 96273ms
IsDegradation : false
Incident Time (UTC) : ‎2020‎-‎10‎-‎23T03:33:47.868700500Z
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance" Guid="{cfc18ec0-96b1-4eba-961b-622caee05b0a}" />
<EventID>100</EventID>
<Version>2</Version>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>4002</Task>
<Opcode>34</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000010000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2020-10-23T03:36:17.9410970Z" />
<EventRecordID>98</EventRecordID>
<Correlation ActivityID="{514c6d1d-a8ed-000a-0275-4c51eda8d601}" />
<Execution ProcessID="4212" ThreadID="4916" />
<Channel>Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational</Channel>
<Computer>***</Computer>
<Security UserID="***" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="BootTsVersion">2</Data>
<Data Name="BootStartTime">2020-10-23T03:33:47.8687005Z</Data>
<Data Name="BootEndTime">2020-10-23T03:36:05.5838083Z</Data>
<Data Name="SystemBootInstance">27</Data>
<Data Name="UserBootInstance">27</Data>
<Data Name="BootTime">96273</Data>
<Data Name="MainPathBootTime">46973</Data>
<Data Name="BootKernelInitTime">63</Data>
<Data Name="BootDriverInitTime">2664</Data>
<Data Name="BootDevicesInitTime">1758</Data>
<Data Name="BootPrefetchInitTime">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootPrefetchBytes">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootAutoChkTime">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootSmssInitTime">23242</Data>
<Data Name="BootCriticalServicesInitTime">1564</Data>
<Data Name="BootUserProfileProcessingTime">6025</Data>
<Data Name="BootMachineProfileProcessingTime">120</Data>
<Data Name="BootExplorerInitTime">8933</Data>
<Data Name="BootNumStartupApps">8</Data>
<Data Name="BootPostBootTime">49300</Data>
<Data Name="BootIsRebootAfterInstall">false</Data>
<Data Name="BootRootCauseStepImprovementBits">9437184</Data>
<Data Name="BootRootCauseGradualImprovementBits">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootRootCauseStepDegradationBits">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootRootCauseGradualDegradationBits">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootIsDegradation">false</Data>
<Data Name="BootIsStepDegradation">false</Data>
<Data Name="BootIsGradualDegradation">false</Data>
<Data Name="BootImprovementDelta">33053</Data>
<Data Name="BootDegradationDelta">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootIsRootCauseIdentified">true</Data>
<Data Name="OSLoaderDuration">2482</Data>
<Data Name="BootPNPInitStartTimeMS">63</Data>
<Data Name="BootPNPInitDuration">5091</Data>
<Data Name="OtherKernelInitDuration">701</Data>
<Data Name="SystemPNPInitStartTimeMS">5772</Data>
<Data Name="SystemPNPInitDuration">2594</Data>
<Data Name="SessionInitStartTimeMS">8387</Data>
<Data Name="Session0InitDuration">1556</Data>
<Data Name="Session1InitDuration">345</Data>
<Data Name="SessionInitOtherDuration">21339</Data>
<Data Name="WinLogonStartTimeMS">31630</Data>
<Data Name="OtherLogonInitActivityDuration">263</Data>
<Data Name="UserLogonWaitDuration">8138</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

Any Idea what that error is? And how can it be fixed?

Even though your motherboard only has 3Gb/s SATA ports, upgrading your hard drive to a SATA SSD should make a noticeable improvement in general performance. It's something to consider if you're moderately experienced and knowledgeable.

I will get an SSD, in the near future, but till then... I want to squeeze everything I can from this build.

 

[Secret-Squirrel]

Thanks for pasting those two events.

The first one is, as you say, insignificant and the second one simply tells us that Windows thinks your PC took too long to startup.

IsDegradation : false is helpful because it tells us that it wasn't a driver, app, or other type of software that caused the startup delay so we need to look elsewhere.

Make sure you have "Fast Start-up" enabled and restarting the PC (by using the RESTART power option) may help.

 

[Jassen]

@Secret-Squirrel Thank you for helping out.

Make sure you have "Fast Start-up" enabled and restarting the PC (by using the RESTART power option) may help.

I do have it enabled, but just to be sure, I unchecked it and checked it again and restarted the PC. And I still get these two events.