New PC Build W7 PRO 64, Running very SLOW! Any advice??

[monkey4sale]

GIGABYTE f2a68hm-hd2
4GH HYPER FURY RAM 1866Mhz DDR3
A6-5400K CPU
KING DIAN 60GB SSD
SEASONIC 300w PSU
WINDOWS 7 PRO

No 1 , I had some issues installing windows 7 via both DVD and bootable USB options....it took FOREVER, I am talking 6 hours......that is not normal via current usb 2.0 speeds!

When trying to install chipset driver from disk and via downloading them they keep hanging at say 80 and again are taking WAY longer than usual.

windows explorer keeps crashing, it takes forever to open task manager, control panel etc , I cant understand exactly the issue.. my guess is some issue with the RAM.....which I will trouble shoot by getting my friend to bring round some DDR3 later today.

I have built upwards of 30 computers....so by no means a noob and I have never had such trouble getting windows installed on a new PC before, let alone all the trouble I am having at the moment.

Extra Info---!!

I have checked the SSD for errors ( being a cheap nasty one I looked at this first) and there are no errors here

All components are new

I used a 4 pin ATX 12v CPU power hook up instead of the 8 pin CPU power cable because this is all my seasonic PSU had available, so this leaves FOUR pins on the motherboards ATX 12V Port vacant.....I did NOT think this would be an issue as I have done this before and TBH I do not think that this could cause the issues I am having.

The next part is an observation which may yield a clue......THE HDD ACTIVITY LED on the front of the case is blinking like crazy anytime I click on something in the OS/ask the OS to do anything......I have read somewhere else that this can indicate an issue with RAM/ Paging/ problems accessing disk cache?

NO ISSUES WITH CPU TEMP-
I HAVE NOT UPDATED THE BIOS YET
HAVE NOT RUN MEMTEST YET ( ALTHOUGH I WILL)
WINDOWS EXPERIENCE INDEX CRASHED WHEN I TRIED TO USE IT, GIVING AN ERROR ABOUT THE KERNEL LOGGER.....NEVER HAD THIS HAPPEN BEFORE....

ANY HELP MUCH APPRECIATED, AND ALSO HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

[Chugalug_]

You're running 64 bit windows 10 pro with an extremely underpowered system with only 4GB of RAM, you could have gone 32 bit and had the same performance.
It's most likely the fact that you only have 4GB of RAM that's causing performance issues.
The SSD is not very high quality, so that could be to blame, have you tried installing onto the HDD in the meantime?

 

[dudmont]

Your ssd is also too small to effectively run win7 64, I wouldn't recommend anything smaller than a 120 for it. Once you get it updated and all drivers installed, it won't have room for a pagefile(or anything else for that matter, and you may not have enough space as it is, just for updated win7 64). Speaking of the pagefile, you would be wise to take full control of it and set custom settings.
If you can afford it, buy a 120gb ssd, put Windows on that and double your ram to 8gb. Those 2 things will solve many of your issues.
That ssd drive you have now could be used as a pagefile drive, once you get windows on a drive of adequate size for it's full install and update.

 

[monkey4sale]

You're running 64 bit windows 10 pro with an extremely underpowered system with only 4GB of RAM, you could have gone 32 bit and had the same performance.
It's most likely the fact that you only have 4GB of RAM that's causing performance issues.
The SSD is not very high quality, so that could be to blame, have you tried installing onto the HDD in the meantime?

Extremely underpowered system? That depends on what the machine is for....for a media PC ...I would say that it is more than enough capable of watching Netflix/youtube/streaming and surfing the web/checking email/ word processing etc etc. I am running windows 7 pro, not windows 10 pro, not that this would make much of a difference in terms of demand for Ram... The RAM is DDR3, 1866 Mhz... The requirements for running windows 7 professional 64 bit are in the link

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/10737/windows-7-system-requirements

IMO there is no need for any more RAM/any faster RAM in this system as it will not benefit the system nor me. The 4GB is ample IMO....

The SSD is not the issue either, okay it is not of Samsung quality, but I had the sense to run health checks on it and also checked the read/writes with crystal diskmark and they are actually fine read and write speeds. It may also be useful to know that the OS boots from cold in 8 seconds.....

You are correct in the sense that I could be running a 32bit OS and achieve the similar overall performance, but.....where does that leave me if I want to upgrade the system..? .it will be capped at 4Gb Ram using the 32 bit OS. I will add more RAM if I decide to do some light gaming /video editing etc....but this would also mean upgrading the CPU realistically... this CPU (or APU) is dual core and although it operates at decent core frequency, it is not ideal for gaming....

I haven't installed onto the HDD as I haven't one installed ....yet

The issue was with a SATA driver that did not install/was not installed properly.....which is v strange... and all I did to rectify the issue was switch the SSD to a different sata port on the mob, restart PC , then windows automatically installed a sata driver( the OS did not do this the previous 15 times I restarted the PC) .....and everything became peachy.. very very strange ...if it was a driver issue...than how did I even get to install the OS on the drive in the 1st place? The system is now very responsive and healthy and fully updated and I am pleased with the 150 GBP I have spent


Thanks very much for your reply my friend.

:

 

[monkey4sale]

Your ssd is also too small to effectively run win7 64, I wouldn't recommend anything smaller than a 120 for it. Once you get it updated and all drivers installed, it won't have room for a pagefile(or anything else for that matter, and you may not have enough space as it is, just for updated win7 64). Speaking of the pagefile, you would be wise to take full control of it and set custom settings.
If you can afford it, buy a 120gb ssd, put Windows on that and double your ram to 8gb. Those 2 things will solve many of your issues.
That ssd drive you have now could be used as a pagefile drive, once you get windows on a drive of adequate size for it's full install and update.

Hi there, a 60 Gb SSD is more than enough to hold a fully updated Windows 7 Pro x64 and various other programs that one might chose to use on a media PC... I speak here from experience and not opinion...... (and I will let you know how much space left on SSD when I am done updating windows) . MS recommends at LEAST 20Gb of storage to install this OS...I think I am ok with 60Gb... I do agree with you , 120Gb is the sweet spot for an SSD boot drive as it leaves you with a whole tonne of space on your C: , that is if you don't want to install scores of programs! ...But it is Xmas and I was on a tighter than ever budget

The issue was with a SATA driver that did not install/was not installed properly.....which is v strange... and all I did to rectify the issue was switch the SSD to a different sata port on the mob, restart PC , then windows automatically installed a sata driver( the OS did not do this the previous 15 times I restarted the PC) .....and everything became peachy.. very very strange ...if it was a driver issue...than how did I even get to install the OS on the drive in the 1st place? The system is now very responsive and healthy and fully updated and I am pleased with the 150 GBP I have spent

 

[dudmont]

sounds like your mobo has an asmedia SATA controller on it, or some 3rd party controller that adds sata ports, besides the native ones. my previous 256 samsung 840pro, win 7 pro took over 80gb by itself(when it was fully updated, about a year ago), when I went to clone the drive to my new ssd(clone job failed, and I ended up starting over with win10 pro, but that's neither here nor there).

 

[g-unit1111]

Out of curiosity, where was this OS license acquired from? After going over the thread it sounds like more of a software problem than a hardware problem.