Sluggish window startup and startup of applications

[CheistiaN49]

Hello,
So I have been having this problem for the longest time where everytime my computer starts up, it takes around 1 minute and 30 seconds to fully boot. While this is a portion of the problem, it continues. When windows has loaded, the enter password pops up, and sometimes just being able to click on the screen to type in the password can take ages. Furthermore, typing the password is laggy and is followed by the sluggish loading of icons on my desktop. Simple applications such as Google or steam takes extensive times to fully load which proceeds with games even more painfully. I have gone through several upgrades such as a CPU, Mobo, graphics card, and even more hard drive space, yet the problem persists. If anyone can offer ideas on whether ram upgrade or an SSD would solve this? Thanks
Specs: i5-4690k OC to 4.5 GHz, 12 GB of DDR 3 ram (2 uneven ram sticks from old HP), GTX 1060 6gb, 1 TB blue hard drive and 2 TB Seagate hard drive, Mobo is a z97 asrock fatality.

 

[dudio]

Temperatures?
Have you ran anti-malware? (MalwareBytes)

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

An SSD plus a fresh install of Windows on it (instead of cloning) would definitely speed it up in those two areas you mentioned. Fresh install would also get rid of any malware, so you'd be killing two birds with one stone.

 

[photonboy]

This is NOT a solution that an SSD would fix unless it's a bad HDD. (though an SSD is a good idea; and of course it would "fix" the problem if the software was the issue and you did a clean install of Windows)

It's probably a software issue, though there are ways hardware can cause unresponsiveness too (sometimes the main HDD/SSD can be failing).

1. Run MEMTEST86 for a full pass www.memtest86.com

2. W10-> do an In-Place W10 Upgrade
a) download latest W10 media creation tool https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/software-download/windows10
b) insert 8GB+ USB stick
c) run tool and wait for download etc to finalize
d) run "setup.exe" from the tool, and follow instructions

3) If that fails, it's a good time to get an SSD then:
a) unhook all HDD's with PC off (just pull out the power and data cables from the rear of the drives)
b) add the SSD (i.e. Samsung 850 EVO 250GB)
c) boot to the W10 stick you already created above
d) install Windows 10
- **you will need the same e-mail and password used to login to W10 now to install W10 again (no need for the W10 key though. read the instructions during install but it will tell you to skip that. It will get added via the internet)
e) let MS Updates finish (left-click Start-> settings-> update and security... wait until done)
f) add ONLY essential drivers such as NVidia graphics driver
etc.

g) if working, shut down and unhook the SSD, boot to the HDD then carefully make a LIST of the programs to reinstall on the SSD, e-mail settings, transfer files etc

h) once satisfied, have all drives running, but boot to the SSD version of W10 (may need to change BIOS boot order)
i) then make a folder like (E:\STEAM) and CUT and PASTE over the "Steamapps" folder
j) in Steam (on the SSD) add the folder "E:\Steam" and the games should work

k) Most SAVE GAMES are in the Documents or Documents/My Games directories somewhere. You should copy the ENTIRE FOLDER somewhere then add the save games back on a per-game basis (it's not hard to figure out how if you Google).

As long as you don't DELETE the Steamapps folder you won't need to redownload the games again.

I probably missed something.

 

[photonboy]

*Please confirm if you have done any of the following:

1) reinstalled Windows
2) used a different BOOT drive

(I didn't understand what "even more hard disk space" meant either.)

If you reinstalled Windows then it's almost certainly a hardware issue, possibly the HDD (not necessarily the boot drive either).

OTHER:
If you know how to create a Linux distro you can also do that and boot to a USB stick to see if Linux feels responsive. If so that implies a Windows software issue (or bad HDD).

Linux Mint or Ubuntu 64-bit is probably a good choice to try.
https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop (use v16)

how: https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial/tutorial-create-a-usb-stick-on-windows?_ga=2.80253271.1511987316.1508827115-915908474.1508827115#0

(I think I just used an 8GB+ USB stick with RUFUS)

BTW, I used HDD LLF Tool from HDDGURU (free version on start) to do a low level format on USB sticks since they often fail to format later until I do so. not sure why Linux distros and other boot methods do that.