[SOLVED] Speeding things up

[enfield250]

Hello!
My pc seems very slow at doing things, for example, I have a printer connected via wifi it takes an age for a document to actually start printing.
Quite often if printing from Win10 mail, it will not print at all.
I have Adobe Elements and again if I try and open it, it takes a long time to open.
I purchased the pc new in November 2018 and it was quite fast, but recently it has got slower and slower.
I have tried disk clean-up, Ashampoo Win optimiser18, CCleaner etc. nothing seems to improve it.
The pc is regularly updated.
In the Windows User folder, I appear to have two users, one of the users doesn't appear to have been used since April 2020, whereas the other is up to date.
Any ideas would be helpful, please?
The system is:
Win10 Home Ver:20H2
AMD Ryzen 3 2200G CPU.
Gigabyte A320M-S2H motherboard.
8Gb of Crucial Ram
Radeon RX460 graphics card.
Disk 1 ST1000DM010-2EP102 SATA 3
Disk 2 TOSHIBA HDWD120 SATA 3

 

[Colif]

try running the tests here on seagate hdd - https://www.seagate.com/au/en/support/downloads/seatools/seatools-win-master/
depending on model toshiba, there might be a tools for it, not sure if they have any actually - https://www.toshiba-storage.com/downloads/

how much free space on the drives?
try doing a defrag on them as well. might help

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ashampoo Win optimiser18, CCleaner etc.

That's probably at least PART of the problem, because those types of programs OFTEN create more problems than they ever correct, especially if you don't know EXACTLY what you are doing with them. And, if you DO know, then you generally wouldn't need them to begin with. So that's one thought, because I've seen a lot of systems get borked up by "optimizer" programs like that. The usual response is, "Well, if they were that bad they wouldn't be allowed to continue offering them", to which almost any veteran technician or enthusiast would reply "Yeah, right". You'd think so, but unfortunately, it's not true.

The biggest problem though is that you really need to move on from those old, slow, mechanical hard drives, and get yourself an SSD to put the operating system on, then use the HDDs for secondary storage and backup duties.

The addition of a solid state drive is generally about the single biggest upgrade in terms of overall performance a person can do if they are still running a spinning drive. And once you get one it would probably be a very good idea to then do a clean install as I'm quite sure CCleaner and Win optimizer have already done irreparable damage to the registry or file system, and as Colif has pointed towards it's also possible you may have a failing HDD anyhow. So testing using Seatools for Windows is a good idea.

I'd run the short drive self test (DST) and long generic (Extended) tests. On both drives, one at a time. Be sure you've backed up anything important before you begin testing just in case there is a problem with a drive failing.

 

[enfield250]

Colif & darkbreeze,
I have now removed Ashampoo Winopotimiser etc. and run the Seatools tests all ok.
I have run SFC/ scannow which found and repaired some files.
As for the space on the C: drive. The partition is 430Gb of which it shows 191Gb free.
The C: drive was defragged yesterday.
However, when I look at the sizes of the folders, there is 130Gb unaccounted for.
The big folders are AMD 16Gb, Program Files 10.2Gb, Program files (x86) 40.2Gb, Program Data 6.57Gb, Windows 19.4Gb & Users 294Mb.
The other files are mostly empty or no more than Mb.
I'm not really bothered about massive speed as it's mainly used for videos and secretarial work.
Cheers,

 

[Darkbreeze]

Hello!
My pc seems very slow at doing things,

I'm not really bothered about massive speed as it's mainly used for videos and secretarial work.
Cheers,

????

So what was the point of this thread then?

 

[Colif]

However, when I look at the sizes of the folders, there is 130Gb unaccounted for.
The big folders are AMD 16Gb, Program Files 10.2Gb, Program files (x86) 40.2Gb, Program Data 6.57Gb, Windows 19.4Gb & Users 294Mb.

try running this and see if it shows the difference = https://windirstat.net/

 

[enfield250]

Colif,
Thanks for the answer, I have found the lost data.
Although the properties of users only showed 294MB, is actually 120GB.
The 120GB is split mainly between user1 & user2 and it is cached data.
User1 is cached music, and user2 cached video, I take it I can delete the caches without a problem?
I still don't understand why I have two users when there is only one user account configured.
Probably best to format the C drive and load a fresh copy of Win10, or could I merge the two users or just delete user1.
Cheers,

 

[enfield250]

????

So what was the point of this thread then?

The point of the post is restoring the pc to it's as new speed, which would be fast enough for my use.

 

[Colif]

Colif,
Thanks for the answer, I have found the lost data.
Although the properties of users only showed 294MB, is actually 120GB.
The 120GB is split mainly between user1 & user2 and it is cached data.
User1 is cached music, and user2 cached video, I take it I can delete the caches without a problem?
I still don't understand why I have two users when there is only one user account configured.
Probably best to format the C drive and load a fresh copy of Win10, or could I merge the two users or just delete user1.
Cheers,

I don't think you can merge users. I can see all kinds of problems with just trying, I can see windows getting it wrong in so many ways

I don't know why you would have two users if its only ever been you using PC.
you could do a full reset, it will wipe all the users off PC without recreating partitions and truly wiping everything. Up to you, clean installs don't take long either. Or don't on ssd anyway... hdd slows it down a little.

you might be able to delete the caches. try running disk cleanup and get it to wipe temp files. It might only do current user though.