Question Windows defender has slowed down my computer even after disabling?

[clinkchristian]

So, I've had windows defender disabled for a while now, because I never used it and I've always used other antiviruses , but I recently enabled Windows Defender so I could do a full scan and see if there was anything that would show. (I primarily use MalwareBytes but I wanted to test windows defender for myself). So then I tried to do a scan, but it got stuck at 85%, then I restarted my computer and it booted up extremely slow. All my desktop icons / taskbar icons wouldn't load. My startup programs were loading up extremely slow, and It took about 8 minutes for my PC to fully boot up (I use a Solid State Drive, so this usually takes around 30 seconds.). You can see my benchmarks from Samsung Magician down below;

Since then, I've tried to disable windows defender but my computer is running so slowly that I cannot restart it, when I attempt to restart it just gets stuck and I'm forced to hold the power button to shut it down. (I've never waited longer than 10m)

Computer Specs
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz (8 CPUs), ~4.0GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
Memory: 16GB RAM
SSD: Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB


SSD Benchmarks

Before

After

 

[mdd1963]

A co-incidental glitch , perhaps unrelated to Defender at all, might have occurred with your OS and/ or file system ; Defender is certainly not known for being any sort of resource hog during a scan...

The only way any sort of 5,000 MB/sec scores (barring X570 and new PCI-e 4.0 spec NVME drives, anyway) would be achieved with a SATA drive would be for RAM caching to be enabled, perhaps that was disabled before the second benchmark... (normally, the better SATA drives get 540-550 MB/sec sequenetial reads on CrystalDiskMark or similar drive scoring software...

Comparing scores with RAM caching enabled accomplishes little, as does not use the drive at all when the data in question fits in RAM....

(Have you perhaps previously enabled Rapid Mode in Samsung Magician prior to getting the otherwise-impossible 5000 MB/sec reads?)

 

[clinkchristian]

A co-incidental glitch , perhaps unrelated to Defender at all, might have occurred with your OS and/ or file system ; Defender is certainly not known for being any sort of resource hog during a scan...

The only way any sort of 5,000 MB/sec scores (barring X570 and new PCI-e 4.0 spec NVME drives, anyway) would be achieved with a SATA drive would be for RAM caching to be enabled, perhaps that was disabled before the second benchmark... (normally, the better SATA drives get 540-550 MB/sec sequenetial reads on CrystalDiskMark or similar drive scoring software...

Comparing scores with RAM caching enabled accomplishes little, as does not use the drive at all when the data in question fits in RAM....

I've never manually toggled "Ram caching". Could this have been automatically toggled due to a Windows Update?

Also if it doesn't have anything to do with defender, do you know any solution?

 

[clinkchristian]

A co-incidental glitch , perhaps unrelated to Defender at all, might have occurred with your OS and/ or file system ; Defender is certainly not known for being any sort of resource hog during a scan...

The only way any sort of 5,000 MB/sec scores (barring X570 and new PCI-e 4.0 spec NVME drives, anyway) would be achieved with a SATA drive would be for RAM caching to be enabled, perhaps that was disabled before the second benchmark... (normally, the better SATA drives get 540-550 MB/sec sequenetial reads on CrystalDiskMark or similar drive scoring software...

Comparing scores with RAM caching enabled accomplishes little, as does not use the drive at all when the data in question fits in RAM....

(Have you perhaps previously enabled Rapid Mode in Samsung Magician prior to getting the otherwise-impossible 5000 MB/sec reads?)

Just read your update, and this is actually true. I just realized that I did disable Rapid Mode a few months ago due to my ram usage being high, initially after disabling rapid mode my computer got much faster . I wasn't aware that was related to "Ram Caching" until now.

But yet this only started happening after the Windows Defender scan, so I'm not sure how that would make my computer this much slower.

 

[mdd1963]

again, perhaps something happened coincidental with a Defender scan, but, I'd not blame the scan itself as hosing the file system, short of it removing something infected, anyway...

Do you have a restore point saved from before the issues popped up, say, from a week or two ago...?

Or a backup image from last month?

 

[mdd1963]

Might have just been a Windows update or drive update gone bad....?

Perhaps you can remove last batch of updates, and redownload/reapply them? (Restore point from earlier would effectively do the same thing..)

 

[mdd1963]

several minutes to boot with an SSD is ridiculous....(assuming you've tried swapping SATA data cables, and SATA ports on mainboard, even different SATA power cable source, just to eliminate the obvious)

I'd consider a 'nuke and pave' (delete partitions/full reinstall) to see if normal functioning is restored...if just a glitch, that should rectify it..barring some sort of actual SSD failure...(rare, but,...they happen)

 

[clinkchristian]

several minutes to boot with an SSD is ridiculous....(assuming you've tried swapping SATA data cables, and SATA ports on mainboard, even different SATA power cable source, just to eliminate the obvious)

I'd consider a 'nuke and pave' (delete partitions/full reinstall) to see if normal functioning is restored...if just a glitch, that should rectify it..barring some sort of actual SSD failure...(rare, but,...they happen)

Thanks for the advice, I'll give everything a try by tomorrow and post feedback.

 

[clinkchristian]

several minutes to boot with an SSD is ridiculous....(assuming you've tried swapping SATA data cables, and SATA ports on mainboard, even different SATA power cable source, just to eliminate the obvious)

I'd consider a 'nuke and pave' (delete partitions/full reinstall) to see if normal functioning is restored...if just a glitch, that should rectify it..barring some sort of actual SSD failure...(rare, but,...they happen)

Okay, so I have found a temporary fix to my problem. Right now I have my other drive (My HDD) completely unplugged from my computer.

For some reason my computer wasn't boosting from my SSD, even when I switch sata cables nothing would change, so I just unplugged the HDD and boom, my PC is back to normal I just don't have my HDD for my secondary storage.

 

[mdd1963]

not sure what you mean by 'boosting from my SSD'...

I just assumed the OS was installed on the SSD.

Did you originally have the OS on the spinning drive?

Did you clone the OS to the SSD?

If so, did you then set the BIOS boot options to boot from the SSD?

(You can certainly cause confusion if you cloned the HDD to the SSD, then leave both connected, and, yet still boot from the hard drive....; if the SSD now functions great without the other drive, and there is nothing you need from it. adjust your BIOS boot options to boot from the SSD, and format the other drive from within