Laptops that are unusable till windows updates are done downloading and installed

[SlickMinnow]

Hey there @River Valley Computer

For what it's worth, most threads got MUCH easier for me to read and stomach when I discovered that you could click on a given user's avatar/pic and click on the IGNORE button. Fair warning though, if you peruse a thread without being logged in you'll be subjected to the full pontification of all thread participants. Have an awesome day!

 

[Galdorf]

Have you looked at the percentage utilization of the C drive when this is happening? I know you mentioned the CPU and memory usage. I've noticed that when Windows on a spinning drive feels like I'm driving a car with the parking brake on, I'll look at the disk usage and it's at 100%.

yes drive was pinned at 100 and only this weeks updates were installing i see this alot on i5 laptops and below windows over time seems to degrade where say linux a install i started 6 years ago and has updated to newest version still runs like new.

I have moved half my personal pc`s to linux only keep my gaming pc with windows due to compatibility.

 

[timeshifter]

yes drive was pinned at 100

!

 

[cypress]

Yeah, I have seen similar issues on spinning drives with usage trickling around 100% and being bogged down when running Windows updates. Eventually, it seems to calm down, but upgrading to SSD goes a long way.

 

[sapphirescales]

The drive usage 100% issue has been around since Windows 10 build 1507 as far as I can tell and Microsoft just doesn't seem to give a crap. Like everything else that users actually need and could use, Microsoft ignores these things and instead works on BS like inking in Edge and Cortana crap that literally NO ONE asked for or needs! It's infuriating. Windows 7 was such a breath of fresh air back in the day. Back then Microsoft actually gave a crap about making a good operating system. Remember little improvements like being able to transfer files without having to sit there watching it in case ONE file threw an error and froze up the entire process? Microsoft decided to notify users of any problems/conflicts AFTER the rest of the files had finished transferring! Or how about their redesigned Paint/Wordpad?

It's been so freaking long that I've forgotten the other improvements they actually made to WINDOWS itself because those things have just become normal now, but Microsoft hasn't worked to actually improve Windows itself in over 10 years. All they care about now is trying to trick people into subscription BS. Their insistence on moving past win32 and using "apps" is killing Windows. Even their Settings "app" is buggy and broken and has been since day 1. The whole thing needs to be scrapped. Windows 7 style programs and their OS interface NEVER just opened up and displayed nothing like their app interfaces do. I'm SO glad they didn't just make File Explorer an "app" on Windows 11 because it would be as buggy as everything else.

 

[Galdorf]

The drive usage 100% issue has been around since Windows 10 build 1507 as far as I can tell and Microsoft just doesn't seem to give a crap. Like everything else that users actually need and could use, Microsoft ignores these things and instead works on BS like inking in Edge and Cortana crap that literally NO ONE asked for or needs! It's infuriating. Windows 7 was such a breath of fresh air back in the day. Back then Microsoft actually gave a crap about making a good operating system. Remember little improvements like being able to transfer files without having to sit there watching it in case ONE file threw an error and froze up the entire process? Microsoft decided to notify users of any problems/conflicts AFTER the rest of the files had finished transferring! Or how about their redesigned Paint/Wordpad?

It's been so freaking long that I've forgotten the other improvements they actually made to WINDOWS itself because those things have just become normal now, but Microsoft hasn't worked to actually improve Windows itself in over 10 years. All they care about now is trying to trick people into subscription BS. Their insistence on moving past win32 and using "apps" is killing Windows. Even their Settings "app" is buggy and broken and has been since day 1. The whole thing needs to be scrapped. Windows 7 style programs and their OS interface NEVER just opened up and displayed nothing like their app interfaces do. I'm SO glad they didn't just make File Explorer an "app" on Windows 11 because it would be as buggy as everything else.

I herd microsoft was thinking of charging a monthly fee to use windows 365 cloud https://www.zdnet.com/article/micro...ce-tag-of-one-of-the-coming-windows-365-skus/ .

 

[alexsmith2709]

spinning drives have had this symptom for a number of years. i've had quite a few computers with this problem. Installing an SSD, even if its a clone of the original install always fixes the issue so i explain it to a customer in very simple terms that Microsoft doesnt design Windows 10 for spinning drives and without upgrading to an SSD, you will be stuck with this issue.

 

[Philippe]

I have seen this behavior on some laptops I've worked on as well, FWIW.

Same over here

As soon as updates are done installing the laptops are usable again

This is why I don't care much. I just manually search for updates & let the computer work... for a few hours.

 

[britechguy]

This is why I don't care much.

Same here. I've had plenty of occasions, not just updates, where disk usage pegs at 100% on HDDs. I don't even consider that to be abnormal unless it persists when "nothing is going on." Usage spikes, be they CPU, Disk, etc., are all a part of "how things work."

 

[Sky-Knight]

When I see this symptom I head to into the power profile. Because sometimes the max CPU setting gets set to something stupid like 15%.

But otherwise, if you're using a platter... expect it to be slow. Those deltas coming out every month aren't easy to do.

 

[Galdorf]

winsys can go overboard sometimes and prefetch tons of data on a platter drive that can pin it at 100 for hours that is why i disable it.
Also telemetry sometimes can cause huge spikes i also disable that.

 

[GTP]

I also turn off/disable all unneded services (depending on the role the PC is playing) following Black Vipers guides.
It does help to claw back resources.
Also using BlackBird and other programs like it are great too.
My own systems (and some clients who want it) use NTLite builds with much of the BS removed.

 

[NviGate Systems]

I also want to add a little "mention" that in the case of spinning disks, what type of spinning disk is also relevant.

Lately many vendors have "slipped" SMR drives into standard desktop/laptop drives. SMR drives are more likely to suffer from lockups, freezes and pegged performance due to the fact they operate like a SSD in how data is written, but are Physically a spinning disk.

As files start overlapping in the filesystem (basic fragments) the drive will even in idle, start to reshuffle files which involves reading and writing. Because SMR drives have overlapping sectors, any area that will be written to has to be read, written to another area then the original area erased and written to. The fuller a drive gets the worse it gets. Asus and Lenovo both have been using Seagate drives with SMR. I'm sure many others do too.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Serious question: Why would this matter?

I realize that a conventional HDD would result in slower updating than an SSD, but what's being described is not, in my quite extensive experience with Windows 10 and HDDs, in any way characteristic. It's just too extreme unless the HDD were to be failing, and it's unlikely that would not be noticed in normal use.

HUGE matter for us. I will not support spinners with Windows 10 with our MSP contracts..I don't want to eat that much time.

In our experience....spinning/platter drive may take half a day to shove in one of the larger updates. Solid state...be done in 45 or 30 or 20 minutes. Aside from "spinner"...is it 7,200rpm or an excruciatingly slow 5,400rpm drive which would take all day and part of the next morning!

 

[britechguy]

In our experience....spinning/platter drive may take half a day to shove in one of the larger updates.

Indeed they may. That has nothing to do with the original complaint, and the follow-ups to which I was responding. To refresh:

"Lately i have been getting alot of laptops in because they are slow i have noticed every time Microsoft pushes updates and they start downloading the performance on laptops drop to almost unusable till it is done these laptops are 8 gen i5 with 8gb ram cpu is at 1% memory 30% not much running in background blutooth app+intel graphics control panel."

I don't care whether a given machine has an HDD or an SSD, this is NOT normal behavior. Updates during download should not ever drop the performance of a machine to "almost unusable" under any typical circumstance.

Of course it can take longer, sometimes much longer, for a large update to install. But that's not the presenting issue.

 

[SlickMinnow]

I also want to add a little "mention" that in the case of spinning disks, what type of spinning disk is also relevant.

Lately many vendors have "slipped" SMR drives into standard desktop/laptop drives. SMR drives are more likely to suffer from lockups, freezes and pegged performance due to the fact they operate like a SSD in how data is written, but are Physically a spinning disk.

As files start overlapping in the filesystem (basic fragments) the drive will even in idle, start to reshuffle files which involves reading and writing. Because SMR drives have overlapping sectors, any area that will be written to has to be read, written to another area then the original area erased and written to. The fuller a drive gets the worse it gets. Asus and Lenovo both have been using Seagate drives with SMR. I'm sure many others do too.

Just did a quick search on SMR drives and Holy Batfeathers - a whole bunch of things I've been seeing over the past year or so make much more sense! This kind of post right here is why I still lurk here. I've learned something of great value to me and my clients. Thank you @NviGate Systems !

 

[alexsmith2709]

Indeed they may. That has nothing to do with the original complaint, and the follow-ups to which I was responding. To refresh:

"Lately i have been getting alot of laptops in because they are slow i have noticed every time Microsoft pushes updates and they start downloading the performance on laptops drop to almost unusable till it is done these laptops are 8 gen i5 with 8gb ram cpu is at 1% memory 30% not much running in background blutooth app+intel graphics control panel."

I don't care whether a given machine has an HDD or an SSD, this is NOT normal behavior. Updates during download should not ever drop the performance of a machine to "almost unusable" under any typical circumstance.

Of course it can take longer, sometimes much longer, for a large update to install. But that's not the presenting issue.

Whether its HDD or SSD does matter in this case, as i and many others have reported in this thread. Devices with a platter drive do have these symptoms, where SSD do not. If the OP stated in was an SSD we would know to advise on other possible causes, if its a platter dirve that is the most likely cause.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Whether its HDD or SSD does matter in this case, as i and many others have reported in this thread. Devices with a platter drive do have these symptoms, where SSD do not. If the OP stated in was an SSD we would know to advise on other possible causes, if its a platter dirve that is the most likely cause.

To further illustrate......simply clone the spinner to an SSD...insert the SSD...and now it completes the update just fine....and runs like a champ. Shortens your time spent working on it by quite a few hours, which more than covers the time spent to clone, and the price of the SSD, and client gets back a nicely running rig.

I will not spend bench time on a spinner. If the computer is new enough, with a decent CPU and RAM, it'll get cloned, handed back to client running much better.