On 12/23/2023 9:14 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
>
> All in all, IMO not bad for a nearly ten year old laptop with -
> relatively - small RAM and a HDD.
>
> [1] We don't turn off our laptops. No need to. We let them sleep or, if
> that takes too much (battery) power, we hibernate them, much faster
> 'restart'/wakeup.

I recently posted about a Toshiba P755 series laptop I had to do some
work on and with some help here got it running very nicely. I've not
been willing to put it to sleep overnight, and I'll give my reason and
see if anyone agrees.

The original battery was total junk after years of use and probably
being plugged in too much. This laptop is probably 12-13 years old. I
am on the second battery which will hold about an hours worth of use
before needing to be plugged in. Yes, it certainly takes more time to
use the machine if I have to shut down completely and then restart after
each use. Short term, I am willing to put it to sleep. But overnight
is another story because I am worried about the older battery suffering
catastrophic damage and failure while I am sleeping. You read stories
of these older batteries exploding and causing fires among other things.
It's not one of those soft batteries you see that get all bloated, and
is in a case. But who knows what's inside the plastic case. I just
don't want it to blow up if I'm not there. You also have the
overcharging problem which will kill the battery off early.

I have thought about the possibility of just removing the battery if I
was using it more. It will run without the battery as long as it is
plugged in, and you don't make a mistake unplugging it and possibly
corrupting files. Anyone know if there is a downside to just removing
the battery and putting it to sleep?

--
Stand With Israel!
NOTE: If you use Google Groups I don't see you,
unless you're whitelisted and that's doubtful.

sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote:
> On 12/23/2023 9:14 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
> >
> > All in all, IMO not bad for a nearly ten year old laptop with -
> > relatively - small RAM and a HDD.
> >
> > [1] We don't turn off our laptops. No need to. We let them sleep or, if
> > that takes too much (battery) power, we hibernate them, much faster
> > 'restart'/wakeup.
>
> I recently posted about a Toshiba P755 series laptop I had to do some
> work on and with some help here got it running very nicely. I've not
> been willing to put it to sleep overnight, and I'll give my reason and
> see if anyone agrees.
>
> The original battery was total junk after years of use and probably
> being plugged in too much. This laptop is probably 12-13 years old. I
> am on the second battery which will hold about an hours worth of use
> before needing to be plugged in. Yes, it certainly takes more time to
> use the machine if I have to shut down completely and then restart after
> each use. Short term, I am willing to put it to sleep. But overnight
> is another story because I am worried about the older battery suffering
> catastrophic damage and failure while I am sleeping. You read stories
> of these older batteries exploding and causing fires among other things.
> It's not one of those soft batteries you see that get all bloated, and
> is in a case. But who knows what's inside the plastic case. I just
> don't want it to blow up if I'm not there. You also have the
> overcharging problem which will kill the battery off early.
>
> I have thought about the possibility of just removing the battery if I
> was using it more. It will run without the battery as long as it is
> plugged in, and you don't make a mistake unplugging it and possibly
> corrupting files. Anyone know if there is a downside to just removing
> the battery and putting it to sleep?

That's actually what we do with the mentioned laptop (my wife's). I
have removed the battery and it's constantly powered by the laptop's
AC/DC adapter. (I removed the battery for exactly the reason you
mention: Having it constantly on AC power ruins the battery. Been there,
done that, got the T-shirt [1]. And then there's the explosion/fire risk
you mention.)

When not in use, it's sleeping, either by itself by the timeout, or
manually.

When not in use for a long(er) time - holiday etc. - I hibernate it
and unplug the adapter from the mains.

As far a I know, there's no downside to using a laptop on AC power
without a battery. Any laptop should be able to work this way, without
any ill effects.

[1] Now my new laptop is on a switched AC timer. Also not great, because
of the 'needless' discharge/charge cycles - which also limit the
battery's lifetime -, but hopefully better than constantly on AC power.
Time will tell. (This one has a non-removable battery. :-()

Frank Slootweg wrote on 12/23/23 11:42 AM:
>
> That's actually what we do with the mentioned laptop (my wife's). I
> have removed the battery and it's constantly powered by the laptop's
> AC/DC adapter. (I removed the battery for exactly the reason you
> mention: Having it constantly on AC power ruins the battery. Been there,
> done that, got the T-shirt [1]. And then there's the explosion/fire risk
> you mention.)
>
> When not in use, it's sleeping, either by itself by the timeout, or
> manually.
>
> When not in use for a long(er) time - holiday etc. - I hibernate it
> and unplug the adapter from the mains.
>
> As far a I know, there's no downside to using a laptop on AC power
> without a battery. Any laptop should be able to work this way, without
> any ill effects.
>
> [1] Now my new laptop is on a switched AC timer. Also not great, because
> of the 'needless' discharge/charge cycles - which also limit the
> battery's lifetime -, but hopefully better than constantly on AC power.
> Time will tell. (This one has a non-removable battery. :-()
>

Just another viewpoint, not necessarily indicative of all laptop
devices(battery and ac adapter)

This 6 yr old Win10 Pro 256 GB SSD, 1 TB HDD 12 GB RAM, Acer i8 515G
as-shipped Oct. 2017 has for most of its entire life been running with
the Li battery intact(not removed) on AC power.
The battery, LG manufactured, is the as-shipped original. Not
removable(can be replaced with major disassembly and a ton of screws,
tap, other connectors).

The designed capacity is 3023 mAh, it's full charge capacity after 6 yrs.
is 2720 mAh
- ~90% of the designed value.

Occasionally(a few times per year) the AC adapter is unplugged and
dscharges to 25-30% before recharging back to 100%. Some articles
indicate Li batteries should be charged to 85% instead of 100% - have
never done that.

This battery at 100% when disconnected to AC provides about just shy of
than 6 hours of battery life(per Win11 Battery Saver app) for my normal
device usage, though never let it reach the warning capacity. Right now,
on battery power for the aprox. the last 1/2 hour it shows about ~5.25
hours at 83%.

--
....w¡ñ§±¤ñ

On 12/23/2023 2:43 PM, ...w¡ñ§±¤ñ wrote:
> Frank Slootweg wrote on 12/23/23 11:42 AM:
>>
>>    That's actually what we do with the mentioned laptop (my wife's). I
>> have removed the battery and it's constantly powered by the laptop's
>> AC/DC adapter. (I removed the battery for exactly the reason you
>> mention: Having it constantly on AC power ruins the battery. Been there,
>> done that, got the T-shirt [1]. And then there's the explosion/fire risk
>> you mention.)
>>
>>    When not in use, it's sleeping, either by itself by the timeout, or
>> manually.
>>
>>    When not in use for a long(er) time - holiday etc. - I hibernate it
>> and unplug the adapter from the mains.
>>
>>    As far a I know, there's no downside to using a laptop on AC power
>> without a battery. Any laptop should be able to work this way, without
>> any ill effects.
>>
>> [1] Now my new laptop is on a switched AC timer. Also not great, because
>> of the 'needless' discharge/charge cycles - which also limit the
>> battery's lifetime -, but hopefully better than constantly on AC power.
>> Time will tell. (This one has a non-removable battery. :-()
>>
>
> Just another viewpoint, not necessarily indicative of all laptop
> devices(battery and ac adapter)
>
> This 6 yr old Win10 Pro 256 GB SSD, 1 TB HDD 12 GB RAM, Amer i8 515G
> as-shipped Oct. 2017 has for most of its entire life been running with
> the Li battery intact(not removed) on AC power.
> The battery, LG manufactured, is the as-shipped original. Not
> removable(can be replaced with major disassembly and a ton of screws,
> tap, other connectors).
>
> The designed capacity is 3023 mAh, it's full charge capacity after 6
> yrs. is 2720 mAh
>  - ~90% of the designed value.
>
> Occasionally(a few times per year) the AC adapter is unplugged and
> dscharges to 25-30% before recharging back to 100%. Some articles
> indicate Li batteries should be charged to 85% instead of 100% - have
> never done that.
>
> This battery at 100% when disconnected to AC provides about just shy of
> than 6 hours of battery life(per Win11 Battery Saver app) for my normal
> device usage, though never let it reach the warning capacity. Right now,
> on battery power for the aprox. the last 1/2 hour it shows about ~5.25
> hours at 83%.

A quick search on this Acer i8 515G of yours says it does not hurt this
models battery to leave it plugged in as it stops charging the battery
when it reaches 100% and runs directly on AC power. I don't think my
Toshiba does that, but I'm interested now and will have to check.

Still don't like the idea of leaving the battery in, but if it isn't
charging, I might change that view.

--
Stand With Israel!
NOTE: If you use Google Groups I don't see you,
unless you're whitelisted and that's doubtful.

sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote:
[...]

[About Winston's laptop:]

> A quick search on this Acer i8 515G of yours says it does not hurt this
> models battery to leave it plugged in as it stops charging the battery
> when it reaches 100% and runs directly on AC power. I don't think my
> Toshiba does that, but I'm interested now and will have to check.

Any decent adapter/laptop combination should 'stop' (go to trickle
charging) at 100%. But 'sitting' constantly at 100% limits the lifetime
of the battery. See also Paul's detailed response on this issue.

> Still don't like the idea of leaving the battery in, but if it isn't
> charging, I might change that view.

'Sitting' at 100% should not be risky for a good battery, but as your
battery is 'bad', I would just take it out and use the laptop on AC
power as I described.

If you want to keep the battery, you probably should top it up to some
80% (see Paul's response as to why) every few months or so (if it keeps
its charge that 'long'). That's what I do with our old batteries.

Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote in
news:kunnq6Fapu3U1@mid.individual.net:

> Paul wrote:
>
>> My line wrap is set at a high number. It's not 72 columns. The wider
>> you make your screen, the wider this line will become.
>
> Not true as received here, the line break occurs after "you" when
> there is more than enough width remaining on my screen for the
> following line to be shown to the right.
>
>> I'll put angle-brackets around it, but I doubt this will help. The
>> period on the end of that link IS PART OF THE LINK. Talk about
>> corny affectations at Dell.
>>
>> <https://www.dell.com/community/assets/community/687062f5-603c-4f5f-ab
>> 9d-31aa7cacb376/DellTechHubmakesDellcomputerta-521ae740-5420-41ea-8f78
>> -73c2d158f771-1427808586.>
>
> With or without the angle-brackets, that URL doesn't wrap here.
>
>
>

If I copy and paste all (including the period) but the brackets, it works
for me.

VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote in news:6th37y2a6sau$.dlg@v.nguard.lh:

> Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 12/23/2023 2:02 AM, Boris wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> So the drive was a four year old POS when Dell put it in their 5559.
>>> As my kids would say, LOL.
>>>
>>> That link gives me an error, but I'm interested in what it has to
>>> say.
>>
>> My line wrap is set at a high number. It's not 72 columns. The wider
>> you make your screen, the wider this line will become.
>>
>> https://www.dell.com/community/assets/community/687062f5-603c-4f5f-ab9" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.dell.com/community/assets/community/687062f5-603c-4f5f-ab9
>> d-31aa7cacb376/DellTechHubmakesDellcomputerta-521ae740-5420-41ea-8f78-
>> 73c2d158f771-1427808586.
>>
>> I'll put angle-brackets around it, but I doubt this will help. The
>> period on the end of that link IS PART OF THE LINK. Talk about
>> corny affectations at Dell.
>>
>> <https://www.dell.com/community/assets/community/687062f5-603c-4f5f-ab
>> 9d-31aa7cacb376/DellTechHubmakesDellcomputerta-521ae740-5420-41ea-8f78
>> -73c2d158f771-1427808586.>
>>
>>>> The considered opinion here, is the drive is a dog, and an
>>>> SSD will provide relief from the agony.
>>>
>>> I love dogs.
>>
>> We'll see in January, whether there will be a Good Dog for you.
>>
>> And by the way, don't expect miracles. The OS presents a lot
>> of overhead, that cannot be justified. Anything Dell has added,
>> isn't helping matters. An SSD is not a miracle cure. It's a start
>> at improving things. Some of the Dell software should be removed
>> or disabled. msconfig would have made this easy, the new solution
>> isn't particularly pleasant or clever.
>>
>> Things I meddle with, when I'm muttering "hurry up, hurry up!".
>> These are typical during a Cumulative on Patch Tuesday.
>>
>> 1( Stop the sysmain service.
>> 2) Repeatedly kill the SearchIndexer.exe (it is set to restart
>> itself,
>> and will not stay non-running for long.
>> 3) Windows Defender, turn off Real Time Protection. WD can drop the
>> I/O rate on a W10/W11 device by a factor of ten.
>>
>> Paul
>
> His Dell 5559 is c.2015. His Seagate drive is c.2014. The story
> might parallel Old Yeller: time to put down Old Yeller, and move on
> with Young Yeller. Could be Old Yeller is acceptable at doing what
> Boris wants from it,

That is correct. I'm just trying to teach an old dog new tricks.

but I need to ask if the slowdown is a new
> problem, or noticed after using a much faster computer. That is, is
> it a new problem, or an old lingering problem? "For a while" doesn't
> say how long. As you use new and faster computers, the older slower
> ones seem even more slow. It's old, but not that bad for many end-user
> tasks.

I understand the question. Let me try to explain.

The machine was purchased in May, 2016, with Windows 10 Home. It ran
nicely for many years. I keep it updated. It's had typical Windows quirks
that could never be explained or solved, just like every machine I've had
since Windows 8. For instance, Spotlight worked for a few months, and then
stopped working. Ok. I still have the same background that I've had since
2017. The machine will not update itself during inactive hours. I have to
manually restart to apply updates. Ok. Some updates have rearranged my
desktop icons, and some have deleted them. Sort of ok. I live with these
things.

The first time I noticed a slow down was about a year ago. Loading the OS
and desktop icons/taskbar seemed a little slower, but Firefox took way too
long to load after starting the OS. Many times Firefox would launch but
the ribbon on top said "Firefox not responding". Task Manager showed disk
100% usage. It would take five minutes for the hard disk to settle down,
and Firefox would load to my homepage. I searched and tried many things to
solve disk 100% usage. Nothing worked.

I use this laptop only when away from home. Over the last year, it's
gotten much slower to load, launch, and settle down. Once settled down, it
still takes longer than it used to to launch a program. Once loaded, the
program generally runs fine.

>
> A $100 2.5" 2TB SSD to replace his 2TB HDD would give a performance
> boost, like during startup, shutdown, and when loading programs, but
> it would only improve disk performance. Whatever is causing the
> slowdown, especially if a recent problem, could easily migrate to his
> setup after switching to an SSD. His startup time would be reduced,
> but the slowdown may be other than disk based.

Understood.

Boris <Boris@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote in news:6th37y2a6sau$.dlg@v.nguard.lh:
>
>> Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On 12/23/2023 2:02 AM, Boris wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> So the drive was a four year old POS when Dell put it in their 5559.
>>>> As my kids would say, LOL.
>>>>
>>>> That link gives me an error, but I'm interested in what it has to
>>>> say.
>>>
>>> My line wrap is set at a high number. It's not 72 columns. The wider
>>> you make your screen, the wider this line will become.
>>>
>>> https://www.dell.com/community/assets/community/687062f5-603c-4f5f-ab9" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.dell.com/community/assets/community/687062f5-603c-4f5f-ab9
>>> d-31aa7cacb376/DellTechHubmakesDellcomputerta-521ae740-5420-41ea-8f78-
>>> 73c2d158f771-1427808586.
>>>
>>> I'll put angle-brackets around it, but I doubt this will help. The
>>> period on the end of that link IS PART OF THE LINK. Talk about
>>> corny affectations at Dell.
>>>
>>> <https://www.dell.com/community/assets/community/687062f5-603c-4f5f-ab
>>> 9d-31aa7cacb376/DellTechHubmakesDellcomputerta-521ae740-5420-41ea-8f78
>>> -73c2d158f771-1427808586.>
>>>
>>>>> The considered opinion here, is the drive is a dog, and an
>>>>> SSD will provide relief from the agony.
>>>>
>>>> I love dogs.
>>>
>>> We'll see in January, whether there will be a Good Dog for you.
>>>
>>> And by the way, don't expect miracles. The OS presents a lot
>>> of overhead, that cannot be justified. Anything Dell has added,
>>> isn't helping matters. An SSD is not a miracle cure. It's a start
>>> at improving things. Some of the Dell software should be removed
>>> or disabled. msconfig would have made this easy, the new solution
>>> isn't particularly pleasant or clever.
>>>
>>> Things I meddle with, when I'm muttering "hurry up, hurry up!".
>>> These are typical during a Cumulative on Patch Tuesday.
>>>
>>> 1( Stop the sysmain service.
>>> 2) Repeatedly kill the SearchIndexer.exe (it is set to restart
>>> itself,
>>> and will not stay non-running for long.
>>> 3) Windows Defender, turn off Real Time Protection. WD can drop the
>>> I/O rate on a W10/W11 device by a factor of ten.
>>>
>>> Paul
>>
>> His Dell 5559 is c.2015. His Seagate drive is c.2014. The story
>> might parallel Old Yeller: time to put down Old Yeller, and move on
>> with Young Yeller. Could be Old Yeller is acceptable at doing what
>> Boris wants from it,
>
> That is correct. I'm just trying to teach an old dog new tricks.
>
> but I need to ask if the slowdown is a new
>> problem, or noticed after using a much faster computer. That is, is
>> it a new problem, or an old lingering problem? "For a while" doesn't
>> say how long. As you use new and faster computers, the older slower
>> ones seem even more slow. It's old, but not that bad for many end-user
>> tasks.
>
> I understand the question. Let me try to explain.
>
> The machine was purchased in May, 2016, with Windows 10 Home. It ran
> nicely for many years. I keep it updated. It's had typical Windows quirks
> that could never be explained or solved, just like every machine I've had
> since Windows 8. For instance, Spotlight worked for a few months, and then
> stopped working. Ok. I still have the same background that I've had since
> 2017. The machine will not update itself during inactive hours. I have to
> manually restart to apply updates. Ok. Some updates have rearranged my
> desktop icons, and some have deleted them. Sort of ok. I live with these
> things.
>
> The first time I noticed a slow down was about a year ago. Loading the OS
> and desktop icons/taskbar seemed a little slower, but Firefox took way too
> long to load after starting the OS. Many times Firefox would launch but
> the ribbon on top said "Firefox not responding". Task Manager showed disk
> 100% usage. It would take five minutes for the hard disk to settle down,
> and Firefox would load to my homepage. I searched and tried many things to
> solve disk 100% usage. Nothing worked.
>
> I use this laptop only when away from home. Over the last year, it's
> gotten much slower to load, launch, and settle down. Once settled down, it
> still takes longer than it used to to launch a program. Once loaded, the
> program generally runs fine.
>
>>
>> A $100 2.5" 2TB SSD to replace his 2TB HDD would give a performance
>> boost, like during startup, shutdown, and when loading programs, but
>> it would only improve disk performance. Whatever is causing the
>> slowdown, especially if a recent problem, could easily migrate to his
>> setup after switching to an SSD. His startup time would be reduced,
>> but the slowdown may be other than disk based.
>
> Understood.

I've noticed Firefox can take a long time to load. I don't leave it
open, but exit when done with it, and later reload it. I will manually
enter a URL into a tab, Ctrl+T to open a new tab, enter a URL there, and
repeat for a total of 6 tabs. All of them use HTTPS. I will see the
TLS handshaking in the status bar. All the tabs hang until one of them
(likely the 1st one) completes its TLS handshaking whereupon all the
other tabs open almost immediately. Doesn't matter what are the HTTPS
sites; i.e., they could be different. Rather than use the bookmarks
manager, often I just start entering text for a site, and use auto-
completion (match on bookmarks). I'll be sitting there for way over 2
minutes before any of the tabs load until one them completes the TLS
handshaking. Seems Firefox stalls on TLS handshakes when the 1st one is
pending. If I use but leave FF loaded, close all tabs when done with
them except open one for about:blank, HTTPS sites thereafter open
immediately thereafter.

Once the stall ends, I can exit and reload FF within a few minutes after
the prior load, and the stall does not recur. It's after FF has not
been used for awhile, like 20 minutes, or more, when it then gets loaded
when the stall happens.

I've not seen high disk activity when FF is stalled on opening multiple
HTTPS sites. To me, looks like FF is stalling on TLS handshaking. I
have some add-ons. In uBlock Origin, it has an option to not load a
page until it has updated its blacklists. Disable that, but no help on
the TLS stall. Disabled all add-ons but no help, either. I've not yet
tried creating a new profile mostly because I'd lose all the security,
privacy, and behavior tweaks in about:config. However, there are times
when I load FF, and open multiple tabs, where there is no stall. So,
sometimes FF stalls, sometimes not. From trying to diagnose the
problem, I've concluded the fault is in FF, not the rest of my setup.
The stalling started sometime after updating from 115.

That I see the stall when the status bar shows TLS handshaking doesn't
mean TLS is the culprit. Could be whatever FF tries to perform after
the TLS handshake, but the status bar hasn't been updated yet. For some
products, status is shown after an action instead of when initiating it.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?order=Importance&short_desc=tls&product=Firefox&resolution=---&query_format=advanced&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&classification=Client%20Software

I did the above search on TLS in Firefox to see if there were known
issues. I haven't read them in depth to see if any apply to my setup.
I do have DoH (DNS over HTTPS) enabled, and am using Cloudflare, so I
might see what happens if I set to Off (which makes FF use the DNS
settings in the OS), but it will take a few days to ascertain if DoH in
FF is causing the first-load stalls.

So, other than Firefox, are you seeing stalls in loading or use of other
apps? Do those stalls always coincide with high disk activity when you
started those apps?

While you mentioned Windows Defender, and testing with it disabled,
unclear is if you have another anti-malware program installed. Is
Defender the *only* anti-malware program on your computer?

On 12/24/2023 5:55 PM, Boris wrote:
> VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote in news:6th37y2a6sau$.dlg@v.nguard.lh:
>
>> Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On 12/23/2023 2:02 AM, Boris wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> So the drive was a four year old POS when Dell put it in their 5559.
>>>> As my kids would say, LOL.
>>>>
>>>> That link gives me an error, but I'm interested in what it has to
>>>> say.
>>>
>>> My line wrap is set at a high number. It's not 72 columns. The wider
>>> you make your screen, the wider this line will become.
>>>
>>> https://www.dell.com/community/assets/community/687062f5-603c-4f5f-ab9" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.dell.com/community/assets/community/687062f5-603c-4f5f-ab9
>>> d-31aa7cacb376/DellTechHubmakesDellcomputerta-521ae740-5420-41ea-8f78-
>>> 73c2d158f771-1427808586.
>>>
>>> I'll put angle-brackets around it, but I doubt this will help. The
>>> period on the end of that link IS PART OF THE LINK. Talk about
>>> corny affectations at Dell.
>>>
>>> <https://www.dell.com/community/assets/community/687062f5-603c-4f5f-ab
>>> 9d-31aa7cacb376/DellTechHubmakesDellcomputerta-521ae740-5420-41ea-8f78
>>> -73c2d158f771-1427808586.>
>>>
>>>>> The considered opinion here, is the drive is a dog, and an
>>>>> SSD will provide relief from the agony.
>>>>
>>>> I love dogs.
>>>
>>> We'll see in January, whether there will be a Good Dog for you.
>>>
>>> And by the way, don't expect miracles. The OS presents a lot
>>> of overhead, that cannot be justified. Anything Dell has added,
>>> isn't helping matters. An SSD is not a miracle cure. It's a start
>>> at improving things. Some of the Dell software should be removed
>>> or disabled. msconfig would have made this easy, the new solution
>>> isn't particularly pleasant or clever.
>>>
>>> Things I meddle with, when I'm muttering "hurry up, hurry up!".
>>> These are typical during a Cumulative on Patch Tuesday.
>>>
>>> 1( Stop the sysmain service.
>>> 2) Repeatedly kill the SearchIndexer.exe (it is set to restart
>>> itself,
>>> and will not stay non-running for long.
>>> 3) Windows Defender, turn off Real Time Protection. WD can drop the
>>> I/O rate on a W10/W11 device by a factor of ten.
>>>
>>> Paul
>>
>> His Dell 5559 is c.2015. His Seagate drive is c.2014. The story
>> might parallel Old Yeller: time to put down Old Yeller, and move on
>> with Young Yeller. Could be Old Yeller is acceptable at doing what
>> Boris wants from it,
>
> That is correct. I'm just trying to teach an old dog new tricks.
>
> but I need to ask if the slowdown is a new
>> problem, or noticed after using a much faster computer. That is, is
>> it a new problem, or an old lingering problem? "For a while" doesn't
>> say how long. As you use new and faster computers, the older slower
>> ones seem even more slow. It's old, but not that bad for many end-user
>> tasks.
>
> I understand the question. Let me try to explain.
>
> The machine was purchased in May, 2016, with Windows 10 Home. It ran
> nicely for many years. I keep it updated. It's had typical Windows quirks
> that could never be explained or solved, just like every machine I've had
> since Windows 8. For instance, Spotlight worked for a few months, and then
> stopped working. Ok. I still have the same background that I've had since
> 2017. The machine will not update itself during inactive hours. I have to
> manually restart to apply updates. Ok. Some updates have rearranged my
> desktop icons, and some have deleted them. Sort of ok. I live with these
> things.
>
> The first time I noticed a slow down was about a year ago. Loading the OS
> and desktop icons/taskbar seemed a little slower, but Firefox took way too
> long to load after starting the OS. Many times Firefox would launch but
> the ribbon on top said "Firefox not responding". Task Manager showed disk
> 100% usage. It would take five minutes for the hard disk to settle down,
> and Firefox would load to my homepage. I searched and tried many things to
> solve disk 100% usage. Nothing worked.
>
> I use this laptop only when away from home. Over the last year, it's
> gotten much slower to load, launch, and settle down. Once settled down, it
> still takes longer than it used to to launch a program. Once loaded, the
> program generally runs fine.
>
>>
>> A $100 2.5" 2TB SSD to replace his 2TB HDD would give a performance
>> boost, like during startup, shutdown, and when loading programs, but
>> it would only improve disk performance. Whatever is causing the
>> slowdown, especially if a recent problem, could easily migrate to his
>> setup after switching to an SSD. His startup time would be reduced,
>> but the slowdown may be other than disk based.
>
> Understood.
>

Firefox has a "cache2". There, you may find a large number of files.
These can be deleted. They are anonymized files, with a
long alphanumeric string for a filename. Over the years, the
filenames have become longer.

tkngv7fa.default-release\cache2\
entries\
0A1DE0174059E5E76A8F97BC14B2CC1CDDA95040
0C1E7A7849B5B0BC16363477B1D02EA68025C8C1 <=== thousands of these
...
FE32780826E697DB1A90586314FEB4C79B761EA1

With some Firefox configuration editor work, you can move the operation
of cache2, into system RAM. This ends the pollution of the hard drive
with them.

Paul

Boris wrote:

> I've run ProcessMonitor, ResourceMonitor, Perfmon, and ProcessExplorer,
> but I don't know how to interpret them.

Since I suggested Resource Monitor, here's how I would use it to
track-down what is causing the most disk activity ...

Launch "Resource Monitor" from the "Performance" tab of "Task Manager"
(on Win10 I remember it had a button at the bottom, on Win11 it's now
via the [...] menu at the top.

Switch to the "Disk" tab

If necessary, expand the "Disk Activity" section (perhaps collapse the
"Storage" and "Processes with Disk Activity" sections too)

If necessary, click on Monitor/Auto-fit Columns (I often find I've left
the "File" column eating all the width the last time I ran it)

Reverse sort on the Total bytes/second column

Take note of the top handful of "Image" and "File" entries changing over
a short period of time.

Then, if you want to focus-in on a particular process ...

Expand the "Processes with Disk Activity" section, leaving the "Disk
Activity" section expanded too

Within the "Processes with Disk Activity" section, tick the check-box to
the left of the requiredn process, the "Disk Activity" section will then
be filtered by that process.

On 12/25/2023 3:35 AM, Andy Burns wrote:
> Boris wrote:
>
>> I've run ProcessMonitor, ResourceMonitor, Perfmon, and ProcessExplorer,
>> but I don't know how to interpret them. 
>
> Since I suggested Resource Monitor, here's how I would use it to track-down what is causing the most disk activity ...
>
> Launch "Resource Monitor" from the "Performance" tab of "Task Manager" (on Win10 I remember it had a button at the bottom, on Win11 it's now via the [...] menu at the top.
>
> Switch to the "Disk" tab
>
> If necessary, expand the "Disk Activity" section (perhaps collapse the "Storage" and "Processes with Disk Activity" sections too)
>
> If necessary, click on Monitor/Auto-fit Columns (I often find I've left the "File" column eating all the width the last time I ran it)
>
> Reverse sort on the Total bytes/second column
>
> Take note of the top handful of "Image" and "File" entries changing over a short period of time.
>
> Then, if you want to focus-in on a particular process ...
>
> Expand the "Processes with Disk Activity" section, leaving the "Disk Activity" section expanded too
>
> Within the "Processes with Disk Activity" section, tick the check-box to the left of the requiredn process, the "Disk Activity" section will then be filtered by that process.
>

I agree it would be refreshing to track down the source.

On Windows, no matter what tool we use, there is no guarantee
you're seeing everything. If the item making a fuss is "naive",
then it could quite well be visible.

Using Task Manager, the "Square with the heartbeat in it", the Performance
tab, then click on the main disk, that will show the instantaneous disk parameters.

Look at Active Time versus read MB/sec or write MB/sec.

It the disk is spending a lot of time Active, and
at the same time, doing little work, that's a hint as
to how good the performance of the disk drive is. You expect
it to be slow, for lots of small files (doing the monthly Cumulative Update
should suck, on a lot of drives, and that's an expected outcome).

But if you compare the Active behavior, with the other computers
in the room, you can get some idea whether the thing is a slug or not.
With a 16MB cache chip, I'm just not expecting miracles (it should be
basically uncached at hardware level).

The time where caches were really invented (not just a merketing gimmick
that made the marketeers look bad), was when 512e drives showed up.

outside the drive inside the drive name

512 bytes per sector 512 bytes per sector 512n Native sectors on "old fashioned drives" (good for WinXP!)
512 bytes per sector 4096 bytes per sector 512e Emulated 512 sectors, needs lots of cache chip to work well
4096 bytes per sector 4096 bytes per sector 4Kn Do not buy. Windows can use. Poor third-party tool support.
Retailers tend to sell into the server market, with those.

The uncached drives, like the first type in the old days, might be 60 commands per second.
The cached drives (all three rows could have a real cache), they might do 1500 commands a second.

The performance of a drive, what gets delivered with the 1500 commands, can
never outstrip the rotational realities of the drive. If it spins 60 times
a second or 120 times a second, all the commands in the world can't fix that
aspect. If a command "hits in the track cache", the drive can act upon it,
without waiting for another revolution. the track cache allows effective read-ahead.

There are a couple reasons a modern drive can support 1500 commands a second.
ACHI queuing allows multiple commands to be stacked (up to 7). They can sit in cache.
The items are tagged. It's like disconnect/reselect on SCSI.

Mis-aligned clusters with respect to the 4096 bytes inside, need fractional
operations that really need that cache chip for efficiency. A side benefit,
was also getting useful caching for other purposes. This means the engineers
at the disk companies, had to sweat bullets so they could have their funky
4096 byte internal sectors.

Caching has also made the building of shitty "shingled" drives possible.
Again, leaning on that cache chip for dear life. The first released shingled
drive was a marketing disaster. Today, the read and write speeds are "almost" the same.
An engineering miracle. With only a bit of stutter. A lot of work in the lab
has made shingled "almost a product" in a sense. I would not buy a shingled
if you paid me :-) I always look for evidence of PMR/CMR and never SMR.
The disk drive companies are devious, not showing platter count or
properly labeling each and every product according to PMR/CMR or SMR.

Paul

On 12/24/2023 5:57 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
> sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote:
> [...]
>
> [About Winston's laptop:]
>
>> A quick search on this Acer i8 515G of yours says it does not hurt this
>> models battery to leave it plugged in as it stops charging the battery
>> when it reaches 100% and runs directly on AC power. I don't think my
>> Toshiba does that, but I'm interested now and will have to check.
>
> Any decent adapter/laptop combination should 'stop' (go to trickle
> charging) at 100%. But 'sitting' constantly at 100% limits the lifetime
> of the battery. See also Paul's detailed response on this issue.

I looked for his suggestions regarding a program to do it, and it looks
like all Toshiba had in that era was an eco power something or another
with little options and none to limit charging.

>> Still don't like the idea of leaving the battery in, but if it isn't
>> charging, I might change that view.
>
> 'Sitting' at 100% should not be risky for a good battery, but as your
> battery is 'bad', I would just take it out and use the laptop on AC
> power as I described.
>
> If you want to keep the battery, you probably should top it up to some
> 80% (see Paul's response as to why) every few months or so (if it keeps
> its charge that 'long'). That's what I do with our old batteries.

I unplug it after I turn it off, and since I only use it sporadically,
will probably just leave it in and keep an eye on it. If I was using it
every day, I would definitely take it out.

Thanks

sticks

--
Stand With Israel!
NOTE: If you use Google Groups I don't see you,
unless you're whitelisted and that's doubtful.

Boris <nospam@invalid.com> wrote:

> I've been trying to solve 100% disk usage on this machine for a while,
> now:
>
> Dell Inspiron 5559
> Windows 10 HP x64, OEM installed, fully updated, 22H2, 5/18/2016
>
> It takes at least 15 minutes to settle down and become useful after a
> clean boot, and takes about 5 minutes to shutdown. Once up and running,
> it takes around a minute or so for a program to launch after clicked
> upon. If I want to open a picture, for instance, the program (i.e.
> Photos, Photo Gallery) takes about a minute to open. Same with FireFox.
> After they are first launched, the respond normally for the rest of my
> session.
>
> I have a minimal amount of programs that launch at startup.
>
> Ethernet send/receive are almost non-existent at startup. Memory and CPU
> seem low.
>
> I tried many suggested fixes months ago, with no luck. Before I do
> somthing more drastic that requires re-installation of the OS and updates
> or all programs, I thougt I'd try again to see what else I could find
> that may fix this problem.
>
> I went here:
>
> https://www.kapilarya.com/fix-windows-10-100-percent-disk-usage-problem
>
> But it turns out my system doesn't include IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, it
> only contains Standard SATA AHCI Controller. Nonetheless, burrowing down
> shows nothing similar to what's shown. Neither does the registry.
>
> Next, going to:
>
> https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/100-disk-usage-on-
> windows-10/17e3aa7e-4a2a-4927-97bd-bdb2f7dbe04b
>
> sfc /scannow found "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and
> successfully repaired them. For online repairs, details are included in
> the CBS log file located at windir\logs\CBS\CBS.log. For example C:
> \Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For offline repairs, details are included in
> the log fimle provided by the /OFFLOGFILE flag."
>
> Per the instructions, I next ran:
>
> dism /online /cleanup-image /checkhealth
>
> Response was, "No component store corruption was found.
> The operation completed successfully."
>
> Per instructions, I next ran:
>
> dism /online /cleanup-image /scanhealt
>
> Response was, ""No component store corruption was found.
> The operation completed successfully."
>
> I was about to run the next suggested command, "dism /online /cleanup-
> image /restorehealth"
>
> But, I first researched the difference between checkhealth and
> scanhealth, and it seemed to me that checkhealth was not needed as
> checkhealth finds 'repairable' files, while scanhealth checks and fixes
> corrupt files. Is checkhealth really needed? Or is it needed because it
> identifies corrupt files, and places them somewhere where they can be
> acted upon?
>
> Anyway, I'm going to continue on with the rest of the suggested plan to
> 'fix' this 100% disk usage.
>
> Also, if you have any other suggestions as how to diagnose/fix 100% disk
> usage, that would be appreciated. I just don't want to have to re-
> install the OS. Main reason...I may have to get a MSFT account to do so.
>
> TIA

What backup program(s) are you using? More than 1?

Some backup programs emulate file versioning by saving a file each time
it is modified. Some backup programs do this by watching file I/O API
calls. Some, however, do it by checking for changed files at very short
intervals, like very 5 minutes.

Most backup programs let you set a priority on their process(es). If
you run them at normal priority, they get the same priority as most
other processes, so they compete for CPU cycles while doing lots of file
I/O over the data bus. If you feel you need that granularity in backups
(I only schedule once per day), see if the backup program lets you lower
the priority on its backup jobs.

Boris <Boris@invalid.invalid> wrote:
[...]

> I understand the question. Let me try to explain.
>
> The machine was purchased in May, 2016, with Windows 10 Home. It ran
> nicely for many years. I keep it updated. It's had typical Windows quirks
> that could never be explained or solved, just like every machine I've had
> since Windows 8.

[Reformatted for clarity:]

> For instance, Spotlight worked for a few months, and then stopped
> working. Ok. I still have the same background that I've had since
> 2017.

Is that for Spotlight on the Desktop or Spotlight on the Lock screen
(and the Sign-in screen)?

Anyway, those are common problems with loads of suggested fixes.

I had a problem on Windows 11 with Spotlight on the Lock and Sign-in
screen not working. None of the suggested fixes work, but somehow it
started to work again, maybe because of something I did.

> The machine will not update itself during inactive hours. I have to
> manually restart to apply updates. Ok.

On my wife's Windows 10 laptop, it often takes a few nights for the
automatic restart to occur. To be sure: Have you checked that Windows
Update says 'Status: Pending restart' (or some such wording, my wife's
laptop has a Dutch UI) for all updates before you expect it to restart
automatically?

My Windows 11 laptop never restarts automatically, because it has
'Adaptive hibernate' which causes it to hibernate before the automatic
restart can occur.

Have a check if your Windows 10 laptop has 'Adaptive hibernate' or/and
is set to hibernate during the night.

With the right non-hibernate settings and the laptop on AC power, the
system should restart automatically during the night. (My Windows 11
laptop has no 'Hibernate after' setting in Power Options, so I can not
use/test this.

> Some updates have rearranged my desktop icons, and some have deleted
> them. Sort of ok. I live with these things.

No suggestions for this.

[Details about slow down deleted.]

Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote in
news:kust7fF8hmuU2@mid.individual.net:

> Boris wrote:
>
>> I've run ProcessMonitor, ResourceMonitor, Perfmon, and
>> ProcessExplorer, but I don't know how to interpret them.
>
> Since I suggested Resource Monitor, here's how I would use it to
> track-down what is causing the most disk activity ...
>
> Launch "Resource Monitor" from the "Performance" tab of "Task Manager"
> (on Win10 I remember it had a button at the bottom, on Win11 it's now
> via the [...] menu at the top.
>
> Switch to the "Disk" tab
>
> If necessary, expand the "Disk Activity" section (perhaps collapse the
> "Storage" and "Processes with Disk Activity" sections too)
>
> If necessary, click on Monitor/Auto-fit Columns (I often find I've
> left the "File" column eating all the width the last time I ran it)
>
> Reverse sort on the Total bytes/second column
>
> Take note of the top handful of "Image" and "File" entries changing
> over a short period of time.
>
> Then, if you want to focus-in on a particular process ...
>
> Expand the "Processes with Disk Activity" section, leaving the "Disk
> Activity" section expanded too
>
> Within the "Processes with Disk Activity" section, tick the check-box
> to the left of the requiredn process, the "Disk Activity" section will
> then be filtered by that process.
>
>
>
>
>
>

Thanks for the turorial. It was very informative.

I launched Task Manager, and then Resource Monitor. I selected some of
the highest B/sec files, one at a time, in the Disk Activity window, and
then selected their corresponding process in the Processes with Disk
Activity window.

The Processes with Disk Activity window showed many files for each
process. Within 10 seconds, all processes disappeared, and I went back
down to the Disk Activity window to make another high B/sec selection.

B/sec were in the 100,000 300,000 range.

Each time, the particular process(es) would shortly reduce it's B/sec
such that the process no longer appeared in the Process with Disk
Activity window. I was playing whack-a-mole.

Some of the processes I followed:

System: C:\Windows\Prefetch\ReadyBoot\ReadyBoot.etl
CompatTelRunner.exe: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge
Update\Downloads... MsMpEng.exe: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows
Defender SrTasks.exe: C:\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy10|smft
etc...

These results gave me no clue as to what to do.

Task Manager Processes tab listed nine Dell processes running, even
though I had long ago disabled them from starting up. I decided to
uninstall everything Dell. The reboot took just as long, but the hard
disk settled down in about half the time. Programs launched faster.

Acronis (Western Digital free version) also had a process called Acronis
Active Protection Service listed as running. That process watches for
changes in files. It's only available if there's a Western Digital hard
disk attached to the system. I have it installed because I make images
once in a while with it to a USB attached Western Digital Passport
portable drive. Since the Passport wasn't attached (it's at home), I
thought maybe it kept hunting for it, and after a while not finding it,
it timed out. I uninstalled Acronis, and the machine loaded up a little
faster, and the disk usage improved a bit. Probably coincidence?
Programs still take long to launch.

The machine is useful once it settles down, but I'm thinking I've spent
many days on this, and it's no longer 'fun'. I may do a clean install
when I get home and have more equipment to do backups/images, and copy
out data.

VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote in news:18wgl17vc3509.dlg@v.nguard.lh:

> Boris <Boris@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote in news:6th37y2a6sau$.dlg@v.nguard.lh:
>>
>>> Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 12/23/2023 2:02 AM, Boris wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> So the drive was a four year old POS when Dell put it in their
>>>>> 5559.
>>>>> As my kids would say, LOL.
>>>>>
>>>>> That link gives me an error, but I'm interested in what it has to
>>>>> say.
>>>>
>>>> My line wrap is set at a high number. It's not 72 columns. The
>>>> wider you make your screen, the wider this line will become.
>>>>
>>>> https://www.dell.com/community/assets/community/687062f5-603c-4f5f-a" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.dell.com/community/assets/community/687062f5-603c-4f5f-a
>>>> b9
>>>> d-31aa7cacb376/DellTechHubmakesDellcomputerta-521ae740-5420-41ea-8f7
>>>> 8- 73c2d158f771-1427808586.
>>>>
>>>> I'll put angle-brackets around it, but I doubt this will help. The
>>>> period on the end of that link IS PART OF THE LINK. Talk about
>>>> corny affectations at Dell.
>>>>
>>>> <https://www.dell.com/community/assets/community/687062f5-603c-4f5f-
>>>> ab
>>>> 9d-31aa7cacb376/DellTechHubmakesDellcomputerta-521ae740-5420-41ea-8f
>>>> 78 -73c2d158f771-1427808586.>
>>>>
>>>>>> The considered opinion here, is the drive is a dog, and an
>>>>>> SSD will provide relief from the agony.
>>>>>
>>>>> I love dogs.
>>>>
>>>> We'll see in January, whether there will be a Good Dog for you.
>>>>
>>>> And by the way, don't expect miracles. The OS presents a lot
>>>> of overhead, that cannot be justified. Anything Dell has added,
>>>> isn't helping matters. An SSD is not a miracle cure. It's a start
>>>> at improving things. Some of the Dell software should be removed
>>>> or disabled. msconfig would have made this easy, the new solution
>>>> isn't particularly pleasant or clever.
>>>>
>>>> Things I meddle with, when I'm muttering "hurry up, hurry up!".
>>>> These are typical during a Cumulative on Patch Tuesday.
>>>>
>>>> 1( Stop the sysmain service.
>>>> 2) Repeatedly kill the SearchIndexer.exe (it is set to restart
>>>> itself,
>>>> and will not stay non-running for long.
>>>> 3) Windows Defender, turn off Real Time Protection. WD can drop the
>>>> I/O rate on a W10/W11 device by a factor of ten.
>>>>
>>>> Paul
>>>
>>> His Dell 5559 is c.2015. His Seagate drive is c.2014. The story
>>> might parallel Old Yeller: time to put down Old Yeller, and move on
>>> with Young Yeller. Could be Old Yeller is acceptable at doing what
>>> Boris wants from it,
>>
>> That is correct. I'm just trying to teach an old dog new tricks.
>>
>> but I need to ask if the slowdown is a new
>>> problem, or noticed after using a much faster computer. That is, is
>>> it a new problem, or an old lingering problem? "For a while"
>>> doesn't say how long. As you use new and faster computers, the
>>> older slower ones seem even more slow. It's old, but not that bad
>>> for many end-user tasks.
>>
>> I understand the question. Let me try to explain.
>>
>> The machine was purchased in May, 2016, with Windows 10 Home. It ran
>> nicely for many years. I keep it updated. It's had typical Windows
>> quirks that could never be explained or solved, just like every
>> machine I've had since Windows 8. For instance, Spotlight worked for
>> a few months, and then stopped working. Ok. I still have the same
>> background that I've had since 2017. The machine will not update
>> itself during inactive hours. I have to manually restart to apply
>> updates. Ok. Some updates have rearranged my desktop icons, and
>> some have deleted them. Sort of ok. I live with these things.
>>
>> The first time I noticed a slow down was about a year ago. Loading
>> the OS and desktop icons/taskbar seemed a little slower, but Firefox
>> took way too long to load after starting the OS. Many times Firefox
>> would launch but the ribbon on top said "Firefox not responding".
>> Task Manager showed disk 100% usage. It would take five minutes for
>> the hard disk to settle down, and Firefox would load to my homepage.
>> I searched and tried many things to solve disk 100% usage. Nothing
>> worked.
>>
>> I use this laptop only when away from home. Over the last year, it's
>> gotten much slower to load, launch, and settle down. Once settled
>> down, it still takes longer than it used to to launch a program.
>> Once loaded, the program generally runs fine.
>>
>>>
>>> A $100 2.5" 2TB SSD to replace his 2TB HDD would give a performance
>>> boost, like during startup, shutdown, and when loading programs, but
>>> it would only improve disk performance. Whatever is causing the
>>> slowdown, especially if a recent problem, could easily migrate to
>>> his setup after switching to an SSD. His startup time would be
>>> reduced, but the slowdown may be other than disk based.
>>
>> Understood.
>
> I've noticed Firefox can take a long time to load. I don't leave it
> open, but exit when done with it, and later reload it. I will
> manually enter a URL into a tab, Ctrl+T to open a new tab, enter a URL
> there, and repeat for a total of 6 tabs. All of them use HTTPS. I
> will see the TLS handshaking in the status bar. All the tabs hang
> until one of them (likely the 1st one) completes its TLS handshaking
> whereupon all the other tabs open almost immediately. Doesn't matter
> what are the HTTPS sites; i.e., they could be different. Rather than
> use the bookmarks manager, often I just start entering text for a
> site, and use auto- completion (match on bookmarks). I'll be sitting
> there for way over 2 minutes before any of the tabs load until one
> them completes the TLS handshaking. Seems Firefox stalls on TLS
> handshakes when the 1st one is pending. If I use but leave FF loaded,
> close all tabs when done with them except open one for about:blank,
> HTTPS sites thereafter open immediately thereafter.

For me, Firefox opens to a picture I have on my desktop. It opens in a
few seconds. I then type in the URL in the same tab, and away I go. I do
see some stalling sometime on TLS handshaking, but nothing serious. I
rarely have more than 3-5 tabs open at once.
>
> Once the stall ends, I can exit and reload FF within a few minutes
> after the prior load, and the stall does not recur. It's after FF has
> not been used for awhile, like 20 minutes, or more, when it then gets
> loaded when the stall happens.
>
> I've not seen high disk activity when FF is stalled on opening
> multiple HTTPS sites. To me, looks like FF is stalling on TLS
> handshaking. I have some add-ons.

I have no add-ons.

In uBlock Origin, it has an option
> to not load a page until it has updated its blacklists. Disable that,
> but no help on the TLS stall. Disabled all add-ons but no help,
> either. I've not yet tried creating a new profile mostly because I'd
> lose all the security, privacy, and behavior tweaks in about:config.
> However, there are times when I load FF, and open multiple tabs, where
> there is no stall. So, sometimes FF stalls, sometimes not. From
> trying to diagnose the problem, I've concluded the fault is in FF, not
> the rest of my setup. The stalling started sometime after updating
> from 115.
>
> That I see the stall when the status bar shows TLS handshaking doesn't
> mean TLS is the culprit. Could be whatever FF tries to perform after
> the TLS handshake, but the status bar hasn't been updated yet. For
> some products, status is shown after an action instead of when
> initiating it.
>
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?order=Importance&short_desc=tl
> s&product=Firefox&resolution=---&query_format=advanced&short_desc_type=
> allwordssubstr&classification=Client%20Software
>
> I did the above search on TLS in Firefox to see if there were known
> issues. I haven't read them in depth to see if any apply to my setup.
> I do have DoH (DNS over HTTPS) enabled, and am using Cloudflare, so I
> might see what happens if I set to Off (which makes FF use the DNS
> settings in the OS), but it will take a few days to ascertain if DoH
> in FF is causing the first-load stalls.
>
> So, other than Firefox, are you seeing stalls in loading or use of
> other apps? Do those stalls always coincide with high disk activity
> when you started those apps?

Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote in
news:umeovl.rj8.1@ID-201911.user.individual.net:

> Boris <Boris@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> [...]
>
>> I understand the question. Let me try to explain.
>>
>> The machine was purchased in May, 2016, with Windows 10 Home. It ran
>> nicely for many years. I keep it updated. It's had typical Windows
>> quirks that could never be explained or solved, just like every
>> machine I've had since Windows 8.
>
> [Reformatted for clarity:]
>
>> For instance, Spotlight worked for a few months, and then stopped
>> working. Ok. I still have the same background that I've had since
>> 2017.
>
> Is that for Spotlight on the Desktop or Spotlight on the Lock screen
> (and the Sign-in screen)?

Lock screen and Sign-in.

>
> Anyway, those are common problems with loads of suggested fixes.
>
> I had a problem on Windows 11 with Spotlight on the Lock and Sign-in
> screen not working. None of the suggested fixes work, but somehow it
> started to work again, maybe because of something I did.
>
>> The machine will not update itself during inactive hours. I have to
>> manually restart to apply updates. Ok.
>
> On my wife's Windows 10 laptop, it often takes a few nights for the
> automatic restart to occur. To be sure: Have you checked that Windows
> Update says 'Status: Pending restart' (or some such wording, my wife's
> laptop has a Dutch UI) for all updates before you expect it to restart
> automatically?

Good question. I don't remember if Windows says Pending restart, but
there's a yellow dot on the Power icon in the Start Menu, and my
notification says Windows will restart during inactive hours, or I can
manually restart 'now'. I will look for 'Pending' next time.

>
> My Windows 11 laptop never restarts automatically, because it has
> 'Adaptive hibernate' which causes it to hibernate before the automatic
> restart can occur.
>
> Have a check if your Windows 10 laptop has 'Adaptive hibernate'
> or/and
> is set to hibernate during the night.

It's not.
>
> With the right non-hibernate settings and the laptop on AC power,
> the
> system should restart automatically during the night. (My Windows 11
> laptop has no 'Hibernate after' setting in Power Options, so I can not
> use/test this.
>
>> Some updates have rearranged my desktop icons, and some have deleted
>> them. Sort of ok. I live with these things.
>
> No suggestions for this.
>
> [Details about slow down deleted.]

Boris <Boris@invalid.invalid> wrote:
[...]

> Stalls, other than with Firefox, are primarily with Photos. It will
> stall with high disk activity, and even with low disk activity when
> launched for the first time during a session. After the first launch,
> it's fine. I do have most programs set to not start up when I start this
> machine.

On my wife's (earlier mentioned) Windows 10 laptop, Photos is also
very slow to start for the first time. (At the moment, it even hangs
with a white screen, but using no resources (other than memory). Go
figure!)

Windows Photo Viewer is much, much faster, so you may want to try that
and see whether the problem is general - i.e. also for Windows Photo
Viewer - or 'just' for Photos. Photos is a Metro/Modern/UWP/Fisher-Price
'app', 'nuff said.

[...]

Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote in
news:ummvjq.hc4.1@ID-201911.user.individual.net:

> Boris <Boris@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> [...]
>
>> Stalls, other than with Firefox, are primarily with Photos. It will
>> stall with high disk activity, and even with low disk activity when
>> launched for the first time during a session. After the first
>> launch, it's fine. I do have most programs set to not start up when
>> I start this machine.
>
> On my wife's (earlier mentioned) Windows 10 laptop, Photos is also
> very slow to start for the first time. (At the moment, it even hangs
> with a white screen, but using no resources (other than memory). Go
> figure!)
>
> Windows Photo Viewer is much, much faster, so you may want to try
> that
> and see whether the problem is general - i.e. also for Windows Photo
> Viewer - or 'just' for Photos. Photos is a
> Metro/Modern/UWP/Fisher-Price 'app', 'nuff said.
>
> [...]

This was a factory install of Windows 7, so Windows Photo Viewer was not
included. I used the registry hack to 'activate' it, and it does load
immediately.

All other media viewers/players also load quickly, even under 100% disk
usage, even first launch per session. Photos is the only one that lags.

On 12/30/2023 1:50 PM, Boris wrote:
> Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote in
> news:ummvjq.hc4.1@ID-201911.user.individual.net:
>
>> Boris <Boris@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> [...]
>>
>>> Stalls, other than with Firefox, are primarily with Photos. It will
>>> stall with high disk activity, and even with low disk activity when
>>> launched for the first time during a session. After the first
>>> launch, it's fine. I do have most programs set to not start up when
>>> I start this machine.
>>
>> On my wife's (earlier mentioned) Windows 10 laptop, Photos is also
>> very slow to start for the first time. (At the moment, it even hangs
>> with a white screen, but using no resources (other than memory). Go
>> figure!)
>>
>> Windows Photo Viewer is much, much faster, so you may want to try
>> that
>> and see whether the problem is general - i.e. also for Windows Photo
>> Viewer - or 'just' for Photos. Photos is a
>> Metro/Modern/UWP/Fisher-Price 'app', 'nuff said.
>>
>> [...]
>
> This was a factory install of Windows 7, so Windows Photo Viewer was not
> included. I used the registry hack to 'activate' it, and it does load
> immediately.
>
> All other media viewers/players also load quickly, even under 100% disk
> usage, even first launch per session. Photos is the only one that lags.
>

Using Sysinternals Process Monitor, you could check what areas
of the disk drive it is scanning. You can record all "CreateFile" and
"ReadFile" operations, as an example of documenting reads it is doing.

If it is wandering into non-photo areas, perhaps this is why it is slow.

Paul

Boris wrote on 12/30/23 11:50 AM:
>>
>> [...]
>
> This was a factory install of Windows 7, so Windows Photo Viewer was not
> included. I used the registry hack to 'activate' it, and it does load
> immediately.

Fyi...Windows Photo Viewer was included in Windows 7.

Win7 devices upraded to Win10/11 retain Win7's included Photo Viewer.
Win10/11 devices clean installed or as-shipped by OEM do not include
Photo Viewer - for these devices, the registry change is necessary.

--
....w¡ñ§±¤ñ

=?UTF-8?B?Li4ud8Khw7HCp8KxwqTDsSA=?= <winstonmvp@gmail.com> wrote in
news:ums9ks$1q6m2$1@dont-email.me:

> Boris wrote on 12/30/23 11:50 AM:
>>>
>>> [...]
>>
>> This was a factory install of Windows 7, so Windows Photo Viewer was
>> not included. I used the registry hack to 'activate' it, and it does
>> load immediately.
>
> Fyi...Windows Photo Viewer was included in Windows 7.

Oops. I stand corrected. I meant to say Windows 10.

>
> Win7 devices upraded to Win10/11 retain Win7's included Photo Viewer.
> Win10/11 devices clean installed or as-shipped by OEM do not include
> Photo Viewer - for these devices, the registry change is necessary.
>
>