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?

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.

>
> 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?

Defender only.