Computer gradually slows down while on until needs restarting

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JaidenOli

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Oct 18, 2021
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Hi, I really hope someone can help me because this has been happening for about the last 2 weeks and I've tried everything I can possibly find.

My problem is that when I first start my computer it runs fine, everything is smooth, I can even play most games on maximum settings and have a great time. But generally about 1.5 hours after starting my computer I notice it's starting to get a bit slow, my mouse pointer dragging a bit, game needs to be run on lower settings, even just pressing start button and hovering on an icon like shutdown is delayed. If I keep going it keeps getting slower and incredibly frustrating to use. I also notice that I start to get some audio crackles when listening to music/video.
I hadn't downloaded any new programs and not aware of any updates happening in the days before this problem starting. I'd been working on my computer that day, closed programs to go off for dinner. Came back about 2 hours later and my computer fans were blasting full speed, i couldn't manually slow them down, restarted computer didn't help, shut down and left for 15 minutes didn't help either. The moment I turned my computer back on fans full speed. After a while I gave up and went to play a game to test if performance was affected but the moment I started the game fans slowed down back to normal. Suddenly in GPU Tweak I was able to adjust them manually again. Did a restart and still quiet. Played the game and everything seemed to be fine.
the next day I opened up my computer and cleaned the external fans of dust since they did need it done. Put the sides back on and kept using it like normal. Then I don't remember but within the next 3 days I started noticing this problem where it slowed down after a few hours. Starting off what feels like forever of me trying to find and fix what's wrong and just failing every day.

My computer was built about 5 years ago for playing games and doing a lot of 3D work and rendering, generally never had any problems like this until recently.
- Intel i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz
- 32GB RAM
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti
- ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming Motherboard

Now I'll list out some information I've gathered and things I've done to try and fix it/check what's wrong that NOTHING seems to have helped.
- Firstly upon fresh startup after a restart and waiting about 10 minutes for startup things to settle in task manager I get stats of CPU 3% and Memory 13% (moving around slightly) after about 1.5 hours of use I close down everything, in task manager even make sure it's completely gone. But my CPU is now consistently up around 15% and memory 15%-20%. I have also noticed while using my computer that System Interrupts gradually makes it's way up to around 8%. I'm not sure if that information really helps but hopefully
- Following from this I did a test where I disconnected my computer from the internet, restarted and opened task manager. Same resting stats for cpu 3%, memory 13%. I left it for about 2 hours and came back. Without fail my computer was slow again, CPU up to 16%, memory about 16%. From this I assume it's not just from me running programs, and not internet related.
- I have both Norton and Malwarebytes on my computer and have done full scans with both, finding nothing
- Have checked all drivers and updated any where necessary, also done a reinstall of my NVIDIA driver but none of that seems to have changed anything. Windows is also on the latest version and I have updated any programs I have to the latest version as well.
- Tried checking for low harddisk space to see if that could cause it, main programs and windows run from a Samsung SSD 250GB, that has currently about 45GB free, with 13GB allocated for over provisioning. My second disk is a regular speed 2TB drive where I store most programs and all files and things, which has 271GB free. I don't think storage space is the problem since it's been lower than this before and still run fine.
- I've checked if it's an over heating issue and generally don't think so. I use ICUE to monitor most of my computer with GPU Tweak for my Graphics. Temperatures at startup aren't drastically different to those after a few hours (some maybe as high as 10C higher). I also tested just turning all the fans up to full and that didn't really change anything. I have noticed while gaming sometimes that my GeForce sits around 30%-60% fan speed, sometimes boosting it to 100% helps just a little but not much really. I also just don't think restarting my computer would immediately fix heat problems and take 2 hours to come back.
- I've run Perfmon and only thing that shows an error is System Service Checks > Abnormally Terminated Services Check > Tests 1 Failed 1
Also got a warning for 33% of events were lost during data collection.
- Think there's a few more things I've done but cant' remember it all at this point.

Unless I've just missed something obvious I don't know what else to try, at this point I'm just starting to accept this is my life now. Using my computer for about 2 hours then having to close everything and restart. Which is just frustrating because for about the first 1.5 it works fine, wouldn't think anything was wrong!
This is also particularly worrying because I'm working from home at the moment and need my computer to work, so if something suddenly dies I have a big problem. Could all of this just be that something is failing and I should start planning for a replacement? Should I get a full computer backup because with every restart it might not turn on again?

If anyone can help me that would be amazing! I can provide any extra information needed, I'm just desperate and hours of reading others people questions on forums isn't helping.

Thanks :)
 
check what background tasks are running, maybe something like Windows Updates, or some maintenance services or telemetry process or optimise task is kicking in.

with the rig being 5 years old, and assuming Windows has never been reinstalled, it could just be Registry Rot.
regardless, at 5 years, I'd be backing up my data and wiping the SSD so as to reload Windows and all my software again, from scratch.

not only will this give you a clean slate, but you may be able to isolate the cause as things get reloaded one by one.
 
There's quite a lot of tasks/processes running in task manager but none seem to be obviously using up a lot and don't think there's any updates or maintenance going at this point now. I've been through the programs I could think of and turned most of that off, stopped updated running automatically...

Windows hasn't even been reinstalled and I had wondered if that could be part of it, just seems weird it would suddenly start being a problem now.
I found one more thing to try in command prompt I did 'sfc /scannow . I ended up getting the message
"Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them..." which is good I guess, though that hasn't helped with the problem either.
Is there any way I can check or do a test to tell if reinstalling windows will help like checking for registry rot?
All of my data is backed up fairly regularly to another drive so mainly just programs and settings that would need backing up as well if I did that at least.

Could also be good to just manually reinstall everything and see if it starts happening. Just annoying I can't scan everything I already have to find a problem like that.
Might look into doing a reset over the weekend though.

Thanks
 
other options....

reboot the PC into Safe Mode and see if the issue happens there as well.
in Safe Mode, only the core services are started, so nothing in the background will be running.

you could also try creating another user account and logging in under that profile to see if things are better.

then there is the repair reload of Windows to try. click the Start button and type reset this pc and tell it to keep everything.
 
Today I tried running with minimal processes at start through a Selective Startup, but not everything gone and it still happened. I'll try full safe mode tonight as well.


Seeing how that goes I'll also end up trying your other suggestions. Worth giving anything a try really!


I realised something today that even after 2 hours the game is generally running fine if I just sit and let it run, everything is smooth. Then when I go to look around using my mouse it starts getting jerky and stutters. I stop moving my mouse and it's fine. Not sure if that's just how lagging works or not but it seems interesting. Seemingly ultimate test though was driving around in the game swerving and around corners, only using keyboard and no mouse, still some lagging happened because it is definitely slower. However then moving the camera around with mouse while driving in a straight line was significantly worse.
Same with a video playing on youtube, video plays fine, go to wiggle the window a bit and it starts lagging.


It's not the whole problem because things definitely start a little slower, but seems to be a part of it.
After a restart these things were fine and no problem.
 
I restarted it in safe mode, just left my computer untouched for about 2.5 hours with only task manager open. The whole time cpu was sitting at 0%, Memory at 5%, after 2.5 hours it was still working fine and smoothly. Certainly seemed fine at least with the limited things I could do in that mode.

But that's good I guess because it means at least the basic windows and hardware is ok? I noticed GPU wasn't an option in task manager during that so guessing it doesn't run? Which could mean that is still possibly the problem. At the moment now I'm letting it run for a while in Diagnostic Startup from msconfig. See if the problem still happens then. Networking seems to still be on though so be interesting to see if it happens
 
JaidenOli said:
I restarted it in safe mode, just left my computer untouched for about 2.5 hours with only task manager open. The whole time cpu was sitting at 0%, Memory at 5%, after 2.5 hours it was still working fine and smoothly. Certainly seemed fine at least with the limited things I could do in that mode.

But that's good I guess because it means at least the basic windows and hardware is ok? I noticed GPU wasn't an option in task manager during that so guessing it doesn't run? Which could mean that is still possibly the problem. At the moment now I'm letting it run for a while in Diagnostic Startup from msconfig. See if the problem still happens then. Networking seems to still be on though so be interesting to see if it happens
Click to expand...
So I ran it in diagnostic mode from msconfig for 2 hours. Just had task manager open. Every stat was consistently at 0%, apart from memory which stayed at 12%-14%. After the 2 hours wasn't showing any sign of slowing or anything. So then I decided to try a game, ended up playing that for an hour. (played on medium settings and it was running fine with no problems, didn't try higher) To be expected stats in task manager went up, but when I closed the game and Steam about 2 minutes later everything was to the baseline stats again. Still no lagging or anything.

So that's good! Must mean that some program or process is causing the gradual slowdown to happen. (or in the last 6 hours the problem has magically gone away).
I took pictures of everything running in task manager under both the processes and services tabs, so if I start my computer up with everything normally, wait 2 hours and see what happens. If it's slow again I should be able to go in and end processes that weren't there when safe (knowing they're also not necessary now) and hopefully see if that finds it.

Other options are I always just use diagnostic startup, though that doesn't seem like a good solution, just ignoring the problem. And manually starting processes back up, restarting and wait to see if that one slows things will take too long.
 
while it's a big hammer to use, I jump pretty well straight to 'nuke it from space' if the quick, obvious stuff doesn't work.

so keep in mind a complete fresh reload of Win10 from a bootable USB stick created by the Windows Media Creation Tool.
 
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