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Windows 7 always slow after idle
Ath:
Besides that, the symptoms are not those of a virus.
-BGM (June 11, 2019, 04:55 PM)
--- End quote ---
Apologies, that's not what I was suggesting.
Most current AV systems are more like heavy duty system-intruders, resulting in unpredictable slowdowns, irregular fan-spinups, cause occasional high disk-activity, and stuff like that, including the symptoms you are describing. The Microsoft offerings with Windows 7 and 10 seem to be the most performance-friendly incarnations in AV-land.
All (hardware-)drivers are up to date (no beta stuff etc.), I presume? (You didn't answer that... :-\)
BGM:
Ath - sorry! No, no beta stuff. Drivers are as up to date as I can get them. I think it is something to do with the interaction of the idle process, the processor, and the graphics cards.
When the slowness starts, sometimes I can fix it by closing random applications. It's as if one of the programs "locks" up the graphics. Another time or two, I've fixed it by applying nVidia 3D settings to random applications. But neither of those fixes is consistent, and I can't pinpoint any particular program to be a culprit. There's something else going on.
I have, indeed cleaned the innards of the machine, not long ago, and have reset the RAM chips. The motherboard, processor and RAM are all less than one year old at this point. One of the graphics cards is also a year old or less, the other a year or two older.
It seems like this is impossible to solve, that's why I've posted here to see if anyone has any ideas. I can't find anything wrong with the HDDs or SSDs using diagnostics programs.
I never had these issues until I upgraded the motherboard. I do still need to run the memtest. But other than the unpredictable slowness, there are no other issues at all. The only lead I have seems to be related to system idle, and I normally discover it in the morning when I begin to work, bringing my computer out of screensaver mode.
I've been running zzStarwars as the screensaver; I'm going to switch that and see if it helps. And I'll try adding DisplayFusion and the .scr files to the exculsion list for MSE.
Ath:
Did you install Windows 7 anew, or updated the existing installation from your previous hardware setup? That situation is known to sometimes (often?) cause undetermined trouble because of unneeded hardware drivers clashing with useful drivers.
Shades:
You upgraded just the motherboard, or you upgraded motherboard and RAM (DDR3 to DDR4 perhaps?). The RAM modules you are using could have timing issues with the new board.
Whenever you buy a new motherboard, you usually get a manual with it that shows the brands and models of RAM modules that are certified to work. If you do not use modules from that list, your mileage will vary. While it should not be a big issue to have different brand/models of RAM, it can be. Errors can be really weird too and/or vague as well.
Also, now I have read some info about your board, disable any overclocking feature (RAM boost) in the BIOS/UEFI and see if that solves the issue. Never had really good or bad experiences with MSI products. More of an ASUS man myself.
How many RAm modules do you use on the mainboard? 1 or 2 modules? Or more? In those cases, you could still try to transplant the RAM in the different slots on the board. Maybe you accidentally put the module(s) in the less optimal set of RAM slots. Motherboards use nowadays different colors for each of the banks.
It might even be a good idea to take the RAM out and write down all the information that is mentioned on them. Most brands/models have a sticker or label that mentions the model number. Most of the time also the timing settings for the RAM modules. You can then apply the recorded timing settings in BIOS/UEFI. While such settings are usually managed by the board itself, it can be helpful to fill in the correct timing settings yourself.
Come to think of it, if you use more than one RAM module, are they all the same model or even brand? Mix-n-matching of RAM from different brands can lead to undesirable results. Sometimes even different models from the same brand are problematic.
In the case of multiple RAM modules, you might even have run with only one for a bit, just see if the problem still occurs. The new board might not be able the handle both modules at the same time, but separately each module might work fine. Something that can take quite some trial-and-error, before finding the working combo.
BGM:
I haven't totally figured this out yet, but I swapped screensavers so that I was using anything other than the zzStarwars one (my favourite) and I haven't had the hangups for awhile.
Another thing I noticed was my disk grinding alot with RAM consumed by ClipX (64bit) and NVDisplay.Container.exe (nvidia's tray app). I killed nvdisplay; of course, it restarts itself, but is better the next run. For ClipX, I uninstalled the 64bit version and installed the 32 bit version and that seems to have calmed that one. They were both running up to around 800MB RAM each.
The only other big culprit for RAM consumption is Waterfox (runs up to 2GB sometimes), but you know how that goes.
If I figure out anything else, I will post it in case someone else comes a-looking for answers.
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