PC turned slow overnight (only with games)

Agustin Malianni · May 7, 2014

Hello everybody, I have quite a big problem.
My pc is not the latest, but I can play a few games on it. A few days ago, everything was perfect, I turned my PC off and next day when I turned it on, gaming was really, really slow, animations run at about 10 fps,(even on games from 2005) I know it's not my hardware, since I have played these games a lot of times on this PC, and I had absolutely no problem, do I have a virus or something? Will formating my pc fix it? Should I format everything since there's a chance the virus is on my external drive? I haven't installed any programs recently, nor even before the problem happened.
Thanks in advice!

HiTechObsessed · May 7, 2014

What GPU do you have?

Uninstall the display driver completely, download the latest from the manufacturers (AMD/NVIDIA) website, and do a clean install.

junkeymonkey · May 7, 2014

are these steam games??

Agustin Malianni · May 7, 2014

HiTechObsessed :

Nvidia Geforce 9600
I also have a pentium r dualcore 3.0 gh
2011 much lol.

Agustin Malianni · May 7, 2014

junkeymonkey :

My game of choice is League of Legends, which isn't on steam, but I have a few steam games, which work just as badly.

notherdude · May 7, 2014

Is it just in games that the machine seems slow? Any running programs or processes using up a lot of system resources?

Agustin Malianni · May 7, 2014

notherdude :

Not at all, I close everthing that can be closed when I game, since my pc is quite old. Even when closing more programs than before, my PC is extremely slow only and just only when I game, web browsing is just as fast as it was before, and everything else is still just fine.

notherdude · May 7, 2014

Agustin Malianni :

Have you tried what hitechobcessed suggested? Doing a clean install of Nvidia drivers?

Agustin Malianni · May 7, 2014

notherdude :

Agustin Malianni :

Have you tried what hitechobcessed suggested? Doing a clean install of Nvidia drivers?

I'll try right now, but I don't understand why would my pc get so slow if my drivers are outdated, because the game ran just fine with those drivers...

notherdude · May 7, 2014

Agustin Malianni :

notherdude :

I'll try right now, but I don't understand why would my pc get so slow if my drivers are outdated, because the game ran just fine with those drivers...

Well, it's probably something else but refreshing the drivers is standard in these cases and sometimes fixes odd video issues, plus it's quick and easy to do and while you are at it I would re-seat the video card in it's slot.

Agustin Malianni · May 7, 2014

notherdude :

Agustin Malianni :

Well, it's probably something else but refreshing the drivers is standard in these cases and sometimes fixes odd video issues, plus it's quick and easy to do and while you are at it I would re-seat the video card in it's slot.

Did everything you told me to, still nothing. Should I just format my pc?

HiTechObsessed · May 7, 2014

When gaming, what kind of CPU and GPU usage are you getting, and what kind of CPU and GPU temperatures are you getting? Download Hardware monitor: http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html and let me know.

Also, what kind of power supply do you have?

And have you tried reseating the GPU and RAM?

notherdude · May 7, 2014

Maybe, if you don't have too much to lose as far as re-installing a lot of programs and games then go ahead and see what happens. Before doing that you could run malwarebytes and make sure you have no bitcoin miner virus running and then do a system restore and if you have another video card laying around install it and see if games run better.

Agustin Malianni · May 7, 2014

HiTechObsessed :

http://i.imgur.com/oaZJ1Oy.png
That is what came up when I opened the program with League of Legends opened up.
As for my power supply, I can't find my screwdriver, lol.

bambiboom · May 7, 2014

Agustin Malianni,

Something very similar happened to me about three weeks ago when my HP z420 workstation performance went overnight from a Passmark system rating of 3815 to 2204- and the CPU score went from 8995 to 5007 - a reduction of nearly half. It was barely usable but I kept at it, fussing a couple of days, ran tests, ant-virus, checked drivers- whatever I could think to try. Without improvement, and an hour away from reloading everything (and my C:\ drive has 180GB on it), I called a friend who is the IT fellow at a large A&E firm and he asked a curious question- did the performance change overnight from Tuesday to a Wednesday?

Yes!

And, this is what had happened: Windows 7 updates are done on Tuesday nights and the problems are so predictable that the IT guys refer to "The Wednesday Headache". He told me to check the Control Panel > Power Settings and there it was > Update had reset my system to the most conservative setting. I reset to "Performance" and voila and eureka- the performance became 3923- CPU went 8995 to 9139, 2D went from 767 to 839 and so on- better than it had ever been.

A simple, dumb thing, but worth having a look.

Good luck!

Cheers,

BambiBoom

PS: The Aero Theme is one the greatest robbers of performance- use the ugly Basic Theme and see your graphics scores improve 25%

HP z420 (2014) > Xeon E5-1620 quad core @ 3.6 / 3.8GHz > 24GB ECC 1600 RAM > Quadro 4000 (2GB)> Samsung 840 SSD 250GB /Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > AE3000 USB WiFi > HP 2711X, 27" 1920 X 1080 > Windows 7 Ultimate 64 >[Passmark system rating = 3923, 2D= 839 / 3D=2048]

Dell Precision T5400 (2008) > 2X Xeon X5460 quad core @3.16GHz > 16GB ECC 667> Quadro FX 4800 (1.5GB) > WD RE4 500GB / Seagate Barracuda 500GB > M-Audio 2496 Sound Card / Linksys 600N WiFi > Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit >[Passmark system rating = 1859, 2D= 512 / 3D=1097]

2D, 3D CAD, Image Processing, Rendering, Text > Architecture, industrial design, graphic design, written projects

Agustin Malianni · May 7, 2014

notherdude :

Yeah I have nothing to lose, exept a few personal stuff which I won't back up, in the case of having a virus is hidden somewhere in there. I don't have a spare card to test...

Agustin Malianni · May 7, 2014

bambiboom :

Agustin Malianni,

Something very similar happened to me about three weeks ago when my HP z420 workstation performance went overnight from a Passmark system rating of 3815 to 2204- and the CPU score went from 8995 to 5007 - a reduction of nearly half. It was barely usable but I kept at it, fussing a couple of days, ran tests, ant-virus, checked drivers- whatever I could think to try. Without improvement, and an hour away from reloading everything (and my C:\ drive has 180GB on it), I called a friend who is the IT fellow at a large A&E firm and he asked a curious question- did the performance change overnight from Tuesday to a Wednesday?

Yes!

And, this is what had happened: Windows 7 updates are done on Tuesday nights and the problems are so predictable that the IT guys refer to "The Wednesday Headache". He told me to check the Control Panel > Power Settings and there it was > Update had reset my system to the most conservative setting. I reset to "Performance" and voila and eureka- the performance became 3923- CPU went 8995 to 9139, 2D went from 767 to 839 and so on- better than it had ever been.

A simple, dumb thing, but worth having a look.

Good luck!

Cheers,

BambiBoom

PS: The Aero Theme is one the greatest robbers of performance- use the ugly Basic Theme and see your graphics scores improve 25%

HP z420 (2014) > Xeon E5-1620 quad core @ 3.6 / 3.8GHz > 24GB ECC 1600 RAM > Quadro 4000 (2GB)> Samsung 840 SSD 250GB /Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > AE3000 USB WiFi > HP 2711X, 27" 1920 X 1080 > Windows 7 Ultimate 64 >[Passmark system rating = 3923, 2D= 839 / 3D=2048]

Dell Precision T5400 (2008) > 2X Xeon X5460 quad core @3.16GHz > 16GB ECC 667> Quadro FX 4800 (1.5GB) > WD RE4 500GB / Seagate Barracuda 500GB > M-Audio 2496 Sound Card / Linksys 600N WiFi > Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit >[Passmark system rating = 1859, 2D= 512 / 3D=1097]

2D, 3D CAD, Image Processing, Rendering, Text > Architecture, industrial design, graphic design, written projects

Hey, thanks for helping out with the theme thing! Can you please post a screenshot of your "Power Settings" tab on the Control Panel? A screenshot would help, since I have Windows on Spanish and when I enter what I think is "my" Power settings tab, I can't find an Update button anywhere.

bambiboom · May 7, 2014

Agustin Malianni wrote :

Hey, thanks for helping out with the theme thing! Can you please post a screenshot of your "Power Settings" tab on the Control Panel? A screenshot would help, since I have Windows on Spanish and when I enter what I think is "my" Power settings tab, I can't find an Update button anywhere.

Agustin Malianni,

To be clear, there were two different items mentioned- the power setting and the display theme. There is no update, only making new settings. The important idea was that a general Windows OS update may have reset the power settings on your system as had happened to me. The second thought was that the Aero theme reduces graphics performance.

Unfortunately, I don't have an image host to send a screen shot- perhaps I can describe it. Go to Control Panel and look for (the equivalent) of "Power Options". On my system (Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit) the Power Options ("Opciones Energía"?) has an icon which appears as a green coffee pot with a cord and plug on it- a funny idea. Clicking on the coffee pot, there are three power options : "Balanced" (Equilibrado?), "High Performance" ("Alto Rendimiento"?) "Power Saver" ("Energía Ahorro"?).

Originally, I was using "Balanced" setting. This setting turned off the system and monitor after it was idle for an hour. The Windows update had reset this to the most extreme "Power Saver" setting- which reduced the performance by half. I then manually reset to "High Performance" by simply clicking on that choice, and that setting made the performance better than ever.

The other item, the Theme, may be changed by right clicking on a blank space on the desktop, then going to "Personalize" ("Personalizar"?), and then clicking on the "Basic Theme", which doesn't have the animations. The real savings in graphics power is by not having the Transparency option of the Aero Theme. I was very surprised by the improvement with the Basic Theme over the Aero. The Taskbar at the bottom is an ugly baby blue gradient that can't be changed, but it's worth the ugly colors to me to have much better 2D and 3D performance. I also use a solid color background, no screen saver, and no system sounds- the most plain appearance possible to save system resources.

Esto puede no ser la solucion pero siempre esperar la respuesta mas sencila.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

Agustin Malianni · May 8, 2014

bambiboom :

Agustin Malianni wrote :

Hey, thanks for helping out with the theme thing! Can you please post a screenshot of your "Power Settings" tab on the Control Panel? A screenshot would help, since I have Windows on Spanish and when I enter what I think is "my" Power settings tab, I can't find an Update button anywhere.

Agustin Malianni,

To be clear, there were two different items mentioned- the power setting and the display theme. There is no update, only making new settings. The important idea was that a general Windows OS update may have reset the power settings on your system as had happened to me. The second thought was that the Aero theme reduces graphics performance.

Unfortunately, I don't have an image host to send a screen shot- perhaps I can describe it. Go to Control Panel and look for (the equivalent) of "Power Options". On my system (Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit) the Power Options ("Opciones Energía"?) has an icon which appears as a green coffee pot with a cord and plug on it- a funny idea. Clicking on the coffee pot, there are three power options : "Balanced" (Equilibrado?), "High Performance" ("Alto Rendimiento"?) "Power Saver" ("Energía Ahorro"?).

Originally, I was using "Balanced" setting. This setting turned off the system and monitor after it was idle for an hour. The Windows update had reset this to the most extreme "Power Saver" setting- which reduced the performance by half. I then manually reset to "High Performance" by simply clicking on that choice, and that setting made the performance better than ever.

The other item, the Theme, may be changed by right clicking on a blank space on the desktop, then going to "Personalize" ("Personalizar"?), and then clicking on the "Basic Theme", which doesn't have the animations. The real savings in graphics power is by not having the Transparency option of the Aero Theme. I was very surprised by the improvement with the Basic Theme over the Aero. The Taskbar at the bottom is an ugly baby blue gradient that can't be changed, but it's worth the ugly colors to me to have much better 2D and 3D performance. I also use a solid color background, no screen saver, and no system sounds- the most plain appearance possible to save system resources.

Esto puede no ser la solucion pero siempre esperar la respuesta mas sencila.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

Thanks for making it so clear! But still, no luck with my graphics card, guess I'll just have to start from zero.

PC turned slow overnight (only with games)

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