Windows 8.1 Pro Extremely Poor Perfomance

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feeshta

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Mar 22, 2011
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Hello all. I recently upgraded my PC, and switched to Windows 8.1 Pro in the process. I replaced the Motherboard, CPU, RAM, System Hard Drive, and operating system. The new system is a Gigabyte Sniper G1 Z97 MB, Intel 4670K, 16 GB DDR 3 2133 RAM, and a Samsung Evo 256GB Solid state drive. I was expecting a solid performance gains, but have been experiencing exactly the opposite.

I seem to have an issue with the memory. If I open multiple windows in Google chrome, or for example run a torrent program, they eat up all of the RAM in no time flat and the system bogs horribly. I have Qbittorrent set to throttle upload speed to less than 200KBPS, so that should not be an issue. It starts out looking fine, but then suddenly it will be at 95% plus RAM usage. Closing Chrome or Qbittorrent does nothing to releave the situation, the only thing that helps is a reboot. If you leave it go, after a few minutes it becomes completely unresponsive, and I have to reboot using the reset button in order to proceed, as I can't even get it to restart from the menu. These are all things I managed fine with the old PC, only occasionally running into lag when I had a ton of windows open or something like that, and never experiencing the lag I see now.

I have noticed performance issues even with very little going on. Dragging windows around in Chrome gets really laggy, with the window following the mouse with a half second of delay or more at times.

Another issue is just an annoyance, but it is a big one. I have 2 spinning platter storage drives, and since the switch to windows 8 they make constant clicking noises, often at times when they should not even be in use. I have the power plan settings adjusted so they should never be powered down(180 Min), but they still behave as if they are constantly powering down and then restarting, giving the loud audible click each time they do. This is especially annoying when I navigate files, as each time I select a file to see properties, I get a loud click from the hard drive. It does this even when I am looking at files on the solid state drive. With my old PC and windows 7, this was initially a problem only when I had been working off the C drive for a while and then attempted to access something from the storage drives. Then I would get a pause, one loud click, and then I was good. Now it's clicking every time I select a file it seems.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
Solution
shortstuff_mt
I would say your malware hasn't been completely removed from the system. It's a multi-step process to remove most malware. Just removing it with Malwarebytes likely didn't completely remove it from the system. See here:

http://malwaretips.com/blogs/pup-optional-installcore-a-virus/
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shortstuff_mt

shortstuff_mt

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Apr 1, 2008
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It sounds like you possibly have multiple problems with the system. My first guess, especially since you mention torrents, is that you have some sort of malware on the system. I also run Windows 8.1 on a system with an i7, 16GB of RAM, and an SSD and it absolutely flies. Another possibility is that the system is overheating. Have you monitored the idle/load temps?

It also sounds like at least one of your HDDs is beginning to fail. It's not normal for a HDD to make a loud clicking noise. That usually indicates the drive is dying.
 
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feeshta

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Mar 22, 2011
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Well, you were definitely onto something with the overheating thing. I downloaded Open Hardware Monitor, and my CPU was at close to 100C. Yikes. Opened up the tower, and the CPU cooler fan was not running. I swapped the wire over to one of the system fan plugs and it fired right up. Temp went down to about 30C and has stayed there.

The really odd thing is that if I plug the case exhaust fan into the CPU fan plug, it works, but the CPU fan itself sits there and just kind of misfires every couple seconds when it's plugged in there. It will move maybe a quarter rotation and stop. Case fan runs fine, but the CPU cooler does not work when plugged into that port. Weird.

I had been pleasantly surprised with how quite the OEM CPU cooler was. Little did I know. Now that it's running, it's noisy as hell. Need to do something with that. I have a liquid cooled CPU cooler, but I seem to have misplaced the extra mounting hardware and can't install it on the new motherboard until I find it, so I'm stuck with the the one that came with the CPU for the moment.

On the hard drive thing, it's not going bad. It has always done this to one degree or the other, but is much worse since I installed Windows 8. It's not a clicking noise like a bad drive makes, but rather the click of the platter motor engaging like you get when you boot a machine with a spinning drive. The problem is that for some reason windows 8 is spinning the motor down all the time, then turning it back on. It's done as a power saving technique, but electricity is included in my rent so I don't worry about that. In windows 7 you just set the power management to keep them spinning, then they don't do that except when you start the machine or are away from it for a few hours. Windows 8 is doing something very different though.

Anyone have any ideas on the hard drive clicking? Should I maybe mark this one as solved and create another for that purpose?
 
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feeshta

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Mar 22, 2011
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Well it turns out I wasn't nuts when I installed that factory CPU cooler. It does work...sometimes. It died again on the system fan plug a few hours later. I managed to get the water-cooled unit I have zip tied into place until I can find another solution. Not ideal, but it's keeping temps in the 30's so far.
 
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johnbl

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Nov 4, 2012
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Hard driver activity : not sure if it matters but windows 8.x will attempt to read your installed drives and do repairs on the drives while your system is idle. This can take days to complete depending on the size of the drives and the number of problems found. Sometimes you need to set your system not to sleep and let the system run idle overnight so the system process can complete its checking/relocation of data from bad/weak sectors.

 
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feeshta

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Well, it's had over a week now, and it's still doing it. I don't think that can be the problem. It also is still having the memory usage issue on occasion. It will somehow shoot from about 20% RAM usage to over 95%, then become really sluggish, and eventually lock up. The temp issue is corrected now, and the highest temp I have seen is 46C on one of the cores. Malwarebytes scan revealed something called "PUP.Optional.Installcore.A", a registry key and value, and they have been removed.

The only time I don't get clicking from the hard drive is when it is constant use, such as when I am recording a TV show. All other times it clicks roughly every 10 seconds, and whenever I access information about a file, such as by right clicking, whether that file is on the drive in question or not. It also often clicks when I click on an internet link and the like.
 
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shortstuff_mt

shortstuff_mt

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Apr 1, 2008
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I would say your malware hasn't been completely removed from the system. It's a multi-step process to remove most malware. Just removing it with Malwarebytes likely didn't completely remove it from the system. See here:

http://malwaretips.com/blogs/pup-optional-installcore-a-virus/
 
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