Windows 11 Laptop Very Slow? (1 Viewer)

[iamchemist]

I am running a split Access 2007 database at a non-profit Food Pantry. Previously there have been two Win. 10 laptops talking to a Win. 10 Desktop. Due to a laptop failure, we have had to introduce a Win. 11 Laptop (I3, 16 Gb or RAM) into the System.

We find that the Win. 11 Laptop runs fine immediately after it is booted up, but gets slower and slower (about 4X slower) over the next hour or two of use.

Based on advice from this Forum, the System has been set up to create a Persistent Connection, which initially speeded it up quite a lot.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on or how to fix it? I am pretty sure that rebooting the Win 11 laptop fixes the problem ttemporarily.

Thanks,

Ron

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Usually, the trick for this symptom is to see if you have a diminishing-resource problem. You say this problem occurs if the application is running for a time measured in hours. On the Win11 machine, you can trigger a launch of Windows Task Manager with CTRL-SHIFT-ESC and look at instantaneous resource usage as well as aggregate stats on critical resources.

On the Performance page, you are interested in CPU usage, Memory usage, and disk usage. If you have more than one disk, you should be able to see if either one is being more heavily used. on the Processes page, you should be able to see MSACCESS.EXE as well as its physical memory size.

What you are looking for is, over the long term,

• Any CPU increases in its usage until it saturates. A saturated CPU tells you that you have a computational problem. If you right-click on the CPU statistic, you can get the option to see logical processors rather than overall usage. That would identify a problem CPU.
• The "Available" memory statistic starts dropping.
• The "Disk Active Time" reaches 100% overall.
• The MSACCESS.EXE process memory size starts rapidly growing.
• The MSACCESS.EXE process disk usage ramps up very high and stays that way

It is very unlikely to see any of the first three or the last one. Process memory size COULD grow but I make no bets.

Another issue is that you have massive database bloat potential and it starts bloating (expanding rapidly in size). How often do you have to run a Compact & Repair on your database back-end OR front-end?

 

[Gasman]

I am pretty sure that rebooting the Win 11 laptop fixes the problem ttemporarily.

Best to make sure, else you could be going down the wrong rabbit hole.

 

[CJ_London]

I3 processors are quite slow and not really intended for regular multi tasking so I would also check what tasks are actually running in the background - my guess would be a lot more in win 11 v win 10

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I looked up the I3 processor, because I know it is part of a family of processors. Which KIND of I3 processor do you have? The 14K series, N300 series, 13K, 13KU, 12K, ...? Even within Intel's systems, there are levels of I3 that have anywhere from 2 to 10 cores, and their base vs. turbo clock rates vary quite a bit. The "K" processors have a mix of "efficiency" cores (low-speed, multi-thread) and "performance" cores (higher speed, single-thread).

The idea that the program seems to slow down could be that your virtual memory is getting bigger and you have started to do some paging or swapping. The "memory" column of the Windows Task Manager "processes" list would show you growth of task memory demands. There is a well-buried item that is part of the virtual page management algorithm that says when your process needs to grow in size, it has to inswap, deallocate space in the virtual memory file, then allocate the larger size, and then finally resume normal swapping. Unfortunately, I don't know how to get to the individual process swap rates to be able to tell if you are swapping.

@CJ_London - A multi-core I3 can easily multi-task since at least some of its cores will be multi-thread and an I3 never has less than 2 cores. The most common case is 4 cores, 2nd most common is 8 cores. It is true that Windows 11 has more processes, but there are ways to silence the background. Must be a couple of hundred YouTube articles on shutting down various useless processes. And, if you look on WTM, you see that most of the tasks are small and idle (0% CPU usage). I'm not defending MS or Win 11, we ALL know that Windows is a resource hog. It is just that I've already gone down that path and, other than turning off features you don't need, there is nothing there to cause the performance profile discussed in the OP's original post.

 

[Mark_]

@OP, what else is running on the machine? I've seen some odd issues lately when browsers are left open, say to play music. Once the browser starts taking up too much memory everything started going very slow.

 

[CJ_London]

- A multi-core I3 can easily multi-task since at least some of its cores will be multi-thread and an I3 never has less than 2 cores.

I never said it couldn’t. Just limited, certainly compared with its higher numbered co products. Would be useful for the OP to provide the same information for the other machine for comparison

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I never said it couldn’t. Just limited, certainly compared with its higher numbered co products. Would be useful for the OP to provide the same information for the other machine for comparison

The performance profile of "starts fast, ends up being slower" doesn't depend on the processor. That is more likely to be a software or resources issue.

For what it's worth, my big genealogy project exhibits that same symptom when converting 1.9 Mb UTF-8 files to ANSI text. I'm on an Intel I7 with some decent performance specs. In my case, though, it is that the back half of the input file contains longer records due to the nature of what appears in that part of the file. The conversion scanner has more to do in analyzing that section of the file. Also, I checked and the program develops bloat to the tune of 20-25 Mb per conversion. In this case, it's the price of doing business.

 

[xavier.batlle]

For an I3 processor some processes are a resource eaters, for example... Windows Update.
It's also very important the processors generation to understand its behaviour.

 

[iamchemist]

I looked up the I3 processor, because I know it is part of a family of processors. Which KIND of I3 processor do you have? The 14K series, N300 series, 13K, 13KU, 12K, ...? Even within Intel's systems, there are levels of I3 that have anywhere from 2 to 10 cores, and their base vs. turbo clock rates vary quite a bit. The "K" processors have a mix of "efficiency" cores (low-speed, multi-thread) and "performance" cores (higher speed, single-thread).

The idea that the program seems to slow down could be that your virtual memory is getting bigger and you have started to do some paging or swapping. The "memory" column of the Windows Task Manager "processes" list would show you growth of task memory demands. There is a well-buried item that is part of the virtual page management algorithm that says when your process needs to grow in size, it has to inswap, deallocate space in the virtual memory file, then allocate the larger size, and then finally resume normal swapping. Unfortunately, I don't know how to get to the individual process swap rates to be able to tell if you are swapping.

@CJ_London - A multi-core I3 can easily multi-task since at least some of its cores will be multi-thread and an I3 never has less than 2 cores. The most common case is 4 cores, 2nd most common is 8 cores. It is true that Windows 11 has more processes, but there are ways to silence the background. Must be a couple of hundred YouTube articles on shutting down various useless processes. And, if you look on WTM, you see that most of the tasks are small and idle (0% CPU usage). I'm not defending MS or Win 11, we ALL know that Windows is a resource hog. It is just that I've already gone down that path and, other than turning off features you don't need, there is nothing there to cause the performance profile discussed in the OP's original post.

Doc Man,

I have done a major experiment that makes me think that there is actually something subtle wrong with this Windows 11 PC. When I substitute my wife's Windows 11 Laptop into the System in place of the problem Windows 11 Computer, the slow-down problem goes away. Ther's is a Windows 11 Ryzen 5 computer. This makes me think that we need to replace the problem Windows 11 laptop.

Thoughts?

 

[Gasman]

So what is running on that computer?
When my hp win11 i7 with 16gb slows down, the access for the disks is 100% :-(

So far I have not be able to work out why.

 

[GPGeorge]

So what is running on that computer?
When my hp win11 i7 with 16gb slows down, the access for the disks is 100% :-(

So far I have not be able to work out why.

FWIW. I finally isolated slow downs with 100% disk usage on my second computer to OneDrive for Business, which I have since removed. Performance is back to normal again.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

FWIW. I finally isolated slow downs with 100% disk usage on my second computer to OneDrive for Business, which I have since removed. Performance is back to normal again.

Interesting. According to what I've read, OneDrive can be tuned to not make backups so frequently. It is possibly a mis-tuned OneDrive latency setting. But then again, I don't know for sure because I won't let OneDrive anywhere near my machine. I turned off OneDrive at the registry level as soon as I got my new Win11 system home.

 

[GPGeorge]

Interesting. According to what I've read, OneDrive can be tuned to not make backups so frequently. It is possibly a mis-tuned OneDrive latency setting. But then again, I don't know for sure because I won't let OneDrive anywhere near my machine. I turned off OneDrive at the registry level as soon as I got my new Win11 system home.

I did try for a few days to modify the schedule of backups and folders included in a back up and decided it was just not worth the effort for a computer I only use once or twice a week.

 

[Gasman]

FWIW. I finally isolated slow downs with 100% disk usage on my second computer to OneDrive for Business, which I have since removed. Performance is back to normal again.

Thank you George, it happened on my old works computer as well.
I will investigate that, if I can.
At present I do not think I am logged in to Onedrive, as I seem to recall getting warnins to that effect quite often.

 

[iamchemist]

Doc Man,

I have done a major experiment that makes me think that there is actually something subtle wrong with this Windows 11 PC. When I substitute my wife's Windows 11 Laptop into the System in place of the problem Windows 11 Computer, the slow-down problem goes away. Ther's is a Windows 11 Ryzen 5 computer. This makes me think that we need to replace the problem Windows 11 laptop.

Thoughts?

Nothing else is running on the Windows 11 Laptop that slowly, consistently slows down as it runs our fe database. Initially I said it slowed down over about an hour, but in reality I can begin to see a slow down within 15 min. or running the fe database.

To put a few more details around my little experiment witn another computer - the computer that slows down has an Intel I3 1215U processor with 8 Gb RAM, and the second computer that I substituted (which did not show the slow down problem) has an AMD Ryzen 7530U processor also with 8 Gb of RAM. The problem Laptop is running a new version of Windows 11 and the substituted Laptop is running a few months older version of Windows 11. A 2nd (non-problem) Laptop that is normally in our System is running a several year old version of Windows 10, and has otherwise about the same processor and memory as the problem laptop. When I check the Task Manager on the problem Laptop, during a slow-down, I don't see anything unusual. That is no excessive CPU use, Memory use, etc., and nothing running in the background.

 

[GPGeorge]

Nothing else is running on the Windows 11 Laptop that slowly, consistently slows down as it runs our fe database. Initially I said it slowed down over about an hour, but in reality I can begin to see a slow down within 15 min. or running the fe database.

To put a few more details around my little experiment witn another computer - the computer that slows down has an Intel I3 1215U processor with 8 Gb RAM, and the second computer that I substituted (which did not show the slow down problem) has an AMD Ryzen 7530U processor also with 8 Gb of RAM. The problem Laptop is running a new version of Windows 11 and the substituted Laptop is running a few months older version of Windows 11. A 2nd (non-problem) Laptop that is normally in our System is running a several year old version of Windows 10, and has otherwise about the same processor and memory as the problem laptop. When I check the Task Manager on the problem Laptop, during a slow-down, I don't see anything unusual. That is no excessive CPU use, Memory use, etc., and nothing running in the background.

It's probably environmental then, and those problems are really hard to pin down.

What other software is running on each computer, in addition to the Access FE? Anti-virus program? Backup program? (See my comments about OneDrive for Business.)
How about the location of the FE respective to the BE? Do all three computers have comparable connections to the network folder where the BE resides?

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I can begin to see a slow down within 15 min. or running the fe database.

That slow to show up? This is DEFINITELY a resource issue. I run into that with my Ancestry database because it takes several minutes to convert the UTF-8 file to ANSI TXT format and I run a record counter on screen to show progress as well as a progress bar. The first 20,000 records are moderately fast when compared to the rest of the file. I can say without doubt that there is at least a 10-for-1 slowdown between the first 10K records and the last 10K, out of a total of over 65K records and 1.9 Mb worth of text in total.

 

[WallaceBeal]

I was never be a windows 11 user. I have used windows 7 for a longer period of time. I was happy enough. I have been using Windows 10 right now. This one is also good. I don't want to upgrade it to windows 11 anymore.

 

[iamchemist]

It's probably environmental then, and those problems are really hard to pin down.

What other software is running on each computer, in addition to the Access FE? Anti-virus program? Backup program? (See my comments about OneDrive for Business.)
How about the location of the FE respective to the BE? Do all three computers have comparable connections to the network folder where the BE resides?

There is no other software running on the slow Laptop. Ours is a closed Ethernet Network, that is not connected to the Internet at all. So, there is no anti-virus software running.

I have wondered if the slow-down problem stems from Windows 11 not being able to get to the Internet, but hooking that Laptop up to an Internet Hotspot on my phone does not remedy the problem.

Physically, both the slow and non-slow FE Laptops are located about 25 ft away from the Desktop running the BE database. The Laptops are connected to an Ethernet switch, which is then connected to the Deskop computer running the BE Database. Switching wh ports on the Switch for the two FE Laptops has no effect. All Ethernet ports involved and the Switch are running 1 Gbit Ethernet. I should check and make sure the slow-Laptop is not set to "Negociate" for Ethernet speed, when it should be set for 1Gbit.