Badly Hesitating/stuttering Pc

Well, I posted my issue over in the malware forum, and was told I don't have any malware, so I should try here.

I have a Dell XPS 8700 that is overbuilt for my needs, but yet it is very badly hesitating and stuttering on me to the point of being unusable. Basically, it hangs up very briefly over and over and over again. The mouse will hesitate, then go, then hesitate, then go as I move it across the screen. My typing will fail to register for a second or two, and then will all show up. When I try to highlight text, my dragging of the cursor will stick part way through, and it will turn off my double-click, so I end up not selecting the rest of the sentence. When I try to drag files, the mouse will stick half way across my drag, and once again my double-click gets undone, so the file drops where ever it was poisitioned at the moment the hesistation bug hit me. It's kinda like some program keeps starting up over and over and over again and freezes up my machine each and every time.

The symptoms show up most dramatically when I run resource-intense applications, but as I said, the computer is WAY overbuilt for my modest needs, so none of these applications require anywhere near enough resources to get me these kinds of problems (and I've run all these same applications on older, less robust machines with no problems).

The symptoms seem to have started several months ago, if I recall. Opening up the Task Manager never really showed me any clear culprits, and so I just didn't have the time to attack this problem until now. Like I said above, the malware steps didn't turn up anything. I've also run CCleaner, IoBit Advanced SystemCare, Wise Care 365, I've defragmented, run a disk scan, etc, none of which helped.

My system specs:

Intel Core i7-4790 CPU @ 3.6GHz
32GB DDR3 memory (Corsair Vengeance Pro)
500GB Samsung EVO SATA 3.0 SSD
MSI Radeon R9 270 video card with 2GB memory

I run Outlook, Word, IE, a SQL database program called ProLaw, X1 search, ESET NOD32 endpoint antivirus, etc. None of those are terrible drags, but IE seems to take up a lot more resources than it should. Closing it sometimes helps the problem for a bit, but does not completely fix it. Closing X1 does the same--it helps for a bit, but doesn't fix it. The amount of memory and processor speed I have, coupled with the SSD, really should be able to very easily handle these kinds of programs.

 

I see you're running W10, please uninstall all 3rd party security software (use the maker's uninstall tools/methods to be sure they're completely removed). You can retain SpyBot's passive innoculations, they shouldn't affect performance.

Enable only Defender, SmartScreen and the Windows firewall during troubleshooting.

Ensure you have a small paging file on the SSD, 1GB should be plenty.

 

I would also look at your start up programs. You can see them most easily in Task Manager > Start Ups and look at the ones flagged 'enabled'.
You can post a focussed screen shot of them (alt + PrtScr) of them if you wish for advice. Most users have more start ups than are needed. Most programs can be launched as and when needed.

One other resource-draining duplication you have is the two 'optimisation' programs: IoBit Advanced System Care and Wise Care 365.
Thy both do exactly the same things and my experience is that it is potentially dangerous to have both. I suspect they both have start ups at boot, and they never need to be in start ups.
If you really feel the need to have such a program, then choose one and uninstall the other.

Defragmentation in any Windows OS from Windows 7 onwards is mostly unnecessary and certainly won't make a system that has reasonable free space any faster, and an SSD drive should never be defragged.

 

Let's not get carried away and rip out everything 3rd party at once, eh?

 

Chaslang on the Malware Forum concurs with removing duplicate security and optimisation programs.

 

I noticed already, I hope it makes you feel better.

I prefer to go for the most likely first, then comment on the other stuff once fixed. Doing it all at once makes it more difficult for the OP to see where the issue(s) lay and gain 'easy' experience from it.

 

My troubleshooting on systems with the OP's symptoms has always been to remove such programs cleanly, restart, and reinstall the required ones one by one monitoring the effects. Always seems to have worked well enough. But we already know that duplicate AVs and Optimisers rarely run smoothly.
Having just one real-time AV, and one system optimiser, is standard advice for smooth system running.

 

What I'm doing is uninstalling the security software a couple at a time, restarting, and checking.

I will post again when either I uninstall something that fixes it, or I run out of things to uninstall. ;o)

 

Read the final post in your Malware Forum thread by the lead Malware Expert Chas Lang. It is duplication of other programs (aside from security) causing you problems, ie having Advanced System Care and Wise Care 365 is overkill and likely to cause problems.

 

I would recommend a error check on that drive.

In search bar type CMD for command prompt.Right click for administrator rights.

Now while in cmd Type this---->> chkdsk /f

It will ask a yes or no question.Press Y for yes than reboot system and let it scan the SSD for errors.

And than after that scan,Run this -->> sfc /scannow

SFC will scan your OS for any errors on the OS.

 

Most damage done by 'utility'/'tweaking' software is done during the running of it initially (so it's best to try to 'undo' any changes made by them before removal), few have active components that run close enough to the Windows kernel to cause issues like the hangs and crashes that clashing security software do.

 

I don't like SSD be cause they seem to do more harm than good some times.

I would all so do a system restore to the last date that the system was working fine.

 

Okay, so I removed everything but NOD32, and did so slowly and methodically as such:

1. Removed MalwareBytes, SuperAntiSpyware and Spybot Search and Destroy
2. RESTART
3. Removed Emsisoft Antivirus/malware, IObit: Surfing Protection; Malware Fighter; Smart Defrag; Driver Booster
4. RESTART
5. Removed RogueKiller
6. Run WiseCare, RESTART, uninstall WiseCare
7. Run Advanced SystemCare, RESTART, uninstall Advanced SystemCare

After getting all of that security software off of there, for a bit I thought things were better, but by today it's just as bad as ever.

 

ESET NOD32 also counts as 3rd party security software, please uninstall it, use ESET's removal tool/method if you can find it. Enable Defender and Windows firewall during testing.

 

I ran chkdsk /f and sfc /scannow as recommended by wile e coyote. The second one found corrupt files and sucessfully repaired them. I've attached that log. Actually, I haven't--it was too large to attach.

 

Ran CCleaner's Registry scan. Results attached.

 

Try zipping any logs that are too large to add normally.

Edit: ESET removal tool: http://support.eset.com/kb3527/?locale=en_US

 

Here's the sfc /scannow log zipped.

 

You now need to look carefully at what is in Start Up programs.
Post a focussed screen shot of Task Manager > Start Ups (alt + prt scr will just take a shot of that).

You don't need the huge and difficult to read cbs log.
You need to generate a shorter easier to read sfc text document:
See this guide:
How to view details of the System File Checker process
To view the details that included in the CBS.Log file, you can copy the information to the Sfcdetails.txt file by using the Findstr command, and then view the details in the Sfcdetails.txt. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open an elevated command prompt as described in the previous step 1.
2. At the command prompt, type the following command, and then press ENTER:
   findstr /c:"[SR]" %windir%\Logs\CBS\CBS.log >"%userprofile%\Desktop\sfcdetails.txt"

Just copy n paste the above full last line of text into a command prompt(admin) by right clicking the windows tile icon bottom left and choose command prompt(admin)
Then attach that resulting text doc here.

 

Okay, so attached is the sfcdetails.txt file.

Also attached are screenshots of my start up programs list too.

I'm going to uninstall Eset NOD32 as recommended above, and run the things mentioned just recently over in the malware post.

 

Ok well image 1 is unreadable, it needs to be split in 3 separate parts as focussed screen shots - but I can see peering at it that there are many many enabled start ups. With image 2, you have more enabled start ups than I have ever seen on a system. No wonder it's lagging.
No program that can be launched as and when needed, needs to be in start ups.
On the point about Eset, you really do not need to uninstall it if it is your chosen principal AV program. It is only *duplicate* AV programs that are inadvisable. The list of RED items in chaslang's post in your malware forums thread is the relevant useful uninstall list.

The SFC text log shows nothing to worry about.

 

Wow! I counted 44 startup entries. Even more important, how many services do you have running?

 

@dr.moriarty please note that I properly posted on the malware forum first, and I was then told that I had no malware, so I should post here.

I then followed that instruction, and did exactly that. After doing so, and completely outside of anything I could possibly control, further posts were made on the malware post making additional recommendations.

So, while I completely understand that it is preferable not to start multiple threads on the same topic, in this case I did so sequentially, just exactly as I was asked to do.

 

Okay, so looks like I have about 290 services running, just counting from the Services tab in Task Manager.

While I will stop unnecessary start ups and services as part of this process, I should point out the following fact: the number of start ups and services has NOT significantly changed from before this problem started to afterward. As such, my machine was running all of these start ups and services just fine for well over a year. It was able to handle that load before, and now it is not, so the sheer number of start ups and services is not, standing alone, the entire problem.

In any event, what do you recommend for stopping services in Win 10? Going to the individual programs themselves and turning off the auto-start feature, or removing them from the Start folder, or disabling them from the Startup tab in Task Manager or using msconfig, or the Tools in CCleaner, or something else?

 

Having duplicate AV programs, and duplicate system optimisers wont necessarily cause problems at once or at the same time. But the fact they are ill-advised has been the case since the very first Windows OS. It's nothing new at all.
As well as that having several dozens of start up programs that are not remotely needed - even on a well-resourced system - most definitely will have a progressive drain on the system itself. Even a super-fit athlete will eventually suffer from doing too much too often.

Disabling start ups that are not needed can be done firstly in most programs that allow that in their settings. Ones that don't, use Task Manager - Start Ups.
Services that do not need to be 'automatic' can be changed to manual in services.msc

 

You should start over here.
http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/black-vipers-windows-10-service-configurations/
And do 5 at a time.

 

Okay, so the blackviper page discusses his recommendations for turning off built-in Windows services, and he definitely recommends using services.msc and not msconfig for that particular purpose.

I think that what we are initially aiming to do on my system is to disable a lot of the third party startups and services, not the default Windows ones. So, for the purposes of turning off third party startups and services, which of the options I listed above is best? I would imagine there would be a hierarchy of preferred methods, starting with turning off the auto start from within third party application if possilbe, and then simply removing others from the Startup folder. Those two options will likely only knock off a couple. For the rest, should I disable them from the Startup tab in Task Manager, or msconfig (or services.msc, tho' that likely only covers Windows services), or the Tools in CCleaner?

 

I would all so Go into your Temp folder and clean it out.

There are a few things that like to hide in there.

In the search option on task bar Type this --->> %temp%

Open the temp folder and delete every thing in there.99% of the time it's not needed.