Solved! New Dell Inspiron 3583 is slow right out of the box.

[DanielKent]

I´ve had this for a month or so, but it was slow from the start and hasn´t gotten much better. I´ve installed every Win10 update (latest is version 2004, as well as this one: October 13, 2020-KB4578968 Cumulative Update for .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8 for Windows 10 , version 20H2.

I ran the UserBenchmark executable and got this:

UserBenchmarks: Game 2%, Desk 60%, Work 2%
CPU: Intel Core i5-8265U - 64.7%
GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 620 - 5.3%
HDD: WD WD10SPZX-00HKTT0 1TB - 12.2%
RAM: Unknown SMS4TDC3C0K0446SCG 1x4GB - 35.2%
MBD: Dell Inspiron 3583

UserBenchmarks: Game 2%, Desk 60%, Work 2%
CPU: Intel Core i5-8265U - 65.2%
GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 620 - 5.6%
HDD: WD WD10SPZX-00HKTT0 1TB - 23.2%
RAM: Unknown SMS4TDC3C0K0446SCG 1x4GB - 34.9%
MBD: Dell Inspiron 3583

I realize we didn´t buy a high end PC, but I certainly expected better from an 8th Generation i5 processor and 4GB of RAM.

The first thing I altered when setting it up was to install the Chrome browser and not use MS Edge. Could this be part of the problem? I get the feeling that the pc really doesn´t perform well with a browser other than Edge. It seems to lag even when switching between active browser tabs. Pages load slowly and it just drags sometimes.

It boots up at a decent speed, but opening apps, switching between them or doing basic functions just seem very slow. I have a 2 1/2 year old HP with an i3 processor that works faster than this.

Is there anything I can do with this configuration without buying more hardware?

Thanks.

 

[rgd1101]

high background cpu usage
not enough ram.
slow hdd.

 

[DanielKent]

What can I do about the high CPU usage? It amazed me to see the load of programs running in task manager. Since we´re using our BitDefender account on 5 other devices, we decided to activate the free 1-year McAffee AV. It uses up a lot of resources. I´ve heard that for a single machine it would be better to uninstall it and just use Windows Defender. Opinion? What can I do to streamline this machine? We don´t use it for any intensive work.

 

[AlHuneke]

4GB of RAM is likely not enough. I find 8GB to make a big difference depending on what you are running. Do you normally run lots of programs at once? Any that you know to require a lot of memory? I would start by going to Crucial .Com and seeing if you can add more memory. This is an inexpensive upgrade. I also always reinstall Windows when I get a new PC (clean install). This get rid of a lot of "crapware". This is not a reinstall for the faint of heart but is well described on the internet, Backup any data first!! Running Task Manager will tell you what is using CPU and Memory resources. Task manager also has a startup tab that show all the software loaded on startup. Be very careful about what you disable, but you may spot some programs you know you don't need. As mentioned above, if you have a hard drive instead of an SSD, changing that will make a large difference but will cost some money.

I never run anything but Windows defender and have never had a problem. Your mileage may vary but the clean install will get rid of all traces of MacAfee.

 

[DanielKent]

4GB of RAM is likely not enough. I find 8GB to make a big difference depending on what you are running. Do you normally run lots of programs at once? Any that you know to require a lot of memory? I would start by going to Crucial .Com and seeing if you can add more memory. This is an inexpensive upgrade. I also always reinstall Windows when I get a new PC (clean install). This get rid of a lot of "crapware". This is not a reinstall for the faint of heart but is well described on the internet, Backup any data first!! Running Task Manager will tell you what is using CPU and Memory resources. Task manager also has a startup tab that show all the software loaded on startup. Be very careful about what you disable, but you may spot some programs you know you don't need. As mentioned above, if you have a hard drive instead of an SSD, changing that will make a large difference but will cost some money.

I never run anything but Windows defender and have never had a problem. Your mileage may vary but the clean install will get rid of all traces of MacAfee.

Thanks for the info about Crucial. I´m rather old school and this is the first pc I´ve bought that doesn´t have a DVD drive. I need to find out how I can reinstall Windows without discs. This is not our main pc, so backing up what is on here is not a problem.

I can´t believe how many resources are being used when I wake the pc up! 100% disk usage, 85%+ RAM, etc. I usually let it run for a minute before actually starting anything. It quiets down.

Can I disable Cortana? I´ll never use it. I have disabled several progs in the startup queue.

Thanks for the advice!

 

[AlHuneke]

Actually, you can reinstall Windows 10 from the internet. Go to Settings/Update and Security/Recovery/Reset this PC/Remove Everything. As I recall, that does get rid of all the crapware. You can then reinstall the vendor things you need from their support website. I suggest you run Belarc Advisor first and note your Windows Key. If something goes bad, this will let you reinstall Windows from scratch and not have to buy it again. If the Reset doesn't get rid of everything, you can get a Windows image from the Microsoft web site and write it to a USB (and boot from that). This approach is a little tricky and I've spent time reinitializing my hard drive, resetting up partitions and boot partitions and other nasty stuff. Fun for me but maybe not for you. That's where you spend lots of time on the Internet and need the Windows key you saved.

I never use Cortana either but it seems MS doesn't really want you to turn it off. Again, someone on the internet may have figured out how, but I would advise you to leave that alone. Getting a SSD and 8GB will improve your startup time to 10-20 seconds.

 

[hang-the-9]

Your results are normal for the hardware in the system, if you get another 4gb RAM stick, replace the platter drive with an SSD, do a clean Windows setup on that it will open things up much better.

 

[DanielKent]

Actually, you can reinstall Windows 10 from the internet. Go to Settings/Update and Security/Recovery/Reset this PC/Remove Everything. As I recall, that does get rid of all the crapware. You can then reinstall the vendor things you need from their support website. I suggest you run Belarc Advisor first and note your Windows Key. If something goes bad, this will let you reinstall Windows from scratch and not have to buy it again. If the Reset doesn't get rid of everything, you can get a Windows image from the Microsoft web site and write it to a USB (and boot from that). This approach is a little tricky and I've spent time reinitializing my hard drive, resetting up partitions and boot partitions and other nasty stuff. Fun for me but maybe not for you. That's where you spend lots of time on the Internet and need the Windows key you saved.

I never use Cortana either but it seems MS doesn't really want you to turn it off. Again, someone on the internet may have figured out how, but I would advise you to leave that alone. Getting a SSD and 8GB will improve your startup time to 10-20 seconds.

Thanks for the info. One more thing; it appears that Win 10 defaults to sharing everything with the OneDrive cloud account. It caused me fits getting it disabled and removing my stuff from the cloud. I only want to copy specific stuff to my cloud account. I recall that even when I had disabled OneDrive and then rebooted, it became active again and I had to go through the process again.

Doy you have any advice on how I can avoid that on the reinstall? Can I opt out of OneDrive and only access it via my browser if I want?

Thanks.

 

[AlHuneke]

I have OneDrive disabled but I don't exactly recall how I did that. I may have just uninstalled it the normal way. Windows has a habit of being persistent with things like this. As I recall, it took me some playing around (and of course you risk "breaking" something else). Do some research on the internet. You should be able to retain browser access regardless of whether it is installed on your computer.

You can change file default save locations if you wish. For instance, if you right click on the Documents folder and select properties/location you can change the location. Same for many of the Windows default locations. You can also go to Word File/Options/Save and change the default for saving files app by app (similarly for other Office apps).