Windows 10 Pro (64-bit) User Interface reacts slow or not

[CinéMatica]

Two weeks ago I bought a refurbised (as good as new) HP Z840 workstation.

Since the very beginning the user interface is reacting slow and sometimes even not.

Yesterday when I installed Avid Media Composer | Ultimate, I couldn't even open the context menus with the mouse. As an example; I had to use CTRL+F to open the File menu. In Windows Explorer double clicking sometimes doens't work. I have gone through all the settings, but couldn't find anything that looks wrong.

Was anyone else ever experience such a behavior from Windows 10 Pro (64-bit)? The version that is installed is 1909 OS Build 18363.535.

As OS drive I have installed a Samsung Enterprise 960GB SATA 6Gb/s PM863a SSD.

Thank you very much for your help and precious time!

Ivan

[DGroves]

If your tag line showing the system config/hardware is correct i do see one issue

 2x Samsung Enterprise 960GB SATA 6Gb/s | 4x (RAID5)

raid 5 should not be used on the z840 be it mech or SSD drives unless your controller has support for SSD's and also has onboard cache and battery backup which the onboard (motherboard)  controller lacks and this could be the bottleneck in drive speed/access times

also raid 5 is no longer a good choice nowadays, raid 10 is preferred over raid 5

last, Avid Media Composer has specific recommendations regarding the HP z840 configurations so check with them and see if what you have is correct and configured as they recommend

for SSD's in any raid config you need a controller capable of keeping pace with it, this means older hardware will not usually suffice you need a LSI 9xxx series card or adaptec 8/9 thousand series card

older raid card models which are PCI-2.0 are really not suitable in general for SSD usage

[CinéMatica]

Hi DGroves,

Thank you very much for your answer and time!

Maybe the system specifications are a bit misleading the way they are displayed beneath my previous post.

Here is a better explenation of what is in the box, and what it is used for. Keep in mind that I didn't do anything on the build and the OS installation of the system. I only added the two PCIe cards in the slots (5 and 7) intended for that purpose. 

2x 18 Core Xeon E5-2699v3 / 2.3GHz 35MB

128GB PC4-17000P 2133MHz / 8x 16GB DDR4

NVIDIA Quadro P4000 / 8GB GDDR5 / 4x DP 5K with 2 EIZO S2432W connected to displayport 1 and 2. Driver version 441.28 is installed and recomended in the Avid 2019.12 readme file. From the beginning on the ports are swapped and can't get them right. My left screen is monitor 2, and the right screen is monitor 1. Even when the monitors are put in the correct displayport. It works, but I find it weird. The driver that was orginally installed was version 436.30, who is not certified by Avid.

1x Samsung Enterprise 960GB SATA 6Gb/s used as C: drive for OS and applications. Installed in the front bay of the Z840 next to the second SSD that is used as the D-drive. The two SSD are not in any RAID configuration with each other nor with the 4 normal HDD's.

1x Samsung Enterprise 960GB SATA 6Gb/s used as D-drive for some data, media cache.

4x HGST Ultrastar He8 8TB 7.2K SATA 6G in the lower bays of the Z840 in RAID 5 configuration for audio and video data. Later this year I will be buying a QNAP TVS-872XT (10 GbE) are something similar for this task.

Avid Nitris DX (Second Generation) with the Host Bus Adapter installed in slot 5 (PCIe Gen2) as recommended by Avid.

Avid Mbox Pro 3 connected to a Sonnet Allegro FW800 IEEE1394 card in slot 7.

TP-LINK TL-SG108 switch for Avid Artist Mix, Transport and Color panels.

Microsoft Windows 10 Professional 1909 OS Build 18363.535

For the moment I only have installed:

Avid Pro Tools 11.3.2

Avid Media Composer | Ultimate 2019.12

EuControl 3.3.2

Sorenson Squeeze 11.1 Pro

iLok License Software

HP Performance Advisor

The by me installed software has nothing to do with it, because the system was already slow with only Windows 10 Pro installed on it.

I guess Avid Media Composer 2019, or the other software, isn't the problem as I had a trial version running on a 10-year old Fujitsu P9900 computer (Intel Core i5 CPU 750 @ 2.67 GHz, 8 GB RAM, no SSD but a regular 5400 RPM HDD)  with Windows 10 Pro version 1903 (64-bit) running on it. This dinosaur is faster than th HP. I also have seen Avid running on self-made systems that do not comply at all with the imposed Avid guidelines.

Maybe I have, like you suggested, to search for the problem at the OS SSD. Problem is that I am not into the technical side of this at all. I use computers since my father buyed his Radio Shack TRS-80 in the late 70's or early 80's where I could play on a little guy. But farther than adding RAM, swapping out an SSD/HDD and putting in a PCIe card it doesn't go. Hahaha!

Thanks again and friendly greetings,

Ivan

[BambiBoomZ]

Cinematica,

I've been using Windows 10 only two days setting up my first laptop** so this idea is highly speculative.

** HP ZBook 17 G2 / i7-4940MX Extreme (4C@ 3.1/4.0Ghz) / 32GB / Quadro K3100M / Kingston 480GB) / Windows 10 Prof'l 64-bit

Everything I've seen about Windows 10 so far I don't like.

The idea is to consider two possibilities. The important one has to so with the automatic setting of the paging file. As the available RAM is 128GB,  it's possible that the paging file is vast.

1.  Click on the Start button and enter "Performance"

2.  Click on Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows

3.  Select the Advanced tab

4  Click on Change in the Virtual Memory

5. Adjust for the best performance of: select "Programs"

6. Uncheck: "Automatically manage paging size for all drives"

7. Select C: and  disable paging file or rather set to "none' or "no paging file" whichever is the nomenclature.  The access time of these drives is so fast a paging file is just not necessary

8. Select the second drive and either disable paging file or set a quite small one

9. Select Set + OK

10. Reboot

See what happens and if the situation is worse, revert the settings to system managed size or run the restore point.

The other aspect is performance settings:

1. Control Panel > System > System Properties > Advanced > Performance Options

2. Select either "Adjust for best performance" or>

3. Select "Custom"  and deselect all the various animations, shadows under mouse arrow, transparency fade, drop shadows for icon labels, and etc.

4. I don't know if Win 10 has it but try: Control Panel > System > Power Options and select "High Performance  which will run the Turbo boost longer and slows the return to idle clock speeds.

5.  Run a very minimal solid color desktop theme, no animation, transparency, etc.

6. Go through the Startup Menu and disable as many items that are not essential to be instantly available. Create a restore point before starting. There may be some Services that can be stopped too, but this requires even more care RE: restore point.

7. It appears to be somewhat difficult, but I think that disabling and better, removing MS Edge is going to be my next top priority and equally is to disable and better, remove, Cortana. Edge appears to be a return to the IE days when it was made so intrusively integrated to the OS that there were lawsuits and is of course a tracking / data-collection. Cortana is simply frightening and must require a lot of resources.

8. I'm not certain how to do it, but in setup, there are quite a few settings regarding data collection, tracking, tracking physical location, and so on that need to be addressed.  Besides the intrusive surveillance aspect, these must also require system resources.

Anyway, just a thought on some possibilities.

BambiBoomZ

HP z620_2 (2017) (R7) > Xeon E5-1680 v2 (8-core@ 4.3GHz) / z420 Liquid Cooling / 64GB DDR3-1866 ECC Reg / Quadro P2000 5GB _ GTX 1070 Ti 8GB / HP Z Turbo Drive M.2 256GB AHCI + Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe 500GB + HGST 7K6000 4TB / Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 sound interface + 2X Mackie MR824 / 825W PSU /> HP OEM Windows 7 Prof.’l 64-bit > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440)

[ Passmark Rating = 6280 / CPU rating = 17178 / 2D = 819 / 3D= 12629 / Mem = 3002 / Disk = 13751 / Single Thread Mark = 2368 [10.23.18]

Next upgrade = Quadro RTX 4000

HP z420_3: (2015) (R11) Xeon E5-1650 v2 (6C@ 4.3GHz) / z420 Liquid cooling / 32GB (HP/Samsung 4X 8GB DDR3-1866 ECC registered) / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB/ Samsung 860 EVO 500GB + HGST 4TB / ASUS Essence STX / Logitech z2300 2.1 / 600W PSU > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (HP OEM ) > Samsung 40" 4K

[Passmark System Rating: = 5644 / CPU = 15293 / 2D = 847 / 3D = 10953 / Mem = 2997 Disk = 4858 /Single Thread Mark = 2384 [6.27.19]

[DGroves]

first, the Z4 looks for cards from the top slot downward so the topmost video card will become display #1

you can change the default video display using windows 10 built in features

At the top of the display settings menu, there is a visual display of your dual-monitor setup, with one display designated "1" and the other labeled "2." Click and drag the monitor on the right to the left of the second monitor (or vice versa) to switch the order.

regarding the pauses in win 10, the only way to quickly check/fix your issue is to remove all cards/drives except for the boot (C) drive, and then do a CLEAN REINSTALL of windows 10 (do not do a restore unless it's a factory HP restore image)

now check for proper operation and do all windows updates, reboot and check performance

then install latest video card driver from nvidia, again reboot and check performance, if still good

install all other storage drives, again reboot and check performance (beginning to see a pattern here yet? you should!)

now, install the AVID card(s) and software per mfgr recommendations,  and again reboot test system

at each stage you have only installed a specific thing, and if a issue appears you know just what thing caused it which helps identify the issue/solution

[CinéMatica]

Hello BambiBoomZ,

Thank you very much for your reply!

The Performance Settings you are suggesting are a big part of the configuration guide that Avid provides for setting up a HP Z840 as a video workstation.

Avid HP Z840 Configuration Guide Rev E 

Your points 1 through 6 were done before my original post over here and are mentioned in the Avid configuration guide. About point 7 and 8 I don't know what I am going to do with them  for the moment. Please keep me posted with the results you get.

The first part of your answer seemed to make the system faster and better in the first place. It still was not as snappy as my 10-yera old Fujitsu Esprimo P9900, but it was getting close. After opening and closing some applications it looks like it is slowing down again. I don't know why this is happening and will try it again tomorrow to see if it acts the same way.

Today I also contacted the company were I bought the Z840, but they didn't reply yet.

Thanks again for your detailed explenation and precious time!

Friendly greetings,

Ivan

[CinéMatica]

Hi DGroves,

Thank you very much for your reply.

I only have one NVIDIA Quqdro P4000 installed in the by Avid recommended slot 2. The P4000 has four display-ports and I am using port 1 for my left monitor and 2for my right monitor. I have tried your explanation before from within the Windows Display Setting menu, but if I do so, than I cannot drag the mouse to the right onto the second. When I drag the mouse pointer completely to the left off my first (left) screen, it appears on the right side of my second (right) screen and stops on the far left side of the second screen. Also with the NVIDIA Control Panel I cannot get it right. Disconnecting my second monitor makes the left screen the default one. After reconnecting the second screen it automatically makes my left screen number two and the right one, number one. Very weird! Have to sort that out later.

Maybe I better do what you suggest, and do a clean install of the system. But I prefer to wait until I got an answer from the company that sold and delivered me the Z840.

I will keep your instructions very close to me as I am certainly going to need them when I do a clean install.

Thank you very much again for you help and precious time!

Friendly greetings,

Ivan

[DGroves]

if your system POWERS OFF (not reboots) exactly every 30 min you have corrupted "ME" firmware on the system in question

[BambiBoomZ]

CinéMatica,

As the solution appears elusive, here are some further speculative suggestions, recognizing these are based on no AVID and almost no Windows 10 experience:

1.   Noted subject system variance to: "HP / AVID Qualified System Specification"

_ A.  Under Supported v3 CPU Choices", the greatest core-count CPU is 12-core.  The  18-core Xeon E5-2699 v3  is not listed.

_B.   Under Supported v4 CPU Choices" the limit is 16-cores. this is prefaced with: " Please note: The following 14-core and 16-core CPU configurations require a minimum of Media Composer 8.5.xIn E5-26XX v4's"

_C.  "Qualified Operating Systems, Avid Client Editing Applications and CPU core-count restrictions:"

The specificity of detail as regards supported core-counts and "core-count restrictions" (Pg. 4) raises some questions that the thread distribution of AVID may be specific and limited. For example, this may have changed in recent versions, but it is known that Adobe Premiere does not address multiple CPU's and is single-thread dominant with the effective multithreading tasks limited to distribution over 5-6 cores.  In these notes, Media composer 8.5, "Supports the new v4 14 and 16 core CPU's. In this view, AVID is specifying that a using Xeon E5-26XX v3 processors, a maximum of dual 12-core CPU's is supported

2.  Memory configurations:

_A. "Memory configurations above 64GB: Media Composer has not been tested, and does not formally support memory environments above 64GB. If configuring the Z840 for an environment larger than 64GB capacity, for the benefit of Media Composer the following rules should be adhered to for all dual CPU configurations.1.)The configuration must use 8 DIMM’s or 16 DIMM’s2.)Memory lanes must be balanced 3.)Memory configurations which use “unbalanced” memory configuration are not recommended or formally supported in AVID environments4.) Memory configurations which mix and match memory module sizes and locations may result in a poor performing, non-optimal operating environment.5.) For 8 DIMM configurations the same size memory DIMM must be installed in the following DIMM slots: CPU0-DIMM1, CPU0-DIMM3, CPU0-DIMM6, CPU0-DIMM8CPU1-DIMM1, CPU1-DIMM3, CPU1-DIMM6, CPU1-DIMM86.)For 16 DIMM configurations follow step #5above, and then populate the following 8 additional DIMM slots. The size of the memory DIMM for these slots must all be the same, but, do not have to be the identical size as the DIMM’s installed in step #5(i.e., for example, the DIMM’s installed in step #5 could be 8GB DIMMs and the DIMM’s installed in the following slots for this step could be 4GB DIMM’s): CPU0-DIMM2, CPU0-DIMM4, CPU0-DIMM5, CPU0-DIMM7CPU1-DIMM2, CPU1-DIMM4, CPU1-DIMM5, CPU1-DIMM7."

Again, the detail of this specification suggests that optimization may rely on details and the phrase, " Media Composer has not been tested, and does not formally support memory environments above 64GB"  must be considered.  Consider trying the system with 64GB, taking care to arrange the RAM modules according to the AVID notes.  

3. Resource-demanding applications: 

_A.  This is anecdotal, based on very little experience, but I believe that Windows 10 Edge and Cortana should be removed or disabled. There are also a series of tracking and reporting applications apparently used for commercial/ promotional purposes that may benefit performance when disabled. For example, unless it is turned off, Windows 10 reports the physical location of your system every 2.5 seconds to MS. 

Interesting problem.

BambiBoomZ

HP ZBook 17 G2: (2015 ) i7-4940MX Extreme (4C@3.1/4.0GHz) / 32GB / Quadro K3100M  4GB / Kingston 480GB SATA SSD > 17.3" LCD 1920 X1080 panel or externally to HP 2711x 27" LCD > Logitech 533  _2.1 speaker system

[Passmark System Rating: = 3980 / CPU = 10140 / 2D = 618 / 3D = 2779 / Mem = 2559 Disk = 4662 / Single Thread Mark = 2387 [1.3.20]

This laptop may become the music production system with: StudioLogic SL88, Focusrite 2i4, and Mackie MR824 monitors running Ableton 9

[CinéMatica]

Hello BambiZoomZ,

Thank you very much for your interest in my problem!

The problem of my Z840 being slow already existed even before I had installed any other software besides Windows 10 Pro. So the whole slowness has nothing to do with the Avid software that I have installed,

That Avid PDF-document is a sort of guide. It's not a must do or otherwise it will not work. 😊

Avid always tests several systems with all kids of configurations that are around at that moment in time. This document is updated from time to time until a new generation of workstations comes out. The version I mentioned is revision E, that is the last one for the Z840 being replaced by the Z8 G4. I have tried to get as close to a certified configuration as possible. The system I have now was the nearest to that guide.

In the past I have been owning a HP XW8200 that was fully certified by Avid and caused me a lot of headaches. So there is no guarantee that it works flawless, even with a fully certified system.

I have tested the 30 day trial-version of their new (2019-version) Media Composer software on my 10-year old Fujitsu Esprimo P9900 and that worked without any problems.

Is there a way to disable Windows 10 Edge and Cortana?

It's weird that yesterday it seemed to work after I followed your instructions. Now it's not even telling me, or asking me to reboot after I change any of those settings. Very weird!

I guess that in the long-end I maybe better do  a clean install of Windows 10 Pro as DGroves suggested . As this HP Z840 is refurbished, it came with a Microsoft Authorised Refurbisher (MAR) version of Windows. I don't know if I than can download the 1903 version instead of the current 1909 that is on the system?

Thanks for your help and time!

Friendly greetings,

Ivan