Super Slow HP 250 G4

[kflash08]

I have a HP 250 G4 that within the last 3 or so years has become extremely slow for unknown reasons. It currently has the following specs:

• 1.7 GHz Intel 4th Gen Core i3 (4005U)
• 8 GB of RAM
• 500 GB SATA SSD drive (installed 5 years ago)

It boots up fairly quick (fast shutdown disabled), but once it hits the Windows sign on screen, it becomes super slow. Simple tasks like launching the start menu takes at least 2-3 seconds to appear. Programs take at least twice as long to launch, usually slower than if running off of a hard drive. The computer struggles with other simple things like the My Pictures screensaver. Strangely, most videos and other graphic intensive programs seem to run fine for its age, and the mouse cursor never stutters.

No crashes, BSODs or critical errors, though because its sluggishness, it will sometimes appear that the system has soft-locked.

When idle, hard drive usage is very low, usually at 0%. CPU usage remains low as well and doesn't exceed 10%. Under normal use, RAM remains at around 50%. SSD (Crucial MX500) SMART reports no issues and still has plenty of health left.

I have tried many things, but have not really been able to improve its performance. Here's what I've tried...

• sfc /scannow
• DISM /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
• chkdisk (no errors)
• Windows Memory Diagnostic (passed)
• Disk Cleanup and a number of other cleaning/management tools that I regularly use on other systems
• Uninstalled un-needed programs
• Disabled numinous startup programs
• Temporarily disabled anti-virus
• Another HP branded power adapter
• Optimized SSD
• Re-seated RAM (recently)
• Re-seated SSD connections (recently)
• Re-seated misc. connectors on motherboard (recently)
• Reapplied fresh thermal paste to CPU (recently)
• Clean heatsink/fan (recently)
• BIOS updated to latest version (many years ago)
• Clear and reset BIOS to factory default, both within the BIOS and by disconnecting the internal battery
• HP UEFI diagnostics (all passed)
• All drivers installed and updated to their latest known version

I did not reinstall Windows yet. That's a last resort, though at this point I doubt that will do much o anything. If I have the time, I will try a fresh install on a spare SSD. BTW, the computer has been unofficially upgraded to Windows 11. No, I doubt that 11 is the problem, as this has been occurring with Windows 10 before the upgrade, which I did shortly after 10's end of support.

I'm at a complete loss here. I'm starting to think that something on the system board is starting to go or has already went (capacitors?). After all, the computer is now 10 years old, but it should still be able to handle normal usage. I also have a HP 280 G1 desktop around the same age (4th Gen Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD) and it's still snappy to this day. Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks.

[NonSequitur777]

@kflash08,

You have actually done a very thorough job troubleshooting already!

Given the symptoms, I would not immediately suspect failing capacitors or general motherboard failure. The biggest clues are that video playback and cursor movement remain smooth while the Windows shell/UI is sluggish. That often points toward storage latency, DPC/driver latency, or severe CPU throttling rather than raw hardware instability. Even though the MX500 SMART looks healthy, I would still test another SSD and verify the MX500 firmware is current. Also check whether the CPU is being stuck at very low clock speeds due to power or EC throttling. Run LatencyMon to look for ACPI/storage driver latency issues, and verify the SSD is negotiating SATA III properly. At this point, a clean Windows install onto a spare SSD is probably the most useful next diagnostic step.

What I mean is a fully fresh, independent Windows installation on a separate physical drive, used as a diagnostic isolation step.

Concretely:

You take:

• a different SSD than the current one (even a small/cheap spare SATA SSD works)

and you:

• install Windows from scratch onto it
• without keeping any existing system files, drivers, or programs

Then you boot only from that SSD and test system behavior.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[kflash08]

It never occurred to me to use LatencyMon, but the offending driver is NDIS.SYS (Network Driver Interface Specification). Also what I didn't try was safe mode and diagnostic startup with msconfig. Doing so did show some noticeable improvement in responsiveness, so it had to be something like a background service.

Back to NDIS.SYS, I started researching potential causes. Disabling network adapters didn't seem to have an effect. Performing a network reset didn't help either. Then I came across this article and one of the suggestions that applied to me was uninstalling Bonjour, because iTunes is installed. I found the service and stopped it for testing purposes, and the system responsiveness greatly improved. Since Bonjour is basically needed to share an iTunes library over the network, which in my case I really don't do, I preceded to uninstall it completely, followed by a restart. Boot times were about the same as before taking at least a minute to get to the desktop, but launching the start menu, displaying context menus and opening/navigating windows were much more responsive, the latter seems like it still has to think about it for a split second, but still an improvement. Programs do launch quicker as well, though in my opinion could still be a tab bit quicker, but perhaps I'm expecting too much from a 10 year old system with Windows 11 on it. CrystalDiskMark shows that both read and write speeds of the SSD are well within spec, around 550 MB/s.

However, after all of this, LatencyMon still reports NDIS.SYS as being the source of DPC latency, though it only happens periodically and not constantly. In that same article, it also mentioned about disabling IPv6, which I did as a precaution, but appears to have no effect otherwise. Interestingly, Bonjour previously never affected this system in the past, unless some newer version got installed and was incompatible with something. All these years I've never had issues with Bonjour, both on past and current systems, so this was definitely a first and something that I didn't expect.

Anyways, I'm pretty much happy with it now. If there are any suggestions that can further improve performance, I'd be interested to hear about them.

[NonSequitur777]

@kflash08,

In System Configuration, click on the Boot tab, change "Timeout:" to 5 seconds, then go to "Advanced options..." and check off (☑) the "Number of processors:", click on the "v" sign and choose the largest number (4 in your case for an Intel Core i3-4005U processor with four Threads), then click "OK", then "Apply" and "OK" again.  Do not choose to restart yet.

Under "Power Options", make sure you choose at least the "High performance" power plan.  If you don't have this power option, use Command Prompt As administrator and copy/paste/Enter:

powercfg -duplicatescheme 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c

Also, follow these Regedit instructions starting at timestamp: 16:14: 🔧 How to Optimize Windows 10 For GAMING & Performance in 2019 The Ultimate Updated GUIDE. No worries: these instructions also apply to Windows 11. Only edit I would add is that in timestamp: 17:18 you are to enter eight (8) f's, like so: ffffffff, and not seven f's.

Restart your HP 250 G4.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777