New Noteboon suddenly dropping in FPS

[Goodhiver]

Hey everyone,

I recently got a new HP Pavilion 15 notebook. It is not even a week old, and in the first 2-3 days I could play games at a relatively high FPS. For example, League of Legends ran at ~100-110 FPS, Kingdom Come: Deliverance at 40. A few days ago, the notebook suddenly decided that things won't work that way anymore, and League of Legends FPS went down to 40, whereas Kingdom Come: Deliverance's now showing an FPS of 14, both with the same settings, and same programs running in the background (Antivirus, Spotify, f.lux).

I obviously have already installed all required drivers, attempted to do a BIOS Update in case that was the wrongdoing, and utilized the HP Hardware Diagnostic to check if anything was wrong, but it all appears to be fine - even though such a sudden and large drop of FPS most definitely is not, moreso on a new machine with hardly anything installed on it.

What could be the cause of it? And how could I solve the issue?

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@Goodhiver 

You said it's only a few days old -- and since it is running Win10, my guess is that Windows Update is at the heart of the problem.

With a Win10 PC, you're going to experience a variety of problems not typical of the older PCs.

First is sluggishness. You may experience a very slow PC at times because Windows Update (WU) is hogging your PC, searching for, downloading, and installing updates -- to bring your PC up to the most current version of Windows. This can also contribute significantly to high processor temperatures, as it is being heavily used.

Second is fan noise. That's directly related to fan speed, which is the result of processor heat, and WU is known to drive up the processor load -- sometimes to 100%. That can cause the fan to run loud and continuous for some time.

Third is disk usage. WU can easily force the disk usage to 100% and and keep it pinned there for some time. That's because it writes WU files to the drive, then it turns around and reads them, then it overwrites existing Windows System files. All of that takes a lot of disk usage to complete.

These processes are compounded by Win10 because new Win 10 patches coming out nearly every Tuesday. Since you can't stop Updates like you did with Win7, this means you're going to get updates, regardless of what you do.

To find out what version and build of Win10 your PC is running, do the following:
1) enter "cmd" (without the quotes) into the search area and select the Command Prompt option
2) enter "winver" into the command window (again, without the quotes)
3) The most current Win10 versions as of 7/9/19 are the following:

a) v1803: Bld 17134.915

b) v1809: Bld 17763.615

c) v1903: Bld 18632.239.

If yours is older than that, most likely WU is hogging your PC trying to update it.

Some folks have been told that resetting your PC will fix this. but, if you reset your PC, you only make matters WORSE! Why? Because you will reset Win10 back to the original version that came preloaded on the PC and that will restart Windows Update all over again.

To disable WU temporarily, do the following:
1) Enter "services" in the search area (again, without the quotes)
2) When the window opens, scroll down until you see Windows Update
3) If it say Running under status, that indicates that WU is running
4) To change that, double-click on that task, select Stop under the Service status, and then Apply
5) That should stop WU -- and you should see an immediate improvement in performance.

If not, then WU is not the problem.

WU will restart itself automatically later on, so you basically have no choice than to bear with it until it finishes.

[Goodhiver]

Your method seems to have done it, but I will test it further once I have got more time to do so. If that's indeed the proper solution, I will obviously mark it as such. Thanks!