Issue with new laptop/IT company

JGEP

Hi,

I’m wondering if I’m right to be suspicious about the IT company that my employer is using or am I just being a little paranoid. I’ve recently had to get a new work laptop and there are a few things that raised red flags with me but maybe it’s just my lack of expertise in the area.

- Old laptop (Windows 7 pro, Office 2010) went very slow, did all anti-virus scans and all came back clean but no improvement so I ordered a new one and they said they’d refurbish the old one and transfer my information to the new laptop, for some reason it took about a week to get the information off my old laptop and on to the new one.
- Ordered Intel I5, Windows 7 pro and Office 2013 but when they sent me the new one it had Office 2010 on it. When I said this to them they replied that they used the licence from my old laptop to save us money (although never contacted our accounts dept. to adjust the PO!) and that 2010 and 2013 are pretty much the same anyway.
- I sent it back and they updated to Office 2013. My issue now is that the new laptop works fine for approx. 2-4 hours and then goes incredibly slow in the exact same way that my old laptop did so I have to restart it to get it to function correctly again.
- Also, after the refurbishment the old laptop performs the same, no improvement in speed.
- Not sure if it has any bearing but the new laptop has a Windows 8 Pro sticker on the underside but I have Windows 7 (as ordered) on it.

Does it sound like something shifty or maybe a virus came over from the old laptop that the antivirus didn’t pick up? They transferred using Macrium Reflect.

Apologies for the long winded post!

Mr. G

The laptop would have been downgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 7. That would not be unusual and generally these companies would have the correct licenses to downgrade it.

Are there any custom applications on the laptop that might be causing it to slow down? E.g. Java application?

JGEP

Mr. G wrote: »

The laptop would have been downgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 7. That would not be unusual and generally these companies would have the correct licenses to downgrade it.

Are there any custom applications on the laptop that might be causing it to slow down? E.g. Java application?

Java is required for entering test details on a web based construction management system. I have downloaded the latest version of java to use this. The laptop slows down after a couple of hours regardless of whether I've been on that site or not and I've accessed it on a few other computers without any issue.

Another thing that happens is that Excel files don't always open up, just a transparent window at the task bar.

It's just frustrating when you get a brand new laptop, you'd expect everything to run smoothly.

tech

As Mr G said, Windows 8 downgrade is the norm for most companies, also you may have a volume license for the office,


Is the laptop over heating? is there scheduled full scan of the laptop on a daily basis, which is controlled by the server??

If you take the laptop home does it work ok??

Mr. G

^ +1 Check the backup to see if it's doing it when the PC grinds to a halt. I find Windows Backup and Restore slows it down considerably.

JGEP

Thanks for the replies.

There doesn't seem to be any consistency to it. Brand new and fan works, have only used it on a hard surface and no heat coming off it so no overheating.
I've had it at home all Christmas and it doesn't matter whether I'm online or using Excel, etc. or just turn it on put on a film, at different times generally between 2 and 4 hours it just goes.

Happens at different times during the day so don't think it's something scheduled slowing it down. I've business anti-virus, last scan yesterday, next scan Thursday. No scheduled backups.

There is another program 8x5 monitoring that shows last contact 20:46 today and it has slowed down now, could that affect it? I'll check that after I restart and it slows again.

yoyo

What anti virus program is deployed by the company? Some of these corporate AV programs, along with encryption software and the likes could take a huge hit on resources. Backup programs as mentioned above likewise

Nick

JGEP

yoyo wrote: »

What anti virus program is deployed by the company? Some of these corporate AV programs, along with encryption software and the likes could take a huge hit on resources. Backup programs as mentioned above likewise

Nick

Vipre anti virus. It's a small company I work for so no encryption software or auto backups.

What got me suspicious was the fact it bahaves the exact same way as the old one did with microsoft programs (not responding) and taking 4-5 seconds to switch between windows, maybe all slow laptops act the same!

Mr. G

Go through the programs in Programs & Features in the Control Panel. Could be some software, e.g. hard drive monitor, grinding it to a halt.

JGEP

Mr. G wrote: »

Go through the programs in Programs & Features in the Control Panel. Could be some software, e.g. hard drive monitor, grinding it to a halt.

I've had a look but there doesn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary, just the usual load of programs from Microsoft, Intel, Lenovo, etc. and the few that I would've downloaded myself, nothing excessive though.

ressem

Two useful programs are
Resource Monitor

Hit windows Key + R, type in

perfmon.exe /res

This lets you quickly see whether the Disk is flat out, CPU or physical memory used up.

Or Process Explorer, a download from Microsoft sysinternals, which is much the same but allows going in depth into a crawling process to determine things like which specific wretched browser add-on is drowning.

JGEP

ressem wrote: »

Two useful programs are
Resource Monitor

Hit windows Key + R, type in

perfmon.exe /res

This lets you quickly see whether the Disk is flat out, CPU or physical memory used up.

Or Process Explorer, a download from Microsoft sysinternals, which is much the same but allows going in depth into a crawling process to determine things like which specific wretched browser add-on is drowning.

Thanks for the advice.
So I checked it with perfmon.exe /res and have found the following:

While functioning correctly:
CPU Usage ~26% Maximum Frequency ~114%
Used physical memory ~35-45% Hard Faults/sec ~0-7

While really slow:
CPU Usage ~35% Maximum Frequency ~119%
Used physical memory ~96% Hard Faults/sec ~70

In the memory section when it's really slow Chrome.exe shows up twice with Commit of about 1,500,000KB.

Now I wouldn't really know exactly what I'm looking for but it appears that Google Chrome might be the problem. Any ideas what might cause this? Should I just uninstall and reinstall Chrome?

ressem

It suggests that you have a low amount of memory in your laptop (new laptops should be bought with 8GB);
or within chrome, some bad javascript on some common page you bring up, or one of the chrome add-ons is consuming it all.

As a result it's using disk virtual memory. (That's the bit about hard faults most likely )

In resource monitor, you'll see that each tab in chrome is a separate process, with it's own memory committed. On my pc the memory per chrome tab / process varies from 33MB to 170MB.
You could take screenshots / notes and close each tab one by one to see which sites correlate to heavy memory. Maybe there's a particular site that's using a gig of RAM due to bad javascript.



I'd be suggesting to get your IT company to run "Windows performance recorder" on your laptop. This will create a file that they can view in windows performance analyzer that identifies what programs are doing what to the disk / CPU / Memory.

JGEP

ressem wrote: »

It suggests that you have a low amount of memory in your laptop (new laptops should be bought with 8GB);
or within chrome, some bad javascript on some common page you bring up, or one of the chrome add-ons is consuming it all.

As a result it's using disk virtual memory. (That's the bit about hard faults most likely )

In resource monitor, you'll see that each tab in chrome is a separate process, with it's own memory committed. On my pc the memory per chrome tab / process varies from 33MB to 170MB.
You could take screenshots / notes and close each tab one by one to see which sites correlate to heavy memory. Maybe there's a particular site that's using a gig of RAM due to bad javascript.



I'd be suggesting to get your IT company to run "Windows performance recorder" on your laptop. This will create a file that they can view in windows performance analyzer that identifies what programs are doing what to the disk / CPU / Memory.

Thanks ressem, yeah it has 4GB RAM. I'll have a look through but the one's I use a lot are either work or college these days so I'll figure out which one it is, although it must be one from each as I don't have both open at the same time and it happens both in work and at home.

Will get on to the IT company, just don't want them to ask for it in as I've exams next week.

I appreciate all the help, thanks.

J

ressem

It could be as simple as one of those little horizontal text scrollers on the top of a website that after a few hours clogs up hundreds of megs.

Spotted a few students / interns trying to reuse some poorly written snippet bit of code and messing up a business site in this way.

unkel

JGEP wrote: »

Used physical memory ~96%

That's your problem right there. When the system runs out of memory, it starts using the hard disk as memory, which is about 100 times slower (presuming you have a conventional hard disk, not a SSD)

Ask the company that supplied the laptop to upgrade it to 8GB, that should cost very little and could go a long way towards resolving the issue. Possibly eliminating it altogether

In the meantime, try using another browser like Opera or Internet Explorer and see what happens. And whatever browser you use, do not open more than 20 tabs loaded with high res pictures :pac:

JGEP

unkel wrote: »

That's your problem right there. When the system runs out of memory, it starts using the hard disk as memory, which is about 100 times slower (presuming you have a conventional hard disk, not a SSD)

Ask the company that supplied the laptop to upgrade it to 8GB, that should cost very little and could go a long way towards resolving the issue. Possibly eliminating it altogether

In the meantime, try using another browser like Opera or Internet Explorer and see what happens. And whatever browser you use, do not open more than 20 tabs loaded with high res pictures :pac:

Yeah, will try a different browser for a while. In the last hour I've just been on Boards, Gmail and the UPC website, (no more than 4 tabs and all innocent!) and CPU usage has gone from 60% to 82% and she's about to pack in.

Mr. G

Do you have any add-ons/extensions on Chrome?

JGEP

Mr. G wrote: »

Do you have any add-ons/extensions on Chrome?

Avast online security
Avast safeprice
Google docs
Google sheets
Google slides

Maybe the avast ones are clashing with the Vipre somehow, got them when I had free Avast on the old laptop and when I signed into Chrome on this one they reactivated.

Up to 86% now!

Ctrl Alt Del

JGEP wrote: »

Hi,
Does it sound like something shifty or maybe a virus came over from the old laptop that the antivirus didn’t pick up? They transferred using Macrium Reflect.

Hi,

My best guess is that the older laptop may have had a bad sector with the hard drive AND while the image / cloning process executed that have been transferred over !

Two options:
first,run a full disk check with the built-in tools!
second,you have to get back to them and ask to do a full clean Windows OS installation along with all the applications and not cloning or image transfer from old to new !

Regards

unkel

Ctrl Alt Del wrote: »

My best guess is that the older laptop may have had a bad sector with the hard drive AND while the image / cloning process executed that have been transferred over !

I very much doubt that happened. It would be terrible practice to clone the hard disk of an old laptop into the hard disk of a new laptop. Never mind what you think you might get away with on your own private system, to do that as an IT company business practice for a customers' PC would simply be unthinkable

johnnybmac

JGEP wrote: »

Avast online security
Avast safeprice
Google docs
Google sheets
Google slides

Maybe the avast ones are clashing with the Vipre somehow, got them when I had free Avast on the old laptop and when I signed into Chrome on this one they reactivated.

Up to 86% now!

Get rid of the Avast add-ons for a start..

Ctrl Alt Del

unkel wrote: »

I very much doubt that happened. It would be terrible practice to clone the hard disk of an old laptop into the hard disk of a new laptop. Never mind what you think you might get away with on your own private system, to do that as an IT company business practice for a customers' PC would simply be unthinkable

off topic
Imagine this sceanrio:a client with few standard PCs.IT guy creates images then stores on the server. With proper software,in eventuality of hardware or software fault,just fix & reimagine in few minutes rather than hours.

That software has an option to restore images to different / new hardware so i thought that might be the case .

Unless WE all see the laptop,good luck guessing ... right OR wrong !

Regards

JGEP

unkel wrote: »

I very much doubt that happened. It would be terrible practice to clone the hard disk of an old laptop into the hard disk of a new laptop. Never mind what you think you might get away with on your own private system, to do that as an IT company business practice for a customers' PC would simply be unthinkable

So I checked the old laptop today and it's as slow as ever even though it was supposed to have been refurbished (it's approx 2.5 years old).
Also, a notification came up stating "You may have been a victim of software counterfeiting and will no longer be able to avail of windows updates" or something along those lines. On the bottom right of the screen it said something like "7601 Windows 7 build edition".

Would that mean that they essentially just transferred the operating system from a malfunctioning laptop onto a new one and that's more than likely why the new one has inherited part of the same issue?

JGEP

johnnybmac wrote: »

Get rid of the Avast add-ons for a start..

Done

JGEP

Ctrl Alt Del wrote: »

Hi,

My best guess is that the older laptop may have had a bad sector with the hard drive AND while the image / cloning process executed that have been transferred over !

Two options:
first,run a full disk check with the built-in tools!
second,you have to get back to them and ask to do a full clean Windows OS installation along with all the applications and not cloning or image transfer from old to new !

Regards

Hi, thanks for the advice but how exactly do I run a full disk check? What program can I do that with?

ressem

To do a check disk, you can right click on the C: drive in windows file explorer (the program used to view your files, shortcut Windows Key + e ).
Then from the menu that appears, select the "properties" in the menu

There, you should a dialog, where the second tab is labeled "Tools"
On that "Tools" tab is an "Error Checking" section, and "Check button".

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ie/windows-vista/check-your-hard-disk-for-errors
(sameish for vista and 7)

----
The "windows software counterfeiting " message is completely the responsibility of the IT company to fix, even if it is for innocent reasons (like disk corruption).

----
Is Chrome still eating up all the memory of 1.5 GB per tab?
If Internet explorer is used instead is the same issue occurring?

Or a chrome derivative like iron browser
http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_download.php

JGEP

ressem wrote: »

To do a check disk, you can right click on the C: drive in windows file explorer (the program used to view your files, shortcut Windows Key + e ).
Then from the menu that appears, select the "properties" in the menu

There, you should a dialog, where the second tab is labeled "Tools"
On that "Tools" tab is an "Error Checking" section, and "Check button".

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ie/windows-vista/check-your-hard-disk-for-errors
(sameish for vista and 7)

----
The "windows software counterfeiting " message is completely the responsibility of the IT company to fix, even if it is for innocent reasons (like disk corruption).

----
Is Chrome still eating up all the memory of 1.5 GB per tab?
If Internet explorer is used instead is the same issue occurring?

Or a chrome derivative like iron browser
http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_download.php

Thanks I'll do the error checking, I've been using Chrome sporadically as when I shut it down the memory usage drops back down to ~46% so I only use it for a while and then close it but if I leave it on it eats up memory no matter what sites I'm on. All my bookmarks, etc. are on it but I'll check out IE shortly instead.

unkel

Chrome is obviously causing your troubles. You can easily import your bookmarks into any other mainstream browser.

Reset Chrome
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/reset-google-chrome-how-to,news-18821.html

And check if there is any improvement...

Cuddlesworth

Kinda sounds like they took the hard-drive out of the old system and dropped it into the new one. From what you have said, they seem to take the laziest and cheapest option and that would definitely be it. The OEM license in Win7 would deactivate when it picks up the wrong Manufacturer bios.

Go to C:\Users and right click on your username, then hit properties. It will show you when the folder was created. If that was when you first joined, they swapped the drives.

BTW, if you are coming from a home machine with a SSD, everything will seem unreasonably slow.