Rant God I hate Windows sometimes

[mikeymikec]

It's a sunny Saturday afternoon and it's been all go all morning, I finally had a chance to sit down, played a game of Catan on my computer (in Win10), after that I left it running a Cyberpunk 2077 update while I pottered around the house. It finished the update and idled (Task Manager was open the whole time), I left the computer for a minute to change into gardening clothes, and came back to this (the screen was still on):



When I saw the HDD going at 100% I thought, "what are you up to", clicked on the graph thumbnail to reveal the larger graph at which point it's almost like Windows looked shiftily around and says, "nothing!". CPU immediately dropped to zero too. The HDD contains nothing that Windows needs to do anything with, it could be disconnected and cause no problems. My only guess is a defrag in the background, but why stop just because I clicked on the graph, why not continue until the system actually requests something on that drive? Also, >1 core saturation for the sake of a defrag seems unlikely (Core i5-4690k).

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

It's a sunny Saturday afternoon and it's been all go all morning, I finally had a chance to sit down, played a game of Catan on my computer (in Win10), after that I left it running a Cyberpunk 2077 update while I pottered around the house. It finished the update and idled (Task Manager was open the whole time), I left the computer for a minute to change into gardening clothes, and came back to this (the screen was still on):

View attachment 81108

When I saw the HDD going at 100% I thought, "what are you up to", clicked on the graph thumbnail to reveal the larger graph at which point it's almost like Windows looked shiftily around and says, "nothing!". CPU immediately dropped to zero too. The HDD contains nothing that Windows needs to do anything with, it could be disconnected and cause no problems. My only guess is a defrag in the background, but why stop just because I clicked on the graph, why not continue until the system actually requests something on that drive? Also, >1 core saturation for the sake of a defrag seems unlikely (Core i5-4690k).

It stops when the system is no longer idle. You clicked a thing so it wasn't idle anymore.

As you noted it was also chewing a core up, that stopped too.

It was probably an endpoint protection scan, or other AV if you have one.

 

[pete6032]

It was probably file indexing service. Yeah it kind of freaks me out when the PC is idle and all of a sudden I hear the fan whirr up like it's doing something but I can't see, and as soon as I jump into task manager its back down below 10% CPU usage.

 

[mikeymikec]

It stops when the system is no longer idle. You clicked a thing so it wasn't idle anymore.

As you noted it was also chewing a core up, that stopped too.

It was probably an endpoint protection scan, or other AV if you have one.

Yup, could be.

@pete6032 indexing only works on folder structures listed in Control Panel > Indexing.

 

[igor_kavinski]

SysGauge - System Monitor - CPU Usage Monitoring

SysGauge is a free system and performance monitoring utility allowing one to monitor the CPU usage, memory usage, disk space usage, disk activities and network activities on the local computer or a number of remote computers via the network.

www.sysgauge.com

Could be helpful?

 

[Captante]

OP is (apparently?) new to Windows?

Seriously this crap has been part of the "user-experience" since Vista. (I really thought this was a necro!)


I keep the mechanical HD's in my backup PC unplugged until I actually want to use them and my primary PC is 100% "solid-state". (backups go to an ext HD)

Without slow as molasses "spinners" in the picture indexing takes seconds and you won't even notice. Every time I touch a PC that even has a sluggish mechanical HD installed/running (nevermind boots from one!) my first thought is "wtf is wrong with this thing?".

Bottom line is that per IRL statistics HD's don't even last longer than SSD's anymore under normal gaming/workstation use. Except for backup/archive purposes (and some servers) they are really obsolete.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Bottom line is that per IRL statistics HD's don't even last longer than SSD's anymore under normal gaming/workstation use. Except for backup/archive purposes (and some servers) they are really obsolete.

Sadly, there is no replacement for them yet. Wish the fabs of the world would shift their unused capacity to making NAND chips, thousands of them every second, so we can finally have affordable 30TB 3.5 inch SSDs that last longer than our lives. Let data centers have even cheaper HDDs for storing the world's porn

 

[Brainonska511]

I'm not really seeing the problem. It's running background maintenance stuff, whatever that is, while your system is being unused and immediately stops when you go back to using it. Seems like that is what we would want the system to do, instead of trying to do it in the background during active use.

 

[mikeymikec]

I'm not really seeing the problem. It's running background maintenance stuff, whatever that is, while your system is being unused and immediately stops when you go back to using it. Seems like that is what we would want the system to do, instead of trying to do it in the background during active use.

It's more like that I want to see what it's doing. I've had it before when Windows had defragged a hard drive while I was web browsing (and I have no problem with that provided it's being intelligently scheduled, and in that case it was), so Windows doesn't strictly stop doing background stuff because of mouse activity.

 

[Captante]

I'm not really seeing the problem. It's running background maintenance stuff, whatever that is, while your system is being unused and immediately stops when you go back to using it. Seems like that is what we would want the system to do, instead of trying to do it in the background during active use.

"Problem" is a relative term.

My old X2 6400+/Nforce 590 system still works without ANY problem at all. (runs/boots Win 10 Pro off a PNY 500gb SATA SSD too)

Point being that while it works perfectly, you wouldn't enjoy actually using it as a "daily-driver". Indexing (along with nearly everything else!) was/is an obvious performance-hit, however It does the job as a RAID 5 backup device.

 

[balloonshark]

Back when they added telemetery to Windows 8 the OS would randomly spin up one of my idle data drives out of the blue. My network would get busy at that time and it was sending the data to an IP address in Singapore. Probably no consumer or privacy protections for US citizens if they store your data in another country.

Nvidia also has a process that will grind a HDD each day. I always assumed it was updating game settings. I believe it's the nvidiacontainer process.

 

[Tech Junky]

telemetery

And that's why pihole is good for blocking that siphoning of data info. It's also good for blocking the crappy updates they try to push. Keeps the noise to a minimum.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

It's more like that I want to see what it's doing. I've had it before when Windows had defragged a hard drive while I was web browsing (and I have no problem with that provided it's being intelligently scheduled, and in that case it was), so Windows doesn't strictly stop doing background stuff because of mouse activity.

Open up resource monitor, go to disk tab, sort by usage. For more in depth, get something like procmon.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Windows is brutal when it comes to disk IO, it's constantly thrashing the drive. Less noticeable on a SSD but on a mechanical drive it's very noticeable. Windows Vista is where it got really bad. It's why that OS was so bloody slow until SSDs came out.

 

[Captante]

It's why that OS was so bloody slow until SSDs came out.

Also straight up garbage 64-bit drivers. (not to mention the "handy" 4gb RAM installation glitch on Nforce chipsets)

After all updates Vista was actually "fine" .... but by that time nearly everyone had bailed out.

 

[lxskllr]

Vista was my favorite windows. It was also my last windows. I switched to gnu/linux by the time 7 came out.

 

[Captante]

Vista was my favorite windows. It was also my last windows. I switched to gnu/linux by the time 7 came out.

I'd have to go with Win2k myself .... best Windows ever IMO in terms of "granularity". (if not all that "user-friendly")

Vista (after service-packs) however was a solid OS with nearly identical "guts" to Win 7 but simpler to use. The trend of "burying" frequently used settings behind multiple clicks started getting out of hand with 7 in the name of "cosmetics" and now in Win 11 it's freaking borderline-absurd. (especially on the desktop)

 

[lxskllr]

I'd have to go with Win2k myself.... best Windows ever IMO in terms of "granularity".

Vista (after service-packs) however was a solid OS with nearly identical "guts" to Win 7 but simpler to use.

Well, a lot of my opinion is based on looks. I thought Vista was beautiful, and the performance acceptable. For purely performance, and lack of hassle, I might go with 2kpro also.

 

[Captante]

Well, a lot of my opinion is based on looks. I thought Vista was beautiful, and the performance acceptable. For purely performance, and lack of hassle, I might go with 2kpro also.

7 was "pretty" too .... I miss REAL "Aero-Glass".

Both Vista and 7 looked a lot better than anything M$ is doing with GUI's these days. (although I prefer 10 to 11)

 

[mindless1]

I'm not really seeing the problem. It's running background maintenance stuff, whatever that is, while your system is being unused and immediately stops when you go back to using it. Seems like that is what we would want the system to do, instead of trying to do it in the background during active use.

Except I don't want a system doing background maintenance stuff when it's not needed and just puts wear on a HDD and wastes power.

I turned off indexing years ago and never looked back, though I suspect in this case it is windows defender or (if you have it installed, chrome) doing a scan. Check for new definition files.

I would be great if there was a shell to make modern windows interface/settings like Win2K. You can use windowblinds to get nearer the GUI look but it doesn't take care of the settings.

 

[Captante]

Indexing isn't nearly as important when booting from an SSD because the increased file-access time will barely be noticable for most people. (nevertheless SSD's are measurably slower without it enabled)

However turning it off booting from a spinner is a mistake. "Seek" performance will gradually degrade and significantly.

 

[mindless1]

^ Huh? Indexing just makes file searches faster, no? AFAIK, has nothing to do with seek or file access times.

Are you thinking of defragging? That's not an issue for me because I don't have any systems running windows partition off a HDD.

 

[Captante]

^ Huh? Indexing just makes file searches faster, no? AFAIK, has nothing to do with seek or file access times.

Are you thinking of defragging? That's not an issue for me because I don't have any systems running windows partition off a HDD.

Reminds me of "mindless" debates in the "comments" section of the main site back in the day lol ... I'll pass sorry.

Do whatever you feel is best with your PC.


What is indexing? Indexing is the process of looking at files, email messages, and other content on your PC and cataloging their information, such as the words and metadata in them. When you search your PC after indexing, it looks at an index of terms to find results faster.

~ Per Microsoft support

 

[mindless1]

^ Yes exactly, it has no impact on seek or file access times, just makes a database of files so they aren't scanned on every search.

I have no use for indexing because I use the lovely Everything search app. Once you learn the syntax it's quite powerful. If you don't want to learn, still does more than MS search ever could.

 

[Captante]

Windows search blows with or without indexing enabled no doubt about that! (I use something called Agent Ransack locally)

Anyway I can't see ever using a PC that boots off a mechanical HD by choice again so it doesn't matter... the feature is mostly obsolete.