Is Resource Monitor useful/why is my computer slow?

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SamHH

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My computer is quite old, and it is annoyingly slow for using Lightroom or Photoshop. I'm trying to figure out what is causing it to be slow.

I've tried looking at the Performance tab in Task Manager, or at the Resource Monitor, to figure out what components are being used when the computer is running slow. Often it shows that, even during the moments when the computer really seems to be labouring, CPU utilisation is <50% and memory usage is <75%. Does this mean that a faster CPU or more memory would not help, or are those data wrong or misleading?

Could my drive be causing the bottleneck? I supposed not, because the drive on which my OS, programs, and image and catalogue files are located is a fairly modern SSD: a Sandisk SDSSDP-128G.
 
Have you done a defrag lately, did one for my friends brand new computer and it speeded his up a lot, loads of files split and arranged all over the place.
 
MatBin said:
Have you done a defrag lately, did one for my friends brand new computer and it speeded his up a lot, loads of files split and arranged all over the place.
Click to expand...

The OP is using an SSD so should not do a de-fragmentation

It would be helpful if the OP gave us some more details on the spec of their current computer

Also detailing what it is they are doing when they notice the slow down.

There could be many reasons why there is a slow down, including possible infection, so the more information you can give us the better
 
I haven't, no. I have this vague memory of reading about de-fragmentation and learning that it doesn't affect performance much.

Anyway, I just tried optimising the drive (I guess this is what Windows 10 calls de-fragmentation?), and it doesn't seem to have changed anything.

Thanks for the suggestion though.
 
What version of Windows and are you looking at tasts for All Users or just those running under your user account?
 
Keith W said:
The OP is using an SSD so should not do a de-fragmentation

It would be helpful if the OP gave us some more details on the spec of their current computer

Also detailing what it is they are doing when they notice the slow down.

There could be many reasons why there is a slow down, including possible infection, so the more information you can give us the better
Click to expand...

Hi Keith,

The CPU is an AMD Phenom II X4 955; the memory is 8GB of DDR2, can't remember what speed; it does not have a separate GPU card. Not sure if any other specs. are relevant.

Sometimes it is slow when doing things that one would expect to, and which the Task Manager indicates does, consume a lot of processing power. For example, converting RAW files to JPEGs, or merging photos into a panorama.

But other times it is slow doing what seem like relatively trivial tasks, like navigating around the catalogue in Lightroom and adding keywords and captions. At these times, the Task Manager is showing low CPU and memory use.
 
There are to many variables to your scenario without being more informed on your system specs i.e. what CPU and RAM are you running.

Never ever do a disk defrag on an SSD drive.
If you want to check the health of your SSD drive then download 'Sandisk SSD dashboard'.
This will let you check the overall health of the drive and also optimise it.
In theory Windows 10 should auto TRIM an SSD bit that isnt always the case. If you download the above software it will let you run TRIM which may assist.

If everytging with your SSD is in order then i would be looking at hardware next.
 
sirch said:
What version of Windows and are you looking at tasts for All Users or just those running under your user account?
Click to expand...

Hi Sirch,

I am using Windows 10 Pro.

I'm not sure how to tell whether I'm looking at all users, or just my user account, although mine is the only user account on the OS.
 
Processor is great I had the 955 its a little rocketship.

8gb is a little low and you might be doing a lot of page file swapping that can impact as you say.
given you have an old 955 you might find your board won't go beyond 8gb as mine wouldn't due to age.
 
MatBin said:
Have you done a defrag lately, did one for my friends brand new computer and it speeded his up a lot, loads of files split and arranged all over the place.
Click to expand...

MatBin said:
Interesting -
http://lifehacker.com/windows-does-defragment-ssds-but-its-okay-1666753409
Matt
Click to expand...

An SSD does not work like a mechanical disc though, SSD's are instant access so it matters not a jot whether files are scattered all over the place.

Modern OS software and purpose made SSD software should allow SSD's to maintain optimum performance without user input.

In my years of running SSD's I have never once done a defrag. I have only ever used Sandisk SSD dashboard (because I have Sandisk SSD's) to maintain the firmware version, check health periodically and allow it to automatically run trim once a week.
 
Try looking at the processes tab and then sorting by cpu or memory usage. Sometimes you can find its windows update or some other programs doing things in the background like looking for updates.

Some versions of lightroom have memory leaks and performance can drop off with time even if you are just navigating. Try quitting lightroom, waiting 10-20 seconds and then starting again.
 
stupar said:
There are to many variables to your scenario without being more informed on your system specs i.e. what CPU and RAM are you running.

Never ever do a disk defrag on an SSD drive.
If you want to check the health of your SSD drive then download 'Sandisk SSD dashboard'.
This will let you check the overall health of the drive and also optimise it.
In theory Windows 10 should auto TRIM an SSD bit that isnt always the case. If you download the above software it will let you run TRIM which may assist.

If everytging with your SSD is in order then i would be looking at hardware next.
Click to expand...

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for your suggestions. CPU and memory specs. are posted just above.

I downloaded SSD Dashboard. When I ran the SMART Diagnostic Extended Test, it got stuck at 10% and eventually returned status code 27, which I understand means it timed out.

When I ran the SMART Diagnostic Short Test, it completed and found no problems.

I ran TRIM, and it seems to have increased performance by a small amount; it's hard to tell. I will schedule it to run TRIM regularly.

Assuming that the drive is not the bottleneck on performance, is it possible to figure out whether a new CPU or GPU or more memory will help? Does indicated memory use of ~75% in Task Manager mean that more memory will not help, for example?
 
Last edited:
Over time you can pick up a lot of malware / bloatware / junk / or other crud from the internet or installing stuff.

It can slow a PC to a near crawl and it can be very hard to get rid of.

You can try to get rid of most of it with anti malware / security programs.

It may be that and not the age of the PC or a combination of both.

At a guess if it is simply the age of the PC then the onboard graphics processor and older ddr2 ram would be the bottleneck.

the cpu power is not bad, ssd are super fast, 8gb ram is large enough
 
the CPU power isnt great, it's pretty lowly to be fair. It benches slower than my old Core2 Quad 9550 which I found editing 5dmk2 files was like pulling teeth.

that said, 50% CPU utilisation wont be causing a bottleneck. either will 75% ram usage, paging shouldn't really be an issue with an SDD (assuming the SSD isnt terrible, although personally I dont rate sandisk).

you mentioned CPU and RAM utilisation in task manager, what is the disk doing?
 
SamHH said:
Hi Sirch,

I am using Windows 10 Pro.

I'm not sure how to tell whether I'm looking at all users, or just my user account, although mine is the only user account on the OS.
Click to expand...

Start Task Manager (right click on the task bar and select Task Manager), click the Processes Tab and at the bottom there is a button that says "Show processes for all users", click that. A lot of background tasks run under a local System account rather than under your account, even though you installed them. These include things like virus checkers, updaters, etc. Once you are looking at processes from all users check what is consuming the CPU, click the CPU column and the active tasks will sort at the top, You can then consider uninstalling anything that you don't think is necessary which is hogging CPU, e,g, you may have more than one virus checker installed
 
sirch said:
Start Task Manager (right click on the task bar and select Task Manager), click the Processes Tab and at the bottom there is a button that says "Show processes for all users", click that. A lot of background tasks run under a local System account rather than under your account, even though you installed them. These include things like virus checkers, updaters, etc. Once you are looking at processes from all users check what is consuming the CPU, click the CPU column and the active tasks will sort at the top, You can then consider uninstalling anything that you don't think is necessary which is hogging CPU, e,g, you may have more than one virus checker installed
Click to expand...

The other useful column is startup. Have a look there to see what else you have running at startup, google update, adobe update, java update etc. You can disable most of these.
 
A few observations not in any particular order
A 128gb SSD is not all that big
You have everything on the SSD-not a very wise idea
Do you have an AV program running which is slowing everything down
Thoughts
Get a second HDD , internal if possible external if not
Put Photos on second HDD ( Note Do this in LR NOT explorer or you will screw everything up.)
Then if you are feeling brave, back up LR catalogue to memory stick and format the SSD and reinstall everything then put LR catalogue back onto SSD
BTW trim should run automatically
 
neil_g said:
Having a single SSD shouldn't cause issues.
Click to expand...

I know a single SSD or any single HDD will not cause issues, until it goes wrong and you loose all your photos, and as HDD's are so cheap you might as well have two
 
GTG said:
Over time you can pick up a lot of malware / bloatware / junk / or other crud from the internet or installing stuff.

It can slow a PC to a near crawl and it can be very hard to get rid of.

You can try to get rid of most of it with anti malware / security programs.

It may be that and not the age of the PC or a combination of both.

At a guess if it is simply the age of the PC then the onboard graphics processor and older ddr2 ram would be the bottleneck.

the cpu power is not bad, ssd are super fast, 8gb ram is large enough
Click to expand...

Hi GTG,

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll give the anti-malware software a go.
 
neil_g said:
the CPU power isnt great, it's pretty lowly to be fair. It benches slower than my old Core2 Quad 9550 which I found editing 5dmk2 files was like pulling teeth.

that said, 50% CPU utilisation wont be causing a bottleneck. either will 75% ram usage[...]
Click to expand...

Hi Neil,

Thanks, this is the question to which I was looking for an answer. Because although the components are quite meagre nowadays, there doesn't seem to be any point upgrading them if they are not even being fully utilised. But I wasn't sure whether Task Manager gives an accurate picture.

neil_g said:
you mentioned CPU and RAM utilisation in task manager, what is the disk doing?
Click to expand...

I'm not really sure how to read the graphs for the disk, but the attached image shows what they look like as I navigate the catalogue, add metadata and move the sliders in the Develop module in Lightroom.
 

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sirch said:
Start Task Manager (right click on the task bar and select Task Manager), click the Processes Tab and at the bottom there is a button that says "Show processes for all users", click that. A lot of background tasks run under a local System account rather than under your account, even though you installed them. These include things like virus checkers, updaters, etc. Once you are looking at processes from all users check what is consuming the CPU, click the CPU column and the active tasks will sort at the top, You can then consider uninstalling anything that you don't think is necessary which is hogging CPU, e,g, you may have more than one virus checker installed
Click to expand...

Thanks for this. Unfortunately I don't seem to have a button saying "Show processes for all users". However, the processes are categorised as "Apps", "Background processes" and "Windows processes". Nothing seems to be particularly hogging memory or CPU usage. I will have a go at uninstalling my anti-virus software, like GTG suggested.
 
troutfisher said:
A few observations not in any particular order
A 128gb SSD is not all that big
You have everything on the SSD-not a very wise idea
Do you have an AV program running which is slowing everything down
Thoughts
Get a second HDD , internal if possible external if not
Put Photos on second HDD ( Note Do this in LR NOT explorer or you will screw everything up.)
Then if you are feeling brave, back up LR catalogue to memory stick and format the SSD and reinstall everything then put LR catalogue back onto SSD
BTW trim should run automatically
Click to expand...


Hi Chris,

Thanks for your reply.

To clarify, I do not have everything on a single drive. I have my OS, programs, Lightroom catalogue and photos that I am currently editing on one drive (an SSD); photos that are 'archived' and other files on another drive (an HDD); and the content of both drives backed up to other internal and external HDDs. I'm not sure I quite follow your point about the size of the SSD. Is that likely to have a bearing on how fast the computer runs?

Yes, I have AVG antivirus software. I will try removing it and see if that makes a difference.
 
Byker28i said:
The other useful column is startup. Have a look there to see what else you have running at startup, google update, adobe update, java update etc. You can disable most of these.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion. There wasn't an awful lot set to run on startup, but I disabled a couple of programs.
 
troutfisher said:
I know a single SSD or any single HDD will not cause issues, until it goes wrong and you loose all your photos, and as HDD's are so cheap you might as well have two
Click to expand...
That's a separate conversation to the performance point at hand but yes backup is a good idea. Although something that can be removed and rotated off site would be good.
 
SamHH said:
Hi Neil,

Thanks, this is the question to which I was looking for an answer. Because although the components are quite meagre nowadays, there doesn't seem to be any point upgrading them if they are not even being fully utilised. But I wasn't sure whether Task Manager gives an accurate picture.



I'm not really sure how to read the graphs for the disk, but the attached image shows what they look like as I navigate the catalogue, add metadata and move the sliders in the Develop module in Lightroom.
Click to expand...
The disk isn't doing much at all. Which is odd as none of the system appears to be significantly struggling from the % usages you mention.
 
SamHH said:
Hi Chris,

Thanks for your reply.

To clarify, I do not have everything on a single drive. I have my OS, programs, Lightroom catalogue and photos that I am currently editing on one drive (an SSD); photos that are 'archived' and other files on another drive (an HDD); and the content of both drives backed up to other internal and external HDDs. I'm not sure I quite follow your point about the size of the SSD. Is that likely to have a bearing on how fast the computer runs?

Yes, I have AVG antivirus software. I will try removing it and see if that makes a difference.
Click to expand...


Sorry I got the impression you only had a 128gb SSD, you have a very similar setup to mine so its looks like something is running in the background and slowing it down
 
A couple of things regarding Lightroom. Its memory management is pretty awful and that may be an issue with only 8gb RAM. (I have 16gb and can easily bring Lightroom to an almost standstill without getting anywhere near maxing out the RAM with only around 3-4gb used.) Secondly, check to see if GPU acceleration is turned on. It can actually be detrimental to Lightroom's performance.

Regards...
 
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