Our company has several Lenovo T440 laptops with Win10Pro. These systems ran flawless for several years through multiple Windows Updates. Then at some point about 12-18 months ago, we started seeing an unusual issue. After Patch Tuesday updates were installed and the laptop rebooted, nearly EVERY function became maddeningly slow, but only the first time that function is performed. For example, open Windows Explorer. Might take 10 minutes! After you wait it out and it opens, then subsequent Explorer openings are instant. Same with opening a PDF in Adobe. First time after WU, takes forever. Once open, then subsequent PDF opens are instant. Same with launching the web browser. Every month, this cycle repeats. I have exhausted my Google-fu trying to find others with the same issue with no success. Anyone here experience something similar? Any suggestions to try out?
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It would be nice to know what's going on, for your own sanity, if nothing else, but it's probably more efficient to just do a backup of your data and then use one of the many options to rebuild/re-image Windows to see if it goes away.
Very weird that it fixes itself after first use,
The issue I had with Lenovo was CPU Throttling, the CPU clock in performance monitor went all the way down to 0.4 / 0.3 Ghz, in my case downgrading the BIOS and rejecting updates kept it with the original performance, and eventually a newer Lenovo BIOS mentioned a fix for thermal, which solved it for me,
In your case, if first use solves it, and since the laptops are now at least year and half old, maybe they need some spinrite? Maybe an area of the disk is struggling, but its only used after updates?
I've run SpinRite on several of them and updated firmware and other Lenovo drivers with no improvement. We have several other models of laptop that don't have this issue. Just the T440p. I misspoke in my first post. Not T440. T440p. If it's any help, these laptops were bought refurbished from ReviveIT.
If you remember the days of XP and how inefficient Windows Update[ing] was, I had an ASUS laptop that would overheat trying to patch, which would cause it to crash and then make things even worse for next time. I never did get to the precise cause of the overheating, but the laptop was only about 3-4 years old. Perhaps it was the thermal paste had failed, or a fan was somehow clogged. When I finally just called it not worth the time any more, I did try some disassembly, but never found an obvious source of the heat build-up.
Windows caches its libraries (DLLs) in an easily loadable format. After patching it must reload them directly from their DLLs. This is similar to what MVS (IBM mainframe) did when we did a cold start. A warm start would load libraries into a memory from an image image (what we called the link pack area), from swap. I sequential read of a single source (swap) will take much less time than reading individual library files. Windows does the same with its DLLs. This reduces boot times significantly. Windows does something similar. Old concept. New implementation. That's all.
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I work with lots of windows clients that go through horribly slow startup times after a windows update, for 30 minutes up to a couple of hours. I never have found any real explanation except to say thats expected from an update
These laptops are only used for reading PDFs and clocking in and out of jobs. They are overpowered for their task, even if they are nearly 10 years old. I believe MS changed something with their WU that is somehow interacting with this specific model. They all have SSDs and once they get past their "first use" of a task, they are lightning fast for the next month until the next round of updates hit them. It is maddening and every month I have to remind the users of the same thing I told them the previous month. "Don't keep clicking, just wait it out. When it finally opens, it will behave normally afterward."
I am tempted to disable WU on these systems.
I am tempted to disable WU on these systems.
Never tried! Typically updates happen overnight Tuesday and first thing Wed morning users log in and use them. I may have to experiment with one. Trade it out so I can try as you suggest.
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