To determine the problem I decided to switch browsers to Firefox and Explorer both were moderately better but still very slow. So my next step was to boot up on a Linux Mint CD and see how my browsing on live.com worked from that OS - massive difference! Probably 5-10x faster on Linux with Firefox.
While trying to figure out what was wrong with my system I did a deep scan using Windows Defender which took well over 24 hours to accomplish and found no problems. My system has a nice SSD drive with defragging software in place and plenty of RAM and disk space.
I suspect a chrome virus using script injection on my youtube.com pages which frequently freezes up and is nearly unusable but have not found anything that finds a problem. Looking on the Chrome debugger I see tons of scripts from all over the map but it too will lock up and prevent me from further investigation.
I used to work with an old 8080 2MHZ single processor 64k 87-bit RAM system I built back in the 70s and it was much faster than my Dual Proc Intel 2.13GHZ processor with 2GB of RAM, 64 bit OS and windows - even when simply using a text editor to code on Windows with no internet useage!
Looking at Task Manager revealed at times Windows Update pegging the hard drive with IO doing some kind of background install that just slowed my system to an unusable crawl. I wondered if it wasn't pre-installing Windows 10 for me in the background.
So basically, my very powerful PC is more controlled by advertisers and viruses and Microsoft than it is by me. It is clearly using a minuscule percentage of CPU power to do what I want it to do with the lion's share devoted to under-the-cover ops I have no clue about and no control over (without writing a post-graduate CS dissertation in the process). Is it spying on me? It is reporting my every keystroke to someone? Is there a root kit in there doing tons of stuff I can't even see? Why should the keyboard respond so slowly yet Task Manager say the CPU is idle 98% of the time?
Linux boots incredibly fast, and runs much faster, even when loading form a single CD. It clearly shows me how much I am being robbed by corporate America.
So as a last effort to give Windows one more chance I decided to start downloading Windows 10 - I've been supposedly doing that for the last 4 hours but the resource monitor shows absolutely no internet activity as the windows spinning wheel goes round and round telling me it is downloading windows. As I write this I am accessing the internet at the same time no problem.
Must be a bug.
I am very close to making the painful transition to Linux and chucking the OS I helped write into the waste basket - forcing me to abandon programs I have used for years like MSN Money and Free Cell and start completely over learning a new system. Maybe Wine is good enough on Linux now to make the transition easier.
I hate to waste the time but Windows has become so bad I can hardly read email or watch youtube or enjoy facebook. Personal computing should not be this way and this isn't the vision I worked so hard on at Microsoft for 20 years.
