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A client emailed me specs for a PC they wanted to buy back in 2019. Was about to head into another client, so I checked it quickly on my phone and said “Looks good, go for it”

I should have looked closer. The system is a HP All-in-One 24-f0047c (they love their AIO’s there). It’s got 8 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD … but processor is AMD A9-9425 which turns out is a mobile chip.

Seems like these things started grinding around the time Windows 20 2004 was installed on them. CPU is pegged at 100% almost all the time with a single browser tab open and my remoted in. Now, I can blame Microsoft (and I will partially), but my bad for not seeing this crappy CPU and helping them choose a more future proof system.

Anyone have any suggestions to speed these systems up? So far I have:

run all windows updates

changed visualizations for best performance

ran ccleaner and registry cleaner

changed power plan from Balanced to High Performance

disabled a bunch of stuff under Startup (i.e. OneDrive, Skype)

turned off bluetooth

changed a lot of the privacy settings, turned off location, turned off background apps

What else do you think will help? Rebulid? More RAM? A BIOS update? Thanks!

45 Spice ups
2

use performance monitor to determine which app/process is using the CPU. then investigate.

It is usually the AV/windows defender. hard to resolve, make sure it is not doing a full scan etc at the time.

5 Spice ups
3

You don’t say what else it is doing besides having a browser with one tab open for the CPU to be going at 100%. What AV does it have and is that doing anything? While it is not a particularly powerful CPU many laptops run with it fine and even Windows 10 should be reasonably fast. Is it the start up they are worried about or is there particular programmes that they run which cause them issues.

Always run Linux on it as that should be nimble enough.

1 Spice up
4

While that A9 isn’t the most powerful chip in the World, constantly high CPU usage? Shouldn’t be happening. I had a system with those similar symptoms and, while I don’t think it’s a virus, I had to convince the execs this wasn’t ‘garbage hardware’, but a rogue or damaged Windows component that was hogging the CPU for nothing. Sure enough, I showed them how, normally, that system was more than enough. Something was just broken.

But I would say it will take a full wipe and re-install for you to get any real satisfaction, rather than patches and upgrades.

26 Spice ups
5

If you are using Enterprise, I would recommend shutting off Cortana. If you haven’t done so already, look at disabling the Delivery Optimization features. There maybe a few things you can do in the browser settings, but they could make some websites not work. One other thing you could look at is tuning your AV. Your really limited on options IMHO.

4 Spice ups
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1135th out of 1263 Benchmark

1 Spice up
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We use Webroot AV so that is pretty light. My remote access tool is Logmein. Then we are an MSP so we have an agent that runs in the background doing patch management. But with just the above running in the background, me remoted in via LogMeIn and one browser tab…100% CPU utilization.

@brianswales ​ - that is hilarious. What a crappy CPU. I feel like crap for not looking deeper into the system. Cannot believe HP would use this proc. In the specs I saw 8GB ram paired with an SSD and thought that would be good enough.

So, going to try a few of the recommendations from @jct2 ​ and will let you know. Rebuild might be in the future!

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Not sure if there’s anything you can do with one of those. I’ve used two HP all in ones in my time, and both of them have been the same way - horrible performance no matter what I tried. I tried reformatting and reloading the OS, I checked the memory, tested the CPU, and nothing. They just were not good computers to use, and I’ll never use another one or recommend one again. You can try a wipe and reload, but from my experience I wouldn’t hold out much hope that it will do any good.

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Run SFC /scannow and dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth.
I’ve had the issue crop up on a couple updates.

3 Spice ups
10

I think you need to more precise…are these new systems or already 12-20 months old (this was launched in Mar 2018) ?

Then are all slow or one or a few only ?

What software installed ?

3 Spice ups
11

Its a loosing battle with a crap CPU that will constantly be the bottleneck. Its like expecting a 3-legged horse to win the race.

3 Spice ups
12

There really is no need to guess here. If Resource Monitor doesn’t tell you exactly what the process consuming the CPU cycles is Process Explorer should.

11 Spice ups
13

You can try BIOS and Drivers but you are going to be fighting a loosing battle with that mobile processor.

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If they insist on All-in-one HP has come out with a monitor that has a slot in the back and an HP elite SFF slides in, one cable to the wall. Very nifty setup.

4 Spice ups
15

We have started to see similar issues with the A-series CPUs now that systems have been updated to 2004 or previous update. We had some with Lenovo and HP desktops and laptops. Our other i3-series computers are also seeing it too but the new Ruben based ones are zooming along now. Almost like 2004 just tanks with old processors.

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Would cost might had been one of the considerations ?

At one point of time…people saw i7 and/or SSDs…they think $$$$ vs a non i5 or i7 CPU would be much cheaper.

To be fair in comparison, the specs could not had been worse than a chromebook which some of our users opens like 20-50 tabs ?

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yeah you’ll need 16gb ram these days for Window10…

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Please don’t take this the wrong way but that is nowhere near correct.

Windows 10 runs very well on 4GB RAM for office work, 8GB is more than enough unless you have 150 Chrome tabs open.

If you are maxing out 8GB of RAM in an office environment and not doing 3D design work (Autodesk Inventor, Solidworks), something is wrong.

The problem lies in the CPU, you can’t polish a turd. It will never run like you want it to, no matter what optimizations you make.

13 Spice ups
19

I’m usually the last person to make this recommendation, but is there a specific reason it needs to run Windows? If yes, would they let you reset it to factory/keep files (if things aren’t backed up) and see what happens? Or wipe and reload 1909?

1 Spice up
20

Process Explorer will give you the information you need. 100% CPU usage does not mean the CPU is 100% busy. It might be interrupts. It might be IO wait. A computer built with an inexpensive CPU is probably also built with a bargain SSD. Not all SSDs are created equal and even an SSD can lead to IO wait issues.

2 Spice ups