[Note]: I have fixed my computer and now it is running fast. See the end of the post for the update and the possible fix(es) of the issue.
I have a habit of keeping my computer up-to-date as much as I can, so whenever there is an update of either OS or software I will get on it and install it. This habit, however, is a double-edge sword, while most of the time it will protect me from getting hacked, it can cause trouble sometimes, which just happened to me recently: my computer became sluggish after I installed Windows 10 Creators Update.
After Microsoft officially released Windows 10 Creators Update on April 11, 2017, I couldn’t wait so I manually installed the update by using the media creation tool as suggested by Microsoft to those who are impatient to wait. The installation went well, but soon I noticed my computer seems to be much slower than before. It is not because I have a crappy computer, the specs of my computer is actually pretty decent: it is a HP Envy 15.6 laptop with Intel i7 CPU, 16GB RAM, 2GB Nvidia graphic card, 32GB SSD + 1TB hard drive. It has been running lightning fast until the installation of Windows 10 Creators Update. Now it takes about 2-3 minutes to boot up, Google Chrome is slow, and video is choppy. I searched the Internet and apparently I am not the only one complaining about the update, see here, here, here, and here.
I have tried some of the suggested ways, but my computer performance does not seem to improve. I will continue my research to find a way to fix my computer and will post back to update you guys. In the meantime, if you have experienced the same problem and found a fix, please share with me; but if you have not updated your computer to Windows 10 Creators Update, I strongly recommend you to put it off until Microsoft finds the root cause of the issue.
[UPDATE] – I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I fixed my computer and now it runs as fast as before the Windows 10 Creators Update, and I am very happy about it. The bad news is I don’t know exactly how I fixed it. It could be one of the following ways I have tried, or a combination of them. However, if you are experiencing the issue as mine, you can try the following ways and I hope your computer will be fixed as well. Here are the things I have tried:
- Update your graphic driver. It is likely Windows 10 Creators Update has some new requirements on the graphics (maybe due to the new Game Mode?) and both my Intel graphic card and NVidia card released driver updates several days after the official release of the Creators Update.
- Launch the Command Prompt and run this command: sfc /scannow . If any important Windows file somehow got corrupted during the Windows upgrade, it could cause performance issue of Windows, and the command would be able to repair the corrupted file to fix the performance issue.
- Disable the Fast Boot option in Windows, then reboot your computer. After you reboot, re-enable the Fast Boot option. (I think this is the fix for my computer). The Fast Boot option is designed to pre-load some boot information to reduce the startup time, but in my opinion, the boot information got damaged or corrupted during the Windows upgrade. By disabling and re-enabling the Fast Boot option the computer is forced to pre-load a fresh copy of the boot information so computer can start up quickly. Again, this is just my theory and I could be wrong, but after I tried this, my computer suddenly runs fast.
Hope this helps. And please let me know if any of the above fixes worked for you.
