Hey everyone, I'm really struggling with this problem. I can get games like DayZ running perfectly after a clean install of Windows 11, especially when I use NVCleaninstall for my GPU drivers and block updates with OOSU10. Initially, everything runs smoothly with high FPS and no stutters. However, after a week or two, I start experiencing random stutters, and even Windows feels sluggish. The Start menu and Explorer are slow, and Task Manager shows 100% disk usage, but no process seems to be using that much disk space.
Here's my setup:
- CPU: Intel Core i7-3770
- GPU: GTX 1080 FTW
- RAM: 16 GB DDR3
- Storage: SATA SSD (with a PCIe SATA 3 expansion card)
- Motherboard: outdated DDR3 board
I've tried several things including blocking Windows Updates, using old motherboard drivers (which made it worse), disabling Windows Defender, and applying various stutter fixes I found online. I even created a restore point when everything was working fine, but the stutters still returned immediately after reverting.
It honestly feels like something in Windows is updating or running behind the scenes. I've considered switching to Linux since I herd DayZ can run well there, but my main concern is getting modded servers to work smoothly. Is this just old hardware showing its limits, or is there a stealthy Windows process affecting my performance? It's frustrating to see everything run perfectly after a fresh install, only for things to degrade over time. Has anyone faced this issue or have any suggestions?
3 Answers
Check how much free space you have on your SSD. If it's getting low, that could really slow things down. Also, is Windows managing virtual memory automatically, or did you set it to a fixed size?
You may want to run a malware scan just to rule that out. Sometimes hidden processes can really bog down your system and aren't clearly visible in Task Manager.
Have you tried disabling Superfetch (now called SysMain)? Sometimes that can really mess with performance, especially on older hardware. Also, I get the feeling your CPU might be holding you back a bit, considering how aged it is.
Yeah, I did mention that I disabled indexing, but I might give Superfetch a shot, just to rule it out.
I've got around 300 GB free, and I'm not using a fixed size for virtual memory, but I think I tried that method before.