Re-optimizing current setup - reinstalling worth it?

[Helmut Grokenberger]

So I've been contemplating re-optimizing and resetting my current system. Forgive me if this is a bit rambly, but I'm kind of brainstorming here and would appreciate some input.

Lately I've been getting the feeling I don't get the performance I used to get. So the thought has formed in my head if reinstalling and slimming down the system is worth it. For reference, I play in VR only, but I think this topic is better placed in the general PC section. My system runs on Windows 10 Pro 22H2 and was installed about three and a half years ago.

Right now I don't want to spend money on new hardware, but maybe some spring cleaning is in order. Apart from actual cleaning, I think maybe doing a fresh OS install might be advisable? I am assuming that a fresh OS install still runs better and smoother than an overcrowded stuffed old one, like it did back in the day . By now the system is pretty bloated and filled with a lot of junk I don't really need anymore.

I do have a spare M.2 SSD (a 1 TB Gen4 NVMe drive) I can use, so the whole endeavour would be relatively risk free. What are your thoughts on this, is it worth it?

I am running a Ryzen 9 5900X on an MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus with 32 GB DDR4@3600 Mhz and a Gigabyte 3080 Ti driving a Reverb G2. The new system drive would be the spare drive I have (a 1 TB Crucial P3 Plus), my games are on a 2 TB 980 Pro. I also still have a 2TB junk hard drive, but that doesn't matter here.

The mainboard has two different M.2 slots, one is Gen4 (from the CPU), the other Gen3 (from the chipset). As the old system drive was a Gen3 drive, the choice was clear what to put where. But if I swap the system drive for a new one: Do I gain anything, performance wise, to have the system drive in the Gen4 slot, or is it better to have the content drive in the faster slot?

Last thought: OS choice. It's becoming somewhat crucial anyway because of the support end of Windows 10, but will 11 be smoother / faster / whatever (I'd have to stick with 23H2 for WMR compatibility)? Or do I stick with 10 for this experiment?

Any opinions?

 

[Morbad]

Starting over with a fresh OS install might be the path of least resistance to a less problematic setup, but one should not expect miracles, unless one has really allowed things to get out of hand. A system can get slower over time, but is not doomed to do so; even Windows can last forever with reasonable maintenance and software hygiene.

Anyway, I usually reserve the fastest drive for the heaviest performance critical I/O. Since I don't care about trivial differences between boot times or application start time, this normally means my game and work/scratch drives are faster than my OS drive. Other people may have other preferences. In general, the differences in general-use performance between any vaguely modern NVMe drives are going to be very small.

Windows 11 doesn't really perform any differently from Windows 10, it just has even more garbage one will want to turn off. This might change as things like newer WDDM versions start to be taken advantage of, but by the time the performance gap is meaningful you'll be overdue for new hardware anyway. If you're going to be using WMR, that limits your options, but there are few practical downsides (no AI copilot...oh no!).

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Thanks for your input. At this point, this is really just spitballing and the flabby "feeling" that my VR performance isn't what it used to be - which is just that - a feeling.

Starting over with a fresh OS install might be the path of least resistance to a less problematic setup, but one should not expect miracles, unless one has really allowed things to get out of hand. A system can get slower over time, but is not doomed to do so; even Windows can last forever with reasonable maintenance and software hygiene.

Well what constitutes as "reasonable software hygiene"? The machine is definitely full of stuff I don't really need anymore. While I am not the type that installs useless software willy nilly, there's probably a lot of junk floating around. I kind of remember that in the XP and 7 days, a fresh install did wonders sometimes. It's kind of good to hear that it's not THAT important anymore.

Anyway, I usually reserve the fastest drive for the heaviest performance critical I/O. Since I don't care about trivial differences between boot times or application start time, this normally means my game and work/scratch drives are faster than my OS drive. Other people may have other preferences. In general, the differences in general-use performance between any vaguely modern NVMe drives are going to be very small.

Good, I would have the same preference - don't really care if the system takes two seconds longer to boot.

Windows 11 doesn't really perform any differently from Windows 10, it just has even more garbage one will want to turn off. This might change as things like newer WDDM versions start to be taken advantage of, but by the time the performance gap is meaningful you'll be overdue for new hardware anyway. If you're going to be using WMR, that limits your options, but there are few practical downsides (no AI copilot...oh no!).

At some point I will have to face the decision what to do. For the near future, I am somewhat comfortable to keep 10 running after the support ends. I'd also be very comfortable to forego "features" of new Windows versions when pinning the system to 23H2.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

To add: I may do an actual dirt check to see if airflow and temperatures are the issue, but in the past driver versions - especially for the nvidia card - have made drastic differences, and I remember I was very reluctant to leave a certain, very well performing nvidia driver version (sadfly I don't remember which version it was) for a newer one because the old one wouldn't run Cyberpunk without crashing.

 

[Morbad]

Well what constitutes as "reasonable software hygiene"? The machine is definitely full of stuff I don't really need anymore. While I am not the type that installs useless software willy nilly, there's probably a lot of junk floating around. I kind of remember that in the XP and 7 days, a fresh install did wonders sometimes. It's kind of good to hear that it's not THAT important anymore.

Things like uninstalling unused software (including their hidden remnants), clearing out temporary files, clearing out the Windows' component store (via DISM), removing extraneous startup entries and scheduled tasks, etc. Keeping an eye on event logs and addressing any problems therein, especially new problems, is also prudent.

Additionally, and contrary to popular belief, an occasional defragmentation pass can help as well, even on SSDs. Excess fragments cause filesystem overhead (request splitting) and certain usage patterns can make it harder for NAND controllers to leverage flash parallelism as data is deleted and misaligned data written into the gaps. This presentation explains the basics of both. Moving files (which is what defragmentation does) will force data to be written to fresh flash in an optimal manner while simultaneously reducing the number of file system extents...data goes back to being striped correctly across NAND devices at the physical level and request splitting is nearly eliminated at the file system level. This doesn't need to be done often and won't make a meaningful difference in number of P/E cycles used over the lifetime of the drive. Modern versions of windows will typically run quick defragmentation pass on SSD once a month, which should be plenty, but disabling some things that I commonly disable (e.g. VSS) also prevents Windows from doing this automatically, so I manually defragment my SSDs if the number of fragments gets uncomfortably high.

Leaving some free space on SSDs is also important. Garbage collection is less efficient, write amplification higher, and SLC caching reduced, when drives are nearly full. In general I try not to let any of my SSDs stay more than 60-70% full, if I can avoid it.

Anyway, even Windows XP and 7 shouldn't need clean installs without some specific reason. If a reinstall worked wonders, things were allowed to get out of hand. Window's default maintenance may have improved, but I still wouldn't rely on Windows to manage itself.

At some point I will have to face the decision what to do. For the near future, I am somewhat comfortable to keep 10 running after the support ends. I'd also be very comfortable to forego "features" of new Windows versions when pinning the system to 23H2.

You could install Windows 11 Enterprise or Education 23H2 (which have support until November 2026) and use Group Policy settings to reject any Feature Updates.

To add: I may do an actual dirt check to see if airflow and temperatures are the issue, but in the past driver versions - especially for the nvidia card - have made drastic differences, and I remember I was very reluctant to leave a certain, very well performing nvidia driver version (sadfly I don't remember which version it was) for a newer one because the old one wouldn't run Cyberpunk without crashing.

Always wise to save old driver installers for those versions that worked well.

 

[Codger]

Last thought: OS choice. It's becoming somewhat crucial anyway because of the support end of Windows 10, but will 11 be smoother / faster / whatever

I can only tell you what my experience has been. I recently moved from Windows 10 to 11 and it made no discernable difference to me, performance-wise.

There was a bunch of crud I had to turn off, and I had to move things around to be where I've always had them, and I had to fuss around making a local account so I could log in without having to sign in to a Microsoft account each time. Stuff like that. But once I got it set up, it runs fine.

 

[STRONTIUM DOG]

all the windows updates from about 4 years ago made 10 slower imo
you would only end up reinstalling them
i would just do a reg an pc clean and uninstall(reboot so not still hiding in ram) reinstall browsers and av force a defag or opto on drives

 

[DjVortex]

A fresh Windows install will make it snappier for a while.

When I installed windows for the first time in my current PC, it booted incredibly fast. After the bios loading screens the Windows login screen would appear in less than a second, and after logging in, the desktop would appear in a small fraction of a second, and if I, for example, right-clicked on the desktop as soon as possible, the context menu would appear immediately, with zero delay.

This was some years ago. Now it takes significantly longer for the login screen to appear, and after logging in it takes something like 2-3 seconds for the desktop to appear, and if I right-click as soon as possible, it takes like a second for the context menu to appear. Windows has gotten a lot slower over the years.

I'm sure that if I did a fresh install, it would be super-fast again.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

I've had a long think about this and came to the conclusion it's not worth it.

First of all, I tried to educate myself on how to actually install Windows 11 23H2. I can install Linux if you wake me at 3am and keep me blindfolded with my hands behind my back, but Windows always gives me the creeps. Just obtaining an install medium for a specific version seems quite the hassle. In the process I learned that MS actually will cut 23H2 from updates just a month later then Windows 10, so you're not really better of but using a (in my opinion) worse OS. Might as well stay on 10 then.

I also tried to learn a bit more about the Oasis project, which aims to create a native SteamVR driver for WMR headsets. It looks very promising (the author has the neccessary credentials to instill some confidence) and is aimed to released some time later this year. I will revisit the option to switch to 11, including the hassle to learn how to get it somewhat more privacy friendly, when Oasis is release.

Reinstalling 10 under these circumstances seems a waste of time, so I consider this short endeavour a failed one. Thanks for your guys' input though, I appreciate it.

 

[alexzk]

can install Linux if you wake me at 3am and keep me blindfolded with my hands behind my back, but Windows always gives me the creeps.

Why do you bother windows than ?

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Why do you bother windows than ?

Because tethered VR on Linux with an NVIDIA card, at this time, is a no-show. I've tried Monado/Envision, and it works, but only barely. It doesn't really work beyond displaying an image. The way I understood it, there is a significant issue in the current NVIDIA drivers that leads to terrible latency and instant vomitting.

"normal" gaming, including current AAA titles, works shockingly well though.

 

[Morbad]

I've had a long think about this and came to the conclusion it's not worth it.

First of all, I tried to educate myself on how to actually install Windows 11 23H2. I can install Linux if you wake me at 3am and keep me blindfolded with my hands behind my back, but Windows always gives me the creeps. Just obtaining an install medium for a specific version seems quite the hassle.

I have about twenty times as much experience with Windows as I do with Linux and have installed Windows 11 at least two-dozen times at this point. Still takes me twenty times as long to setup Windows to taste, from scratch, as it does any vaguely user friendly Linux distro. That said, it's more tedious than hard.

Microsofts .ISOs are readily available. I would strongly recommend using a custom autounattend.xml to disable the most flagrant of Windows' annoyances during installation. A good generator for said file can be found here. After that it's mostly a matter of disabling a few more things via PowerShell and Group Policy, optionally running Edge and Defender uninstallation utilities, installing updates, drivers, then ripping out some scheduled tasks/startup/services entries.

In the process I learned that MS actually will cut 23H2 from updates just a month later then Windows 10, so you're not really better of but using a (in my opinion) worse OS. Might as well stay on 10 then.

For the Education or Enterprise versions it's thirteen months more support for Windows 11 23H2 than 10...unless you have the ESU license for 10, or a third party source for those patches.

That said, unless something is actually wrong with your current install, I agree, a fresh install probably isn't worth the effort.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

I have about twenty times as much experience with Windows as I do with Linux and have installed Windows 11 at least two-dozen times at this point. Still takes me twenty times as long to setup Windows to taste, from scratch, as it does any vaguely user friendly Linux distro. That said, it's more tedious than hard.

Yeah it's not hard. Tedious nails it. Annoying. More so when you don't really have routine doing it.

Microsofts .ISOs are readily available. I would strongly recommend using a custom autounattend.xml to disable the most flagrant of Windows' annoyances during installation. A good generator for said file can be found here. After that it's mostly a matter of disabling a few more things via PowerShell and Group Policy, optionally running Edge and Defender uninstallation utilities, installing updates, drivers, then ripping out some scheduled tasks/startup/services entries.

Thanks for the links. Discerning if sources are legit and safe or not isn't really easy when you're not deep in the "scene", so to speak. I will remember those later.

For the Education or Enterprise versions it's thirteen months more support for Windows 11 23H2 than 10...unless you have the ESU license for 10, or a third party source for those patches.

I just looked it up for the easily available Pro version, apparently that one is kicked in october.

That said, unless something is actually wrong with your current install, I agree, a fresh install probably isn't worth the effort.

Yeah, about that... as if to mock me, when I launched my VR headset to day to play, my headset's mic stopped working. Well not the mic. Windows decided to stop it from working. Ironically, it shows up as a USB device and works fine in Linux, so I know it isn't the hardware that is broken. Windows tells me the device is fine and unmuted, yet it produces no sound.

I hate Windows.

 

[IcewindZG]

To follow up to what Morbad said about software hygiene, I have been using Revo Uninstaller to help with removing the traces of software I no longer use. I am now on a fresh install of Win11, but it's still in my arsenal. It's a free app, and it's worked wonderfully for me.

 

[Morbad]

The July update for WIndows 11 24H2 prevents Cross Device Resume from being completely disabled via conventional means. I've resorted to renaming the executable and replacing it with a null executable, which is a less than ideal solution as it won't survive a system file checker scan. This update also added a couple of garbage services that I had to disable.

Edit: since CrossDeviceResume.exe wasn't restarting automatically after being killed, I switched to simply killing it upon login with a scheduled task, as this avoids an annoying warning on startup as well as keeping the original file intact/sfc kosher.

That's the biggest problem with Windows 11...it being in active development means Microsoft is constantly adding or reworking features, 95% of which I don't want on my system at all. Disabling this garbage--which is a mix of nagware, spyware, and nannyware that all increase attack surface--is a never ending game of whack-a-mole. Worse, the dependencies are largely undocumented and unintuitive; I need to test each thing I disable to make sure it doesn't break some seemingly unrelated aspect of Windows

 

[Neilski]

That's the biggest problem with Windows 11...it being in active development means Microsoft is constantly adding or reworking features, 95% of which I don't want on my system at all. Disabling this garbage--which is a mix of nagware, spyware, and nannyware that all increase attack surface--is a never ending game of whack-a-mole. Worse, the dependencies are largely undocumented and unintuitive; I need to test each thing I disable to make sure it doesn't break some seemingly unrelated aspect of Windows.

I actually stopped using native-boot Linux well over 10 years ago because the update process back then was relatively laborious. However, I do still like most things about the OS and the update process has vastly improved in that time. Now that Windows is going from bad to worse in respects like this, it's probably the push I need to ditch Windows again. Gaming had been the only thing tying me to native-boot Windows, and I've been reading that most games now work pretty well on Linux (sounds like I may have to sacrifice VR though, reading what @Helmut Grokenberger says above).