A Surprised & Totally Unexpected Result

For longer than I care to remember I had been fighting with my Windows 10. I was suffering constant ‘not responding’ lock ups and freezes and all too frequently I was turning my computer on a good half hour before I wanted to use it – and at times even that wasn’t enough.

A virus perhaps?

No it appeared not. I ran my antivirus and Spybot and even did a six hour disk clean up to no avail.

CTRL-ALT-DEL

I did this and called up my Task Manager and it became immediately obvious that the ‘disk’ resources were the problem. They were clocking at 100% and were red and not budging. I know my way around a computer and decided to turn off (end process) some none essentials like Dropbox and Lenovo Update Facility. The basic rule of thumb here is only turn something off if you know what it does and that it is not essential.

Still my ‘disk’ remained at 100% and in the red.

It was endlessly frustrating and absolutely honestly it has even cost me money when trading. There have been moments when I wanted to make a trade but because of a freeze my browser locked up and by the time it was working again (which could mean close and reopen) the window of opportunity had passed.

I happened to mention my difficulties in a comments section on a post on Publish0x (I can’t remember even which post or even if it was one of my own) and I got a very helpful comment and a solution back.

He basically said Windows 10 is wonderful. Uninstall your anti-virus.

I have always had 3rd Party Anti-Virus protection on my Windows systems and I was initially very sceptical. He went on to explain Windows Defender is perfectly good and the problem with 3rd Party Anti-Virus is that they clog up system resources because they have a tendency to run a background scan on start up. This is not a virus check rather it is an indexing process that it does every time.

The idea of trusting Windows Defender with my files was not an appealing thought, but by now I was so frustrated with my computer that I thought I’d at least look into it.

So I did some research and it turned out that Windows Defender isn’t quite as good as many antivirus products on the market but it is certainly good enough. Let me define good enough. Generally speaking you are safe online so long as you:

• follow common sense best practice concerning emails / attachments / downloads / links

• only use legitimate streaming download services rather than those others that are out there including torrents

• do not visit those websites that your mother would disapprove of (you know the ones I mean).  

So as somebody who pretty much knows how to keep my computer safe I decided to trust Windows Defender. The commentator told me that it could take a couple of weeks for my files to settle down and for me to see real results from doing as he said.

So it’s been about a month now and the results have been incredible. I always thought it was the Windows Updates that clogged up the system and to some extent I still do but true to the advice I was given after about two weeks I started having far less ‘Not Responding’ lockups. Don’t get me wrong they still happen from time to time, but now it is like maybe once or twice a week rather than 20-30 times a day.

That is significant.

In my Task Manager my ‘disk’ resources are far more manageable. Incidentally when I did check it earlier I saw that my antivirus was using a lot of system resources, but I considered it to be untouchable as an essential process and I didn’t mention it earlier because it would have got in the way of the flow of a good story.

So to put it simply don’t do anything dodgy online and Windows Defender is more than good enough to protect your computer.

So being a part of a wider community like Read:Cash, Noise:Cash or Publish0x isn’t just about crypto and it has other benefits too.