Windows slow after updating to 21h1

Question

Our company has updated all computers to 21h1 and all computers that were formatted by hardlink with backup have been experiencing issues of slow explorer.exe (Desktop), extremely slow firefox (other browsers not affected) and other Microsoft programs too are slow. We've already done cleanmgr, cache, cleanup, sfc and dism, (starting third-part programs is not allowed GPO) and we only use SSDs. Most updated drivers have already been included in the image. What else can we try? The only solution we found was to delete the user and create again. We need a less drastic solution.

Answer 1

Hello Eliezer A,

Thank you for your question.

If the problem arose after upgrading to 21h1, then it would be better to downgrade to the previous version.

In some cases, this problem of slowness can be caused one by a specific update that will be released via Windows Update, if this happened to you after installing version 21h1 I recommend removing this update, for that you just need to follow the instruction below

Instructions: go to settings> update and security> click View update history> at the top of the screen click Uninstall updates> when opening the new screen look for the newly installed update and then right click on it and select Uninstall, wait for the process is complete and then restart your computer to complete the uninstallation completely.

You should use the above instruction to remove the possible update that caused the problem and on the date it was installed.

Another thing that may be the reason for the slowdown is the lack of updates in the 21h1 version, I know it seems a bit contradictory after the statement above, but this type of problem is quite common.

To check if your 21h1 version is really up to date, check the Build on the device, for that you just need to follow the instruction below:

How to check the version or Build: Press the Windows key + R and type: winver and press Enter, see that it will open a small screen with some information, you should look for Build, if it is in Build 19043.1165, it means you don't have it no updates pending on windows 10.

If the answer was helpful, please don't forget to vote up or accept as an answer, thanks.

Yours sincerely,

Samuel L

Answer 2

Try open start and search for feedback and open Feedback Hub app and report this issue.
If possible, create a new user or domain and try to connect to it and see if the problem persist?
Try perform Clean boot and see if the problem persist?
Take a look at:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows-da2f9573-6eec-00ad-2f8a-a97a1807f3dd
You may then enable services one by one to see which one causing the problem.

Answer 3

Hello @Eliezer de Almeida ,

In my experience, if the newly created users work fine, probably we are talking about some shell extensions that were installed prior to the update and that for some reason they don't like the new version libraries.

I have used through time different 3rd party tools to detect and disable them such as:

-ShellMenuView: is a small utility that display the list of static menu items that appeared in the context menu when you right-click a file/folder on Windows Explorer, and allows you to easily disable unwanted menu items

-CCleaner: has a feature to clean up the context menu. It's found under Tools -> Startup -> Context Menu

Also you can check in the Registry for \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Shell Extensions , but I am not a friend of patching through registry my issues.

and last but not least, the official method would be to use the Microsoft tool Process Explorer to Suspend (not just kill, to avoid restarts) of suspicious processes:

1. Get Process Explorer. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer
2. Use Process Explorer to suspend any suspect processes to stop them from writing to registery.
3. Get Auto Runs. - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns
4. Use the Autoruns to look at everything that gets loaded at start up, into Explorer and Internet Explorer and shut down any suspect services (non-Microsoft).
5. Find extensions like Google Updater, Adobe Updater, 7zip and Flash Utils processes and rename and stop them from running.

Hope this helps!!
Luis P

Answer 4

It sounds like you're encountering a frustrating issue with your Windows system after updating to version 21H1. I can empathize as I'm experiencing a similar problem with sluggish performance when searching for cleaning services in san diego. It's frustrating when standard troubleshooting steps don't seem to resolve the issue, especially when it disrupts essential tasks. Hopefully, someone can offer a solution that's less drastic than deleting and recreating user profiles. Let's keep an eye out for any insights or fixes that might emerge.