Sounds like something is wrong with your system.

My work machine runs Windows 11 and it's fully up to date. Notepad starts pretty much instantly.

▲ maccard 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

At my last job I was responsible for 70 windows 11 machines. At my current job it’s 20. These are i7/i9 spec with 64+GB memory and NVMe drives. No endpoint management software, just Intune for device registration.

They all have _very significant _ performance issues out of the box, with very long app startups, and very confusing slowdowns. I am 99% sure it’s windows defender doing an absolute crap ton of work on every single file open, and ignoring file and folder exclusions.

▲ criddell 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I know IT people often aren't given the time to dig into this stuff, but xperf and event tracing should reveal the culprit fairly quickly.

The best resource for this kind of stuff is Bruce Dawson's blog:

https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/etw-central/

▲ maccard 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not IT, I'm' just the senior most engineer in a game studio. Ive got WPA captures that point to windows defender, even with processes and folders excluded. But I have literally no idea what to do with those traces, hence my 99% conviction.

▲ saratogacx 20 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

If it is mostly your own tooling you may want to look at setting up a dev drive. It is supposed to be more optimized around workloads that would normally spin stuff like defender off the rails.

    System -> Advanced -> 
      -> For developers -> Developer Mode [on] 
      -> Dev Drive -> Create Dev Drive

	▲	maccard 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I need to write the blog post. I keep being told this, and it’s not the solution. After a reboot, on an NVMe dev drive with no disk encryption, first launch of our internal application (unreal editor) takes 9 minutes on my workstation. If I disable windows defender before launching it, it takes 30 seconds. If I add all the processes as exclusions, and add the workspace folder as an exclusion to defender… 9 minutes. edit: I didn't mean to direct this at you. I mean that it's somehow gained traction as being the solution to slow filesystem access, but the reality is it's just broken.

▲ fluoridation 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If it's that bad, why not just disable it?

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maccard 34 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Because the alternative is worse - no protection. Because we have everything in Intune we get the per device scan reports (I lied - we do enforce _some_ stuff as a group policy. We disable turning off certain features and we manage the windows update cadence) and thrrr have been multiple people who still need it… it’s generally non tech people who just download the absolute worst crap imaginable and ignore all the bypassable warnings too.

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9x39 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Enterprise versions are tamper-protected.

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fluoridation an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Can you not dual boot into something else and delete the executable?

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9x39 42 minutes ago | parent [-]

Disk encryption is also mandated in most enterprises.

I do not mean to patronize, it's just the enterprise-y stuff has tried locking down the PCs for exactly this reason - deleting the security tools when they're not loaded would be of course very effective.

On top of that, showing such motivation can expose people to violating the 782 commandments of whatever corporate IT policy someone had to sign to get a paycheck.

Rare is the security vs usability compromise in these companies that accounts for the need for high performance desktops, sadly.

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maccard 32 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I replied above but basically we still need something; some people are just incapable of not making a total mess and they will literally go to Trojan.com and install dangerous.msi, ignore all the optional dismissible pop ups that say this is bad, and then still drop me a DM that the cracked plugin they got for maya to try out before asking to spend $8 isn’t working…

If there’s a middle ground I’d love to hear it!

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fluoridation 27 minutes ago | parent [-]

Couldn't you disable on a per-user basis? Everyone shouldn't be punished just because a few people can't be careful with their stuff.

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maccard 23 minutes ago | parent [-]

The person mentioned is a special case but the reality is that most people do need _something_. What happens if one trusted person makes a mistake and submits an exe to perforce? Now absolutely everyone is hosed.

	▲	fluoridation 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Why would everyone be hosed just because a binary got committed to version control? Either way, surely you can set up some policies or monitoring for that sort of thing. I don't know, I've been developing on Windows for decades without an antivirus and I've never had these issues. Are your people downloading and installing random software all the time? In my experience, once I'm set up with my usual tools I rarely need to install anything else.

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fluoridation 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Eugh. Well, whatever. Not like it makes any difference to the employee. They get paid whether they're waiting for the computer to finish spinning or doing useful work.

	▲	maccard 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		We’re spending $4-8000 on these machines to try and offset these problems. The problem is that there’s 100 of these “little” issues - and I have a full time job that _isnt_ doing IT support. If someone can help me find an IT support contractor that I can hire that will fix it I’d love to chat to them, but it goes in the pile alongside “why on earth does teams take longer to boot than my entire machine” and “why are we using zoom (because the person who makes the decision there prefers zoom to teams”)

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maccard 34 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I am the enterprise here. We enforce it on because the alternative is worse.

▲ froindt 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The best demonstration of the delay is typing Calc in the Win+R Run dialog. There's a difference between instant and "way faster than Word".

On Windows 7, you could hit enter and immediately start typing numbers and it would work. I have never worked on a Windows 10 or 11 machine where it launches instantly.

I get a similar lag when launching Notepad. Not a huge disruption to the day, but annoying to see on a simple utility that used to be better.

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criddell 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That one is a little slower for me too - about 700 ms (it's a difficult thing to time with a stopwatch).

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oasisbob 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The iOS app "Is it snappy?" Is great for things like this.

	▲	criddell 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's really cool and what a great idea. Thanks for the recommendation.

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diegolas 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

in windows 11 i launch calc from win+r and it opens right when i hit enter. the delay is not from the launch dialog/OS but from the app (i use windows 7 calculator, i've replaced it because i don't like win 10+ calc design)

▲ pelotron 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Just give her a little of the ole "works on my machine."